General Education Review Committee
Meeting, 31 January 2001
Red Oak Room, 4:30-5:30 pm

Minutes

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

1. Senate proposal--Dr. Katz updated the committee on his presentation of the Sense of the Senate resolution proposal at the meeting on 18 January. He made a short presentation and answered questions. The second reading of the document will occur at the next Senate session, on 8 February. Katz will attend that meeting, too, in order to answer questions or provide information to the Senate before they vote on the proposal.

2. Taskforce reports--Katz distributed the Reports from the Chancellor's Taskforces on Diversity, Retention, and Community Partnerships. He also distributed an index to the report, which highlights taskforce recommendations pertaining to each of the SACS committees, including GERC. Each of the reports contains materials of interest to GERC, beyond recommendations aimed directly at the General Education curriculum. Committee members should begin reading the taskforce reports; we will begin discussing them within the next month. 

Katz briefly summarized the central recommendations in the report. The Report on Diversity essentially recommends a diversity requirement of more than one course ("two or more"). It recommends that UNCA bring in consultants to offer us a clear sense of the chief models for diversity requirements at campuses like ours across the nation. The report discusses options for a requirement (p. 13); it includes materials on "diversity-centered," "diversity-related," and "culture-specific" courses within Diversity curricula (pp. 20-21). The report also discusses advantages/disadvantages of these options (Pt. II, pp. 25ff) and possible models for a requirement (Pt. III, pp. 27ff). There is also a report written by the Student Cultural Diversity Taskforce, which also recommends a diversity of requirement of 9 credit hours (p. 17).

The report from the Student Retention Taskforce recommends greater support of FYE program (pp. 13, 37). It recommends that we commit more resources, fiscal and personnel, to the Learning Community experience within the General Education program (p. 37). The report proposes a Community Service or Service Learning requirement (p. 37). There are also relevant discussions of the Liberal Arts tradition and so on.


3. The GERC Report for the SACS Self Study--The first full draft of our report is due to Dr. Sherry Gale and the SACS Enhancement Executive Committee by 12 March. We should think of our recommendations, both their content and their form, as "directive" in nature. That is to say, the recommendations we draft for the SACS Self Study, both for curricular revision and for the fiscal allocation and institutional change required for implementation, should focus on the issues our committee will address in our work on the revision of the General Education program. At this point in our discussions, we need not come to any specific determination on a given issue or "talking point." 

The committee spent most of the meeting brainstorming the issues that our committee will have to study and discuss as it moves into the design and implementation phases of the General Education revision. Discussion was wide-ranging, lively, and clarifying. Katz will write up the directive recommendations in language appropriate for the SACS Self Study and will distribute them to committee members by email attachment or regular campus mail. We will continue to discuss the recommendations at the next meeting. If members have any additional recommendations for the report, but did not have a chance to offer them at the meeting, they should forward them to Katz.

4. The next meeting of the GERC will be Wednesday, 14 February, 4:30-5:30 pm, in the Red Oak Room.