General Education Review Committee Minutes
April 20, 2006, 3:30 pm
Present: Amy Carr,
Bill Thompson, Judi Dallinger (ex-officio),
Polly Radosh, Dean Zoernik, Margo Byerly, Paige Goodwin, Susan Meiers, Karin
Spader, William Hoon, John Miller, Kathleen O’Donnell-Brown, Alice Robertson,
I. Meeting was called to order by Polly Radosh, substituting last minute for Lori Baker-Sperry, who had a death in the family. Minutes from April 6 were approved (Zoernik/Lane).
II. Lori Baker-Sperry was congratulated for her fine work on the GERC report.
III. Judi Dallinger wrote the following collectively-brainstormed ideas on the board:
A. Possible Deletions from Gen Ed
1) W (Writing intensive) requirement (see #15 below)
2) Separate major/Gen Ed courses (see #21 below)
3) Limit enrollment/class size
B. Possible Additions to Gen Ed
1) Global issues
-- perhaps infused throughout the curriculum wherever important
-- redefine “multicultural” to incorporate global issues?
-- uses the Council for International Education’s emerging criteria for international courses?
2) Foreign language
3) Clusters or themes
4) Ethics category – one social sciences, one humanities
5) Interdisciplinary courses
6) Enrollment across four years – include 300 level courses that would also apply to transfer students
7) First Year Experience – without placing requirements (e.g., writing) on FYE that we don’t place on other Gen Ed courses?
8) Responsible citizenship/volunteerism/democracy
9) Community service or service learning
10) Learning communities
11) Electronic portfolios
--students asked to document, justify, and revise their learning plans in electronic portfolios, possibly for credit (Fall 2004 Peer Review, 9)
12) Assessment
13) Better job of emphasizing core
skills (
14) Math skills, computer literacy
15) Remove “W” (writing intensive courses) and require writing in ALL courses; clarify how best to work on written communication skills
16) Develop ways of assessing the degree to which writing is happening in all Gen Ed courses
17) Emphasize all Gen Ed aims across the curriculum (critical thinking, research, computer literacy, etc.)
18) Life skills (money, credit cards, mortgages, interview etiquette, resume preparation, balancing checkbooks, conflict management, argument; which of these are required in Illinois high schools?)
19) Require students to use high school knowledge
20) Intentional lifelong learning – empower students as learners who know how to research and think critically about a problem, perhaps through “learning communities” in which “people work solving unscripted problems” (Fall 2004 Peer Review, 5).
21) Should Gen Ed courses be separate from major courses? What makes Gen Ed different from a course in a major? More than skills—since majors can perform those skills
a) less detail on theoretical perspectives & methods but on interesting content—popular vs. advanced
b) less specific to discipline
c) more interesting to general public
d) student skills/background are at a lower level, so expect students to be in a different place with respect to their readiness to learn and learning skills (don’t we do this already? How many Gen Ed courses are actually too challenging to students?)
e) students bring more diverse learning styles
f) Gen Ed requires “more things” to be done
g) bigger class enrollments, more students per faculty mentor
h) useful skills across disciplines through life
i) but many departments do not have enough staff to teach separate Gen Ed and entry-level major courses—so how to teach a course that services both Gen Ed and a major? But if Gen Ed ideals are (as our literature suggests) in play in the WHOLE of university education, including the major, does a sharp distinction between Gen Ed and major courses need to be made, anyway? Aren’t we just really reflecting on the characteristics of a liberal arts education more broadly?
22) Resume disciplinary reflections in our categories
23) Personal application of the ideas and theories presented (engaged/narrative approach)
24) Seminar-sized classes, rather than big lecture classes
25) Category-specific expectations and goals (whom does this really serve?)
26) Pedagogy: identification of best teaching practices
27) Articulate anew the relationship between Gen Ed SKILLS goals and Gen Ed goals concerning KNOWLEDGE/content/world understanding
28) A Western “signature” to Gen Ed?
29) Identify a more manageable number of learning outcomes (rather than 28)?
30) Identify how students best grow to feel connected to the goals of Gen Ed—and to take responsibility for working towards them
IV. Elections for 2006-07
A. We voted to continue to have no secretary, and thus to rotate the taking of minutes.
B. GERC chair: Aimee Shouse; Vice chair: Marty Kral
C. CGE chair: Amy Carr; Vice chair: Paige Goodwin
D. We agreed that we would schedule GERC and CGE meetings every other Thursday, but hold such meetings (CGE as the need arose) on alternate Thursdays.
Meeting adjourned at 4:36 pm
Respectfully submitted,
Amy Carr