General Education Review Committee

Minutes

March 23, 2006

 

Present: Dale Atkins, Lori Baker-Sperry, Amy Carr, Judi Dallinger (ex-officio), Paige Goodwin, Dave Lane, Candace McLaughlin (ex-officio), John Miller Alice Robertson, Jim Schmidt (ex-officio), Margaret Sinex, Aimee Shouse, Karen Spader, Dean Zoerink

 

 

I. Meeting was called to order by Lori Baker-Sperry.  Minutes from the 3/2/06 meeting were approved.

 

II. Announcements

A. Student representative Karen Spader was introduced

 

B. Update on Foreign Language/Global Issues committee: John Miller and David Lane provided an update on the actions of this committee.  In regard to the survey conducted by the committee, there were over 220 responses, which were overwhelmingly positive for both requirements.

 

            C. Election date for CGE and/or GERC officers was set for April 20, 2006. 

 

            D. Lori Baker-Sperry announced that the Faculty Senate would consider GERC’s

 recommendations for a freeze of membership and an extension of the

committee’s  mission at its meeting on March 28th.   She reported that there

seemed to be support for both recommendations on the Faculty Senate Executive

Committee.

 

III. Old Business

            A. Freeze and Extention  - It was discussed what effect the two recommendations to the

Faculty Senate would have on the leadership of CGE and GERC.  Lori Baker-Sperry explained that it was the sense of the Faculty Senate Executive Committee that any voting member of GERC, both the original members of CGE and the 6 Senate appointees, could be elected to a leadership position.

 

 

B. General Education Survey – Several members reported on the preliminary results from the General Education Survey.  Judi Dallinger explained that there appeared to be more similarities than differences among the respondents.  John Lane concurred, explaining that most differences occurred across the colleges, with the College of Business and Technology being somewhat less satisfied with students’ general education skills than the university as a whole.  Further, those who teach general education courses were more satisfied than those who did not.  There were no real robust differences, though, and John thought that using the data as a whole might be more useful to GERC than breaking it up. 

      Jim Schmidt concluded by discussing the analysis of the data using Principle Component Analysis, which provides some evidence of patterns of variance among the respondents.  He discussed several of the more important patterns, including those who are relatively satisfied with the general education curriculum as it is; those who don’t want general education to impinge on the major; those who think a liberal education is important to higher education; and those who endorse the category approach that is in place currently.   Smaller factors included groups who considered the human well-being and multicultural category important, that scientific rigor is important, and that communication skills are important.

      The concern was raised that the concerns with our current general education do not appear to be due to the structure of general education but due instead to whether the courses in general education, or the faculty teaching those courses, are achieving the goals. 

 

C. Student Perception Survey – a general discussion was held on the utility of a survey regarding student perceptions of general education.  One member explained that it was important that we not assume we know what students think, yet GERC needed to consider what we would do with the information were we to survey students.  John Lane recommended that GERC consider other ways to discern student perceptions, such as focus groups or using student groups for feedback, especially when various proposals for general education have been developed.  This would also give us feedback on how to “market” general education to students. 

 

D. Alumni Survey – Candace McLaughlin discussed handouts from the 3/2/06 meeting which provided summaries of alumni surveys from 2000 through 2005.  She explained that the surveys did address some of the kinds of information we wanted from alumni regarding general education skills, such as communication skills, critical thinking, and methods of inquiry.  In regard to these skills, alumni generally seem positive about their experiences at Western.

 

IV. New Business

 

Given the generally positive feedback from the survey, one member posed the general question of “what do we do now?”  Lori Baker-Sperry referred to the Faculty Senate Charge and explained that GERC should simply continue to address the items on the charge it was given.  There was general discussion of the progress made by GERC and what items from the charge still remained to be addressed.

 

 

The meeting adjourned at 4:22

 

 

Respectfully submitted by Aimee Shouse