In his book, Living Philosophies, Albert Einstein wrote that "the most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious ... the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science." It was an elegant point that remains true today. In our best and brightest scientists and artists, we find common threads of imagination, curiosity and a sense of wonder.

That is why it should not surprise anyone that we count a significant number of scientists among our 90,000 alumni. Yet in conversations with scientist alumni, there is sometimes a sense that they did not live up to their artistic expectations or ideals - even as they credit Interlochen with sparking their imaginations.

This mindset reflects an unfortunate but seemingly common bias that places science and the arts on opposite ends of an imaginary spectrum. I often wonder if the origins of this false dichotomy lie in our public debates about educational funding. We are frequently told that scarce educational funding means that we must choose between math and sciences or the arts. If we choose the latter, we are warned, our children will not be able to compete in the 21st century job market. The more we learn about how we learn - the more we realize that this is completely wrong.

Extensive research conducted by groups including the Dana Foundation and Project Zero at Harvard University are giving us tantalizing glimpses of how the human brain works and learns - and how the involvement and training in the arts can affect memory, concentration and the ability to process information. Our own alumni community provides convincing evidence to refute the notion that the arts cannot advance the sciences or vice versa. Imagination, wonder and curiosity are habits of the mind that transfer well to other disciplines. Certainly, we witness this at Interlochen.

In our Academy classrooms, students who once swore they were "not good at science" patiently analyze the physics of a movement in dance or the acoustical properties of an instrument they constructed themselves. Once their innate and artistic sense of wonder and curiosity has been tapped, they cannot help but to be interested. Our artist-scientist alumni include astrophysicists, wildlife biologists, technology entrepreneurs - they have shown that these mindsets are habits that they will carry throughout their lives.

In this issue of Crescendo we will share the stories of a small handful of artist-scientist alumni and explore the role the arts can play in shaping the mind. The point of this is not to suggest that the arts should be used as a means to an end - higher grades or test scores, etc. What we have learned from our alumni is that the habits of mind developed through the arts - curiosity, imagination, discipline and wonder - consistently seem to bring out the best in humanity.

Sincerely,

Jeffrey Kimpton

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