Council on General Education
Minutes
3:30
p.m. December 1, 2005
Present: Amy Carr, Dave Lane, Dean Zoerink, Martin
Maskarinec, Polly Radosh, Lori Baker-Sperry, Paige Goodwin, Kathleen O’Donnell
Brown, Alice Robertson, Steve Bennett, John Miller, Dale Atkins, Susan Meiers, Candace
McLaughlin (ex-officio), Jim Schmidt (ex-officio), Judi Dallinger (ex-officio)
Guest: Vicki Walters, Affirmative Action Intern
I. The meeting was called to order by Lori
Baker-Sperry. Minutes from 10/27 meeting
were approved as read.
II.
Announcements
There
will be no need to replace Margo Byerly on the Foreign Language/Global Issues
subcommittee because Margo will be here for the spring semester and will be
able to serve the remainder of her term on CGE.
III.
Old Business
General
Education survey: Council members had the
opportunity to test both the
“W” portion of the Gen Ed
survey and the most recent draft of the entire survey.
some
errors were found in both and J. Miller will contact Tere North for
revisions
in the main portion of the survey. C.
McLaughlin will contact
Tere with
revisions in the “W” portion.
Comparison of benchmark universities: L. Baker-Sperry continued the
discussion of general education
curriculums at benchmark universities that
was interrupted by the Provost’s
visit. Jim Schmidt noted that SIU
Edwardsville
is in the process of reviewing its
Gen Ed and this wasn’t evident on the web.
J.
Miller pointed out that we might
want to look at graduation requirements to see if some requirements (such as foreign language) are included there
rather than in the
General Education. C. McLaughlin noted that admission
requirements can also
play a role. The subcommittee (
Sperry) volunteered to go back and
look at both admission and graduation requirements
for the schools assigned to them and report their findings at the next
CGE meeting.
The General Education Comparison
Summary distributed at the last meeting
demonstrated that some schools are
using a theme to tie different parts of the Gen
Ed together. L. Baker-Sperry pointed out that we have a
University
theme we might be able to work with
and that the Provost indicated (speaking for
the President) that there might be
some interest in this kind of revision.
A. Carr
noted that two or three courses
could be tied together in a thematic bundle. C.
McLaughlin mentioned the FIGs
(Freshman Interest Groups) that Dana Moon is
investigating as an avenue for this
and recalled the “cluster classes’ offered
in the early 90’s for General
Orientation students. P. Radosh
described the “themed” courses
(300-400 level) offered during the 80’s to honor students and
remembered how rewarding they were
to teach, but that they were labor intensive.
Other interesting results from the
comparison with benchmark schools included:
Ø the relatively large number
of schools that had a math/quantitative reasoning course requirement that was
separate from meeting competency.
Ø the small number of schools
that seemed to have a “W” requirement or something like it in the Gen Ed.
Ø the number of schools that
have a specific creativity/fine arts requirement separate from humanities.
Ø the fact that public
speaking doesn’t appear to be a requirement in the gen ed for all schools (12
of 21). This prompted looking at
graduation requirements because it is known that one of the schools listed as
not having a public speaking requirement in the Gen Ed does have it somewhere
else.
Ø Developing some kind of
“signature” that WIU would be known for.
Ø Question as to whether
general education courses are taught as “general education” or as introductory
major courses.
Ø Students don’t really know
what “humanities” are.
Ø Need an assessment plan with
clear learning outcomes
Ø Need to talk about theory
behind what we want. Make changes that
will capitalize on something unique we have to offer.
Ø We need to identify the big
issues – what we want students to know/have.
Ø Create something we can
“hang our hat on.”
Ø What do we want a
graduate of WIU to know?
L. Baker-Sperry reviewed the Harvard
Task Force Report’s statement of
general program goals provided in
the handout from the last meeting. The
goals
described what an educated person
should know/be. The article stated that,
“Harvard’s
program goals are clearly an update of the traditional ideal of the
liberal arts education; variations on these themes can be
found in the majority of
the rationales for the core curriculum.” P. Goodwin felt that #4 on Harvard’s
list was the most important; “An educated person is expected to have some
understanding of, and experience in thinking about, moral
and ethical problems.
It may well be that the most significant quality in
educated persons is the
informed judgement which enables them to make
discriminating moral choices.”
