Proposed Mission Statements and Goals for General Education at UNCA
Preface
The Mission Statement and Goals below are drafts produced by the General Education Review Task Force. They are working documents, or draft proposals, designed to stimulate discussion among faculty, students, administrators, and staff. The Mission Statement for General Education was drafted to be read in the context of the UNCA's institutional Mission Statement. The Mission Statement for General Education, then, attempts to articulate a vision of General Education in the Liberal Arts setting, a philosophy, if you will, that drives our shaping and teaching of a general education curriculum. The Statement of Goals, which follows the Mission Statement, is intended to articulate the contexts in which general education is acquired and the skills that general education is intended to foster. The Statement of Goals, that is, should be read in light of the Mission Statement.
The Mission Statement is general and the goals are more detailed. The revision process, then, involves designing a curriculum that leads to fulfilling the goals, and represents a further level of detail. Future assessment plans will provide yet more details. With your help, the GERTF will revisit these statements and revise them to reflect more accurately a campus-wide understanding of General Education at UNCA.
We would like your reactions, feedback, input, suggestions. Feel free to email anyone on the GERTF (email links can be accessed on the GERTF membership page to the left of the screen). You may also use the web discussion forum link to engage in campus-wide discussion of the Mission Statement and Statement of Goals. To reach the Discussion Forum on the Mission and Goals Statements click here.
Mission Statement for General Education at UNCA
A liberating education-one that emphasizes humane values in thought and action and promotes the free and rigorous pursuit of truth--creates good citizens, individuals who assume responsibility for their thoughts and actions and their impact on the world. Their personal development is inextricably linked to the contributions they make to their scholarly, social, and political communities. To be good citizens, people must be able to think critically and to communicate their ideas. In serving UNCA's liberal arts mission, the General Education Program works alongside the majors to help people develop and improve these skills by immersing them in an interdisciplinary community of mutually supportive scholars.
At UNCA, primary responsibility for developing the ideas and methodologies to communicate within a disciplinary community lies with the major department. The purpose of the General Education Program is to provide a broader context for the discipline. General education offers exposure to the ideas essential for students to understand how their work in the major is part of a larger range of human concerns. With these ideas, people can make connections across the liberal arts. General education helps specialists learn to communicate with people in different scholarly communities and enables them to understand problems outside their areas of study. By promoting the integration, synthesis, and application of knowledge, general education provides individuals with an awareness of their role in a diverse culture and highlights their responsibilities to the larger community.
Statement of Goals for General Education at UNCA (draft)
At UNCA, we acknowledge that General Education is more than what happens in the classroom. General Education provides curricular and co-curricular opportunities through which students may develop important skills and knowledge.
Among these curricular and co-curricular experiences are:
· Active and collaborative learning
· Diverse learning environments
· Cultural events
· Service activities
These experiences are designed to facilitate the acquisition of the following skills and knowledge:
Knowledge domains
· The social world
· The natural world
· The arts
· Quantitative concepts
· The impact of the past on the present
· Technology and its implications for contemporary life
Skills
· Effective communication through speech and writing
· Comprehension
· Analysis
· Integration of knowledge
· Self-directed learning
· Formulation of original ideas
· Problem solving
· Information and computer literacy
Rev. 11.30.00
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