By Colin Ahern – Opinions Editor

The Williams School of Business at Bishop’s represents a large percentage of students on campus. This program is excellent in providing students the tools necessary to work in business and finance or explore entrepreneurship. Similarly, it teaches students how to manage their own finances and interpret theory about how the global economy functions.

These are all valuable skills. However, they prove to be either intimidating or inaccessible to many liberal arts students as a result of existing outside the arts. For students looking to learn about these topics through electives, the courses they pursue can be far too narrow to be practical, thereby demanding that students take more.

As a student who went to CEGEP, I have no space in my degree for a business class. This begs the question: If not in university, where will I learn this theory? The answer is most likely that I will not.

One way to potentially dispel this issue is to provide a week of lectures in Centennial or by opening specific classes to other domains. Much like the Humanities Week in the fall, this could prove valuable for students to learn business content without being focused on the grade they will receive. We see that in Donald Lectures, there is a high attendance of students attending liberal arts lectures. If we offered a similar style of presentation for business topics open to all disciplines of study, many liberal arts students would want to attend. Sufia Langevin, a fourth-year student in education shared: “There are so many opportunities to learn different ideas, skills, and knowledge in sciences and arts from Arts Fest to Research Week. It would be really interesting to have something like that in business for sharing and learning.”

The lack of these venues removes the ability for non-business students to access this information. However, business students are not held back from learning about the arts. Every semester has multiple events run by the humanities for all students to see plays, attend concerts, or view art galleries. With Arts Fest approaching, one must wonder if there can be an event targeted toward liberal arts students to learn business skills beyond the odd elective.