Council on General Education

Minutes

3:30 p.m. October 27, 2005

Present: Amy Carr, Dave Lane, Dean Zoerink, Martin Maskarinec, Margo Byerly, Polly Radosh, Tessa Pfafman, Jongnam Choi, William Hoon, Lori Baker-Sperry, Paige Goodwin, Kathleen O’Donnell Brown, Alice Robertson, Candace McLaughlin (ex-officio), Jim Schmidt (ex-officio), Judy Dallinger (ex-officio), Dana Moon (guest)

I. The meeting was called to order by Lori Baker-Sperry. Minutes from 10/13 meeting were approved as read.

II. Old Business:

a. Request for freeze of GERC members: The Executive Committee of the senate felt it was premature to consider the request to extend the term of the GERC and/or CGE members. In theory, GERC is supposed to be finished at the end of the academic year. Should this not be the case, the Ex Co would consider extending the term of the GERC members, but not necessarily the core CGE members. This was discussed by the Council and it was pointed out that there is value in continuing membership on a committee dealing with complicated information. It is time consuming to bring new members “up to speed” and counter productive to lose seasoned members before the process is complete. The Council will evaluate how far along it is at the end of the spring semester and determine whether to request an “extension.”

b. Reports from subcommittees:

i. Current perception of general education on campus – committee

response to survey. J. Miller sent revisions suggested during

the last meeting to Lori and she will send them around to the entire

committee along with a couple of changes recommended during the current meeting (word change from “radically” to “substantially” on page

2).

ii. The W portion of the survey with revisions was distributed by P. Goodwin.

The following points were discussed:

· Why “W” requirement was incorporated in Gen Ed. P. Radosh pointed out that students were failing the Writing Exam and that it was felt not much writing was taking place in Gen Ed classes. The “W” requirement was instituted to address these concerns. It may no longer be needed if sufficient writing is being done both in and out of Gen Ed classes.

· Whether or not teachers of non-gen ed courses should be asked how many pages of writing they require. It was decided to include the question, “Across the semester, approximately how many pages of writing are provided by students in your non-General Education course?”

· Should survey be sent to teachers of English 100, 180, 280 since writing is a significant part of these courses? The decision was made to exclude these teachers.

· Suggestion to add question, “If the W was dropped, would the amount of writing in your class change?” It was agreed to add the question.

· P. Goodwin will make corrections and C. McLaughlin will work with Tere North to align the questions appropriately in the survey.

K. O’Donnell-Brown distributed her updated annotated bibliography of General Education. J. Schmidt pointed out that the website for the Association of American Colleges and Universities is one many schools are using to evaluate their curriculums. L. Baker-Sperry added that she requested the Provost’s Office to provide committee members copies of Peer Review, a resource we can use as we evaluate our General Education. There is a strong argument for constructing General Education alongside how you will assess it. An article titled “A Framework for Accountability Worthy of Our Mission” was distributed. Five Key Learning Outcomes are included in the article. GERC members were asked to read the Peer Review when they receive it. All the resources in the bibliography are on reserve in the library, with the exception of the websites. It was determined that we may eventually need a subcommittee to spend time researching the resources in the bibliography.

It was suggested that GERC invite the president and provost to a meeting to determine if they have a vision for General Education that we should be considering. We should know how much “control” we have over the design of a Gen Ed before we spend a great deal of time developing something that might not meet the expectations of the administration. L. Baker-Sperry will invite them to a future meeting.

The Committee meeting on the cross-cultural/foreign language issue includes three GERC members, David Miller, Marty Maskarinec and David Lane. D. Lane mentioned that the committee was trying to define issues and to determine what we (as a University) want to accomplish before recommending where a requirement would fit (Gen Ed, graduation requirement, study abroad, departmental, etc?). He said that the committee is taking a more global (international) approach than a multicultural one. D. Lane will send a draft of goals to GERC.

c. Survey of Students: This subcommittee will meet soon. K. O’Donnell-Brown

requested that the survey allow students to express their views. Based on discussions she has had with her students, they do have strong feelings about the General Education.

d. Survey of General Education at peer institutions: It was decided that this subcommittee should meet again to further summarize the information gathered from the different schools. Charts were distributed at a prior meeting but further collating of information needs to be done to make the data more meaningful.

III. Old Business

CAGAS request for response to issue of FCS and one-major exception: The GERC members not also serving on CGE were not required to stay for this discussion. The issue is as follows:

· CAGAS received an appeal from an Econ major who took Psy 2227 at COD. The student was apparently told prior to transferring here that Psy 2227 counted as FCS 121 and would therefore count in the HWB portion of the Gen Ed. This is true, but only for FCS majors. CAGAS’s question to CGE is basically should this articulation be confined to only one major? The CGE did not have the information above when deliberating so L. Baker-Sperry was asked to clarify the facts. E-mail discussion ensued.

Meeting adjourned at 4:55 p.m.

Respectfully submitted by

Candace McLaughlin (ex-officio)