Liberal Arts In The News - August 2026
The following are clips from media mentions and articles in August 2026.
- Trending on Campus: Influencer Classes
- WORLD
- Lindsay Perrault, a lecturer in Purdue’s school of communication, teaches a class on content creation that equips students with the skills they would need to become full-time influencers or to work with influencers as a business or brand. "For the vast majority of creators, it is a big grind before you’re able to develop a stable income,” she says. While a content creation class alone cannot guarantee students will become successful overnight, Perrault sees value in teaching both new and traditional principles of journalism that can apply to all kinds of career paths beyond social media influencing.
- Research on parental favoritism found most mothers privately admit to a favorite child — but when researchers asked the kids to guess who it was, they were usually wrong
- Bolde
- A Distinguished Professor of Sociology, J. Jill Suitor, has been following the same 500+ multigenerational families for more than 25 years, studying patterns and health consequences of parental favoritism and disfavoritism in adulthood. This 3-wave project, funded by the National Institute on Aging, has expanded in recent years to include adult grandchildren as well as adult children and focuses on how parental differentiation in middle and later life shapes psychological well-being, parental caregiving, bereavement and relationships among adult siblings.
- South Korean ambassador Kang Kyung-Wha bridges cultural exchange at Purdue
- The Exponent
- The Purdue Interdisciplinary Center for Korean Studies (PICKS) welcomed South Korean Ambassador Kang Kyung-Wha for a conversation with Huai-Rhin Kim, a clinical assistant professor of Korean and Asian studies in the school of languages and cultures. Dean Chris Yeomans joined them as they explored various topics related to present and future US-Korean relations from culture to interpersonal connection.
- Purdue expands Cornerstone program with new civic learning initiatives
- Star City News Lafayette
- Purdue is expanding its Cornerstone Integrated Liberal Arts program, adding a new interdisciplinary initiative centered on civic learning and engagement. Building on a decade of national success, the new Cornerstone Institute for Civic Thought integrated civic education into disciplines such as STEM, business, agriculture and health. Cornerstone currently serves over 10,000 students, aiming to foster well-rounded and career-ready graduates equipped for thoughtful citizenship.
- A recount Q&A: 'Pretty clear what the voter intended'
- Based in Lafayette
- Jay McCann, a political science professor specializing in campaigns and elections, shared key insights on how administrative technicalities flipped the Indiana Senate District 23 Republican primary. McCann commented on how minor human oversights by poll workers led to invalidated ballots in an extremely tight race. “Since it is such a labor-intensive process and there’s so many hands all over the process, invariably you're going to see little hiccups along the way," he observes, emphasizing that while these small errors are typically random, "sheer randomness can have a really big, important outcome when you are down to just a handful of votes here or there.”