(upbeat music) - Hi, everyone, Steve Adubato.

We kick off the program with Dr.

Jonathan Farina.

He's the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Seton Hall University, one of our higher ed partners.

Dr.

Farina, good to have you with us.

- Great to be here, Steve.

Thanks for inviting me.

- For those who do not know, explain what being the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at SHU is all about.

- Well, the College of Arts and Sciences is our biggest college.

It includes all of our hard sciences from physics and chemistry to biology, as well as all the humanities, English, history, philosophy, and social sciences, political science, psychology.

So as Dean, I'm responsible for managing all those programs.

They account for more than half of the students at Seton Hall.

As well as for fundraising, developing new curriculum, programming, and recruiting.

So it's a big job, but an exciting one.

- Absolutely, and we've been a long time.

I've taught at the university, at the Buccino Leadership Institute, and longtime Seton Hall basketball fan.

Looking forward to a good season.

We're starting this right before the season, or taping this before the season.

Dean, talk to us about the goal that you've expressed publicly, and our producers picked up on this, to connect liberal arts with real-world careers, such as humanities, business, philosophy, and law.

Historically, people thought, "Oh, liberal arts, I mean, what is that?

Like what do you do with that?

How do you get a job with that?"

Connect it all for us, Doctor.

- Sure, so yeah, it's one of the overarching strategic goals of Seton Hall as we move into our new strategic plan is actually to encourage more and more students to cross major in both a liberal art and a pre-professional degree that's more familiarly associated with a career track.

The liberal arts are named the liberal arts not because of their political connections, but because they were the forms of education appropriate for free people.

Literally, those forms of education that were thought to train you to be a citizen in a democracy, but also those disciplines that rounded out your humanity so that you weren't just that guy Steve from this particular town speaking this particular language believing these things, but instead, we expose the student to different languages, different cultures, different time periods beyond his or her present, so that they have a wider understanding of their context in the world and a responsibility to others.

So the way we're connecting these disciplines to jobs is through some innovative integrated programs as we call them, including a medical humanities program, and a business humanities program, and a BA in philosophy and law.

And what all of these do is they have courses that don't take for granted that a student is going to take a history course, for example, and know how what they're learning there is going to apply to the business world, say.

But instead, those classes actually give the students business content to understand and think about together as a historian to see how does understanding the history of this industry or this area make them a better potential business person moving forward.

How does being a better storyteller help them become a better doctor or nurse listening to a patient tell them about their symptoms or give them their diagnosis?

- Big picture question.

My older son Steven did his graduate work at Seton Hall in religion and theology, and for his mom and I and so many other parents are like, where's the jobs?

Where are the jobs?

You know, that whole question.

To what degree do you believe, for parents watching right now, listening right now, do you believe that it is the role a significant role of a higher ed institution, in this case, Seton Hall, to prepare a student for work, to get a job?

- So I think the university has two very important goals.

One is to give the student an education and the meaning of the term, which is to lead them out of themselves, edukire literally means a path out.

And that has little to do with the job.

That's more about finding who they are, what their loves are, exposing them to the full experience of what it is to be a human in this rich world.

And then absolutely, we also have the obligation to prepare them for a successful career, and not just a successful career the day they graduate to 10 years out, but when they graduate to when they retire, however long down the road that is.

Because as you know, a lot can change in 10 years, what career is popular and successful and so on.

- Including with artificial intelligence.

- Exactly, artificial intelligence and automation of all kinds.

Key point I always make with parents when we're recruiting is a major does not determine how much money you're gonna make.

It doesn't determine what jobs you're gonna get.

They're often connected because the person who wants to be a writer might choose English, might choose to be a writer, which is not a highly lucrative career, but plenty of businesses would gobble up someone who's an English major as long as that student does all the things they need to do to set themselves up to land a business job.

In fact, I think sometimes they're more competitive for those jobs than the business student is.

But starting day one, they have to take advantage of all the things the university offers to help them prepare.

- Absolutely, Dr.

Farina, talk to us about a very significant gift, financial gift from an alumnus, a late alumnus, Frank Rubino, a $10 million gift for a scholarship that will provide financial support to students pursuing degrees in traditional STEM, science, technology, engineering, and math fields.

Talk to us about that gift, how significant it is, and the impact it'll have.

- Sure, yeah.

So Frank Rubino graduated in 1964.

He had his Bachelor of science in mathematics from Seton Hall.

He was also a member of the ROTC and the math club, and went on to have a career in the US Army as a lieutenant in Germany.

After that, he became an actuary for many years, and not only in the Army, but afterwards, he had the experience of traveling in Italy.

So he had two interests with us.

One, he wanted to help more students have the kind of education he had so that they could have a long successful career.

He also wanted them to be exposed to the world like Italy.

So at his bequest, he left us $10 million.

The way our endowments work is that we take off four and a half percent a year to spend so that they will last forever.

And this gift will spin off 45 $10,000 scholarships per year forever.

For students, it prioritizes students with financial need, and they can be in any of those traditional STEM fields, so math, computer science, physics, biology, biochemistry, chemistry, any new engineering fields we create along the way.

And all they have to do is demonstrate a real interest in Italian.

So they can take Italian as their required language.

They can take coursework in Italian subjects, history, art.

They can do any one of our study abroad programs.

We have many study abroad programs that go to Italy.

And really, what's great about this gift then is it helps students of need.

Seton Hall's always been about giving a new access to social mobility to immigrants and to people with less money.

It gives them the career-worthy, you know, degree in STEM, which is a huge field of opportunity right now.

And the United States is not producing enough STEM graduates to meet the job demands, and it gives them that liberal arts kind of mindset that we want by exposing them to a different culture.

- Dr.

Jonathan Farina is the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, the largest college at Seton Hill University, one of our longtime higher ed partners.

Dr.

Farina, thank you so much for joining us.

We appreciate it.

- Thanks for your time, Steve, appreciate it.

- You got it, stay with us, we'll be right back.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by The Turrell Fund, a foundation serving children.

Community FoodBank of New Jersey.

The Adler Aphasia Center.

Congress Hall.

A Cape Resorts property.

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New Jersey Sharing Network.

Johnson & Johnson.

NJM Insurance Group.

And by Valley Bank.

Promotional support provided by Insider NJ.

And by NJ.Com.

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