New GenEd proposal under review

By Sophia Harris Editor-in-Chief The General Education Advisory Board, chaired by Professor Patricia Lynne, has proposed a new general education model to be implemented in the coming years. The new general education model is currently in the proposal stage and will be reviewed by University committees. If the proposal is approved this year, there will still be a year of implementation before the new model is put into place, Lynne said. She said this new model has three components that together create an encompassing general education model. The first component of the model is the “Core” courses. The four courses under this domain would be the classes “that we believe everybody should take,” Lynne said. The classes under this domain are a RAMS first-year seminar course, a first-year writing course, a math course, and possibly a world languages course. “That one is up for some debate at this particular point, but there's some expectation that students would have at least some ability in a second language,” Lynne said. Changes from the previous GenEd model include that students will have a choice of a specific core math course which will be dependent on major requirements. The math requirement must be completed within the first two years of matriculating at the University, according to the proposal. The writing requirement, which is Composition II, must be completed within the first year of matriculating at the University. For the world languages requirement, all students will be required to complete one semester of a world language. The proposed change includes a reconstituting of the learning objectives to take American Sign Language into account. The second domain is “Distribution Requirements.” These classes consist of two arts & humanities courses, two social science courses, and two STEM courses. According to the proposal, courses under arts & humanities “explore human culture, expression, and experience through artistic creation or through critical analysis and interpretation of cultural and artistic artifacts, historical events, and philosophical ideas.” The learning objective of the courses under the social sciences requirement is exploring “human society and behavior through critical analysis of human systems and empirical data gathered using both quantitative and qualitative methodologies,” according to the proposal. The learning objective of the STEM courses is exploring “the natural world, technology, mathematics, and finance through observation, experimentation, data analysis, and the application of mathematical models and technological applications,” according to the proposal. At least one of these courses must still be a lab science course. Students will now also be able to take a 300-level course for a general education requirement. The third domain is the “Diversity” requirement. A student will have to take one course under the diversity domain. Courses under the Diversity domain will be required to meet a “power, privilege, and resistance” learning objective and one additional category: “historically marginalized perspectives,” “global perspectives,” or “social justice.” The power, privilege, and resistance courses “examine and critically analyze how differential systems of power and privilege shape social, economic, and/or political inequalities in local, regional, and/or global contexts across diverse and marginalized communities as well as consider collective and individual responses to forms of oppression and inequality,” according to the proposal. Regarding the current political climate, Lynne said, “The only thing in our model that could be flagged by the current federal administration would be the diversity requirement. I won't remove that until somebody tells me we have to remove it. And so far, I'm not getting that message at all. That doesn't mean that the feds won't come down and say, ‘You're not going to get any more federal funding as long as this requirement is in place.’ But honestly, that's going to be part of a much bigger fight and problem.” Lynne said the thinking behind the new general education model is, “This is the kind of thing we say that we want students to take, but we're not going to say where exactly in your program you have to take it. For some majors, it'll happen as part of their major. For other majors, they'll need to take something outside, but they'll have more control about where that happens.” She added she hopes the new model will provide an easier pathway for students to reach graduation. Lynne said, “I firmly believe that it is incredibly important for students to get some breadth in their education through general education requirements. “This is a way of helping students enrich what they are already focusing on, but also for students who haven't decided, a way to explore possible alternatives. Instead of worrying about whether something fits a domain, they can just go, ‘OK, I can take anything in the social sciences. So what am I interested in? What jazzes me?’” She said another driving factor behind this proposal is helping the domain learning objectives align better with what is required of students. “Currently, our learning objectives have no relationship to our general education model. … There is no requirement that students take all of those learning objectives, which means they're not learning objectives at all,” she said. Lynne added, “The biggest thing is that this has involved many faculty members. It has involved department chairs. We have gotten feedback. We spent all of last year getting feedback to put this together. This has not come out of nowhere. I have been intentionally, deliberately giving people places to put in their input, to contribute, to join the General Education Advisory Board. … I see this as a consensus model.” The next step is to present the proposal to the University Curriculum Committee on March 14 and April 4. “The UCC vets this. They may decide that there are changes that are needed that they will send back to me and the General Education Advisory Board.” According to Michael Greenstein, Chair of the UCC, these meetings are open to anyone in the campus community to provide feedback on the proposed model. Greenstein said the new general education model “is something that affects everyone at this University. It affects faculty as it changes the classes that we teach, and affects students. As it is, a third of the courses that you take in your time at this University are general education courses, approximately.” He added that a change in the model happens only once a decade and the current GenEd model went into effect in 2012. Greenstein said, “If this proposal does not get accepted … there will be another proposal probably within the next year or two if it gets rejected. But given that there's been so much work on this and there's a lot of outreach,” he does not anticipate too much pushback from the community. He added these proposals are “always going to be controversial because they're changing the entire landscape of the University, but they did a lot of work to try to make it somewhat less controversial than normal.” Greenstein said the “idea behind what UCC does is that everyone who's affected has the right to have their voice heard.” Junior Angelina Barrett, who is the student representative on the UCC, said she supports the new general education model. She said she supports the proposed requirement that math has to be taken in the first two years and it will be more tailored to the student’s department. Barrett added she can see how having to take a math requirement within the first two years of matriculation can be seen as stressful for students. “To put any time, any date on anything is stressful for a lot of people.” She added that the diversity requirement is beneficial for students as an additional avenue “to make you a more well-rounded person.”