D. Adkins felt that integrity is probably the most important quality
his department wants to see in RPTA
majors. He pointed out that service
learning and
community service are important and
that our region has needs that our students
could help meet. Ethics are closely related to integrity. It was noted that many
majors
have courses dealing with ethics. It was
noted that there is some value in finding
ways to include service learning/community service
in the General Education.
“adrift” in terms of how to proceed. L. Baker-Sperry explained that we
need to have an informed discussion
and that is the reason behind the readings
distributed and the research
conducted on other schools. Hopefully
the
information gathered will lead to
more brainstorming as in the discussion about
integrity and ethics. J. Schmidt pointed out that it’s pretty
normal to feel “adrift”
at this stage because we are still
gathering information. The survey will
generate
more information and interest and
there will be opportunities for forums to be
held to brainstorm ideas.
The issue of freezing membership on
GERC may need to be revisited with the
Senate. It takes time to review all the materials and
it would be difficult to have
new people coming on the committee
just when it is time to make decisions.
Council
members were asked to continue with the readings.
IV. New Business
a.
IAI Proposal:
Some of the following
information is from a memo Steve Bennett
provided after the meeting. The memo went to IAI General Education
Panel members explaining
that comments on the Preliminary Report
and
Recommendations from the Evaluation of the
Initiative were being solicited during the period of November 15 –
December 15. J. Dallinger drafted a response with specific
concerns about
portions of the document and
sent it to GERC via e-mail. Comments
from
D. Hample and S. Bennett
(both members of IAI panels) were shared as
well. GERC members were in agreement that Judy’s
concerns should be sent forward. They are as follows:
Recommendation 2 (and related
sections of other recommendations, 3, 9, 10)
At WIU, all proposals to include
a course in the university general education are evaluated and approved (or fail
to be approved) by
multiple committees composed of faculty members. Administrators are not allowed to add or
subtract courses from the general education (or indeed any major or program)
unilaterally.
The
university has clearly defined goals for general education and guidelines for
the inclusion of potential
courses. Even though these exist and are made
available to all faculty, each course that is proposed for
inclusion still needs to be
considered by the faculty governance structure.
Recommendation
2 in the proposal for the IAI GECC suggests using a mechanism of approval of
course
inclusion that runs directly counter
to the processes used at WIU.
Therefore, WIU would like to object to this
recommendation (and the related sections
of the other recommendations).
We would ask that responses to the
following questions be considered before the Recommendation moves
forward.
Questions:
1. What are the processes for including courses
within the general education at the various institutions?
2.
How many of the
faculty on the IAI GECC panels support this recommendation? (were they surveyed
similar to the data reported for
the major panels? data reported on p. 23)
Recommendation
13
At
WIU, the university general education includes requirement to complete
coursework from categories that are
not represented in the IAI GECC. WIU considers the completion of these
requirements to be an integral part of
a WIU degree.
While
we have agreed to accept the IAI GECC for transfer students who complete it, we
would be reluctant to
waive the WIU-specific components of
our general education program for transfer students who have not
completed the entire IAI GECC.
We
do not support this recommendation.
The final comments from WIU
will be written by Barb Baily. Two
consultants appointed by the
IBHE and the
Board will review the
comments submitted by all interested parties and,
in consultation with the
ICCB and the IBHE staff, will finalize the report
by December 31, 2005. It will be presented to the Boards of both
agencies
in spring 2006. Staff will discuss implementing the
recommendations and
transitions will occur in
fiscal year 2007.
The six GERC
members not on CGE were excused.
V. Discussion/wrap up of FCS 121/PSY 237.
L. Baker-Sperry explained that there
are two issues:
1. Whether or not we think it’s okay for FCS
majors to count COD’s Psy 237 as
FCS 121;
2. Should the articulation apply for all
students.
The situation is unusual because the
FCS 121 course is a required course for FCS majors
that happens to also count in the Human Well Being
portion of the Gen Ed for all
students. J. Schmidt questioned whether there were
enough students involved to warrant a
global ruling.
He felt individual cases should be handled through CAGAS appeals. He
further stated that any course that does not have a
direct articulation (IAI or otherwise)
should come to CGE for approval. Council members agreed. L. Baker-Sperry will convey this decision to
CAGAS.
Meeting adjourned at 5:00
p.m.
Most respectfully submitted
by