Faculty Senate

Date:    September 8, 2007

To:       Louis Hayes, Chair, Faculty Senate

From:    Royce C. Engstrom, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs

Subject:  General Education

Thank you for the opportunity to meet with ECOS last week.  I am following up on our conversation regarding the General Education Curriculum with some thoughts and questions.  Let me begin by thanking the General Education Subcommittee of ASCRC for their hard work.  Development of a General Education Curriculum is a difficult task and I understand that the Subcommittee has spent many hours of discussion, deliberation, and listening to arrive at the framework being presented to the Senate at the September meeting.  I appreciate their work.

As the discussion of General Education moves forward, I would ask that the following questions and suggestions be given serious consideration.   General Education is that part of the curriculum in which certain outcomes can be achieved that are difficult to achieve within the context of the major.  In that regard, please consider the following:

1. The proposed General Education Curriculum includes core skills necessary to succeed in any undergraduate major, as it should. English writing skills and mathematics (Group I and II) are among those skills. I believe another fundamental skill critical in today's world is information literacy, and I do not see that indicated explicitly anywhere in the proposed curriculum. Is it inherent in one of the Groups, and if so, which one?

2. Those same skills, English, mathematics, and information literacy, need to be successfully completed by the student early enough in the undergraduate curriculum to build a solid foundation upon which advanced coursework can be undertaken. The current requirement for the Writing Proficiency Assessment permits completion as late as 70 credit hours into the undergraduate experience. The 70-credit hour mark is over half-way through the normal curriculum, which is too late for such a foundational requirement. Similarly, the mathematics requirement does not appear to have a time-limit on it at all, permitting a student to postpone that requirement until the final stages of the program. That seems to "close the door" on many options available to students that require a certain quantitative competency. I strongly recommend that a time limit no later than the end of the second year be established for any foundational aspect of the General Education Curriculum.

3. In today's world, we are faced with many challenging and complex societal issues that require an interdisciplinary approach to solution. I do not see in the proposed curriculum either a systematic way of exposing our students to those complex issues or any work of an interdisciplinary nature that would provide our students with the opportunity to learn in the context of an integrated problem-solving team. While such experiences may exist in individual courses in various majors, it is important for all of our students to have that experience.

4. Finally, how does the General Education Curriculum connect a student to his or her major? Is there a mechanism through which a student can contemplate how the selected major relates to the breadth requirements represented by Groups IV through XI? For that matter, is there a mechanism by which the connectedness between the various groups is made apparent to the student?

I offer these questions and comments in the most constructive sense, and would be happy to engage in further discussion about them as the process moves forward. 

Thank you.