A book championing the study of the liberal arts co-edited by Grove City College Professor of English Dr. Jeffrey Bilbro was a finalist for the Lilly Network’s 2025 Arlin G. Meyer Book Award.
This biennial award recognizes original and imaginative work from any academic discipline that best exemplifies the central ideas and principles animating the Lilly Network of Church-Related Colleges and Universities – faith and learning in the Christian intellectual tradition, the vocation of teaching and scholarship, and the history, theory or practice of the university as the site of religious inquiry and culture.
“The Liberating Arts: Why We Need Liberal Arts Education” by Bilbro and fellow scholars Jessica Hooten Wilson and David Henreckson was one of five books considered for the award.
“This collection of essays nicely embodies the kind of thoughtful Christian scholarship practiced at Grove City College. We are especially thankful for Dr. Bilbro’s creativity and growing leadership in nurturing a community of scholars devoted to the Christian liberal arts education tradition,” Dr. Paul Kemeny, dean of the Calderwood School of Arts and Letters, said.
The book addresses a central question in higher education today: Why should anyone study the liberal arts? Contributors to “The Liberating Arts” attempt to reimagine and rearticulate what a liberal arts education is for, and what it might look like in today’s world.
“We genuinely hope that readers of this book walk away with the conviction that liberal arts education remains possible today despite the many threats arrayed against it,” Bilbro said when it was published in 2023.
The 2025 Meyer award went to “Deep Reading: Practices to Subvert the Vices of Our Distracted, Hostile, and Consumeristic Age,” by Dr. Rachel B. Griffis, Dr. Julie Ooms, and Dr. Rachel M. De Smith Roberts. The award honors the late Arlin G. Meyer, Professor Emeritus of English at Valparaiso University, who served as program director of the Lilly Network from its inception in 1991 until his retirement in 2002.