General Education Review Committee Meeting

General Education Review Committee
Meeting, 17 January 2001
Red Oak Room, 4:30-5:30 pm

Minutes

Present: Faculty-Bruce, Dohse, Friedenberg, Hardy, Konz, Krumpe, Lee, McKnight, Nelms, Pons, White-Carter, Katz; Students--Clere, Spenser, Wilde-Ramsing. [Members on off-campus scholarly assignment/leave: Mike Ruiz, Tracey Rizzo]

1. Senate proposal--Dr. Katz will present to the Senate a Sense of the Senate Resolution, requesting the authorization of our committee to move forward from its work on the SACS Self Study to the revision of the general education curriculum. This presentation will take place at the next Senate meeting, on 18 January. The proposal will get a first and second reading. Katz distributed to the committee copies of the Resolution.

2. 2001 Asheville Institute on General Education--Dr. Cochran has approved the use of funds from Academic Affairs to send a team to this year's AIGE. This would be a third visit, which is not customarily offered to past AIGE teams. But, since UNCA hosts the event and an Asheville team does not represent a resource burden to the AIGE program, we have a good chance of being admitted. Dr. Katz will write and submit a proposal. The team will likely focus on actual curriculum design and on the changes, both administrative and fiscal, that would be required for the implementation of a new curriculum. The team's work will focus on establishing the foundation for our agenda next year. We would encourage Wayne McDevitt, the new Vice-Chancellor of Financial Affairs, to serve as the administrative member of the team. Interested committee members should contact Katz. The program will be held 2-6 June 2001.

3. Conference opportunities--There are two conference opportunities for interested faculty. Let me know by Friday morning if you would like to go to either conference. (The SACS Enhancement Executive Committee is interested in reclaiming unused money, in order to fund secretarial support for the self study effort.) The conferences are:

a. "Best Practices in General Education and Its Assessment: Bridging Theory and Practice," AAC&U. Atlanta, GA, 22-24 February 2001
b. "Learning Communities: Strategies for Strengthening Connections, Competence, and Commitment," AAC&U, Providence, RI, 1-4 March 2001

4. One last look at Goals and Mission Statement--We looked one more time at the drafts of the Mission Statement and Goals. Professor White-Carter noted that Information and Computer Literacy were not really one and the same. We changed that skill to read "Information and Computer Literacies."

Dr. Lee called attention to the fact that, while the Mission Statement expresses a commitment to diversity, we have removed diversity from the knowledge domain on the goals statement. He asked what we thought the effect of this would be when we solicited faculty and student input and whether the committee was open to adding further goals, possibly from faculty suggestions or from the mission statement itself, in future drafts of the goals statement. Committee members agreed that the goals statement is likely to change in the future, as we receive faculty and student input. Dr. Friedenberg noted that the way we have examined the issue of diversity in the Mission and Goals Statements expresses the idea that diversity should be diffused throughout the entire curriculum and not placed in a single course required of students. Dr. Katz observed that such an approach to diversity has much to recommend for it, but that it would require oversight in order to make sure that faculty were actually engaging diversity in ways appropriate to their discipline. Dr. Katz also noted that there was a danger that, in not mentioning diversity explicitly as a knowledge domain, it might disappear from the curriculum revision. Several committee members thought that faculty and students would respond to this issue, and that we should wait to receive their input and ideas, before proceeding on this issue. It was also noted that we are charged to consider the reports of the Chancellor's Task Forces on Diversity, Retention and Partnership; we will receive additional direction from these resources. It was generally agreed that diversity would be a key issue in our revision process.

There were several recommendations regarding the placement of the Mission and Goals Statements on the Committee website.

--Provide adequate context for the draft. Clearly label the statements "first drafts." Present these statements as a single document, each to be read in light of the other.

--Briefly clarify the relation of these statements to the University's Mission Statement. Provide a hotlink to the UNCA Mission Statement.

--In describing these statements as proposals only, we should note that the Mission Statement is a statement of vision, and is therefore general; that the goals are more detailed; that a revision process involves designing a curriculum that leads to fulfilling the goals, and represents a further level of detail; and that future assessment plans will provide yet more detail.

--Provide a link on the website to the Senate Resolution proposal, once it is approved.

--Place a counter on the Mission Statement and Goals Statement page, so that we can get a sense of faculty and student interest.

5. Agenda for Spring 2001--This spring we will be considering the following materials and information as part of our discussions:

--The reports from the Chancellor's Task Forces on Diversity, Retention, and Partnerships.

--The APC findings on the current General Education program as they become available.

--Input from department Chairs and faculty. We discussed going into departments in teams of two or possibly three, to conduct listening-project style interviews with Chairs (and/or the faculty of departments), in order to gather information. We discussed the sorts of things we might learn from such interviews, including obstacles to departmental support for general education, what departments expect from general education, what innovations they would like to see in a revision of the general education curriculum, and so on. Please email Katz your ideas for other information you think we need to gather from department Chairs and faculty. Also email Katz questions you think would best elicit useful responses from department Chairs and faculty.

6. Key issues for curricular revision--It was decided that we should not move right away into examining particular issues in the General Education program. Dr. Friedenberg argued wisely that it would be better to study the above resources carefully and gather data on the current program, before taking on specific curricular issues. Committee members agreed and the meeting was adjourned.