On September 28, 2000, The Academic Policies Committee met with the chairs of the five social science departments which offer courses satisfying the general education requirements.

Senate Document 3684 states: "Six hours are required in the social sciences. Two courses must be chosen from two different disciplines to include Economics, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology, or interdisciplinary courses developed from these. Courses appropriate will emphasize the cultural and historical context of the discipline, and, where feasible, its interdisciplinary origins. No more than one course required as a major or cognate course in any major will count toward the six hours."

From the report and the discussion, APC draws four conclusions about the social sciences' general education contributions.

1. Senate Document 3684 provides little guidance to the Social Sciences as to what their courses are expected to contribute to a student's general education.

Other than emphasizing the discipline's origins, the original senate document does not specify the requirement's purpose or the material or approach the courses should emphasize. This gives the departments considerable leeway in defining the nature of their contribution to general education. The departments have followed one of two options. Two departments have opted to design specific courses for the requirement while the remaining three have primarily selected courses from their departmental program and designated them as satisfying the requirement. There has been no effort to implement a third alternative-- interdisciplinary courses-- which is explicitly mentioned in the Senate document.

It is not possible to determine which of these options best achieves the purpose of general education because the original charge does not specify what those objectives might be regarding the social sciences. While this is a common problem with the original document, the lack of direction is most apparent in the social science section.

2. It is not possible to determine whether the specified courses do indeed contribute to general education.

APC cannot determine the value of the specified social science courses for two reasons. First, since most of the courses are tied directly to the major programs of the different departments, the courses derive their reason for existence from their disciplines, not from any inherent value for general education. Of the twelve classes which satisfy the requirement, all but two can be used for a departmental major and of the remaining ten, the majority were designed with the major, not general education, in mind. As a result, in both the submitted report and the discussions, the departments defined the value of the courses solely from a disciplinary perspective. This has two consequences. First, to question a course's value for general education is tantamount to challenging the discipline. Second, the departments are reluctant to consider alternatives which might better serve the general education curriculum. These problems highlight the difficulty inherent in using previously existing departmental requirements to achieve general education goals.

Second, the charge's vagueness makes it difficult for both APC and the department chairs to judge whether the specified social science classes make a contribution to general education. The Senate Document's rationale for the requirement is, "All students should be aware of the social sciences as a way of understanding distinct from those of other fields of inquiry." Since any social science course would seemingly satisfy this goal, there is no apparent reason to specify any one course over another.

3. The social sciences should exert a greater effort to coordinate their offerings and creatively address the weakness of the original charge.

Despite their complaints that the charge's vagueness provides no clear direction for them, the departments seem comfortable with the flexibility they enjoy in defining the purpose their courses are to serve. That the departments' freedom has not been creatively exploited in the service of general education, however, is acknowledged in the report where they describe their general education efforts as merely "serviceable."

APC found little evidence that the departments have made any effort to coordinate their offerings or to develop a common strategy in support of general education. APC encourages the departments to take advantage of the flexibility granted by the original senate document and develop a vision as to what the social sciences can and should contribute to general education. They will then be in a position to determine how their courses might be better designed to achieve that vision.

4. Diversity Concerns

With the exception of one Sociology course, syllabi submitted with the report provide little evidence that diversity topics are a major priority for the social sciences.