Present: Faculty—Bruce, Friedenberg, Hardy, Konz, Krumpe, Lee, McKnight, Moseley, Nelms, Pons, Rizzo, Ruiz, White-Carter, Katz; Student--Spencer

1. Dr. Katz introduced Blue Banner reporter Sarah Wilkins to the task force. Ms. Wilkins will be attending meetings in order to write an article about the General Education Review process.

2. VCAA Search update—Dr. Nelms reported that the VCAA search continues and that next Monday, 29 October, the Search Committee will make its first cut. There is still time to nominate candidates for the position.

3. Students and Alumni for Task Force—Dr. Katz reported that former UNCA student Ellen Perry, who currently works in Academic Advising and teaches in the Humanities Program, is interested and willing to serve on GERTF. After discussion, it was agreed that she would be an excellent candidate. We discussed a Social Science student nominated to the Task Force—Brady Grohne is majoring in International Policy, an Interdisciplinary major that he has designed independently through the IST program. There was interest among GERTF members of continuing the nomination process. We are planning to add a Social Science and a Humanities student to replace students who graduated or otherwise had to discontinue their participation on GERTF. It would be ideal if nominees could commit to two years on GERTF.

4. Proposed discussion series for General Education—Dr. Katz is working on a series of faculty discussions on General Education, perhaps to start at the end of this semester and to continue through the Spring, on a series of topics central to the process we are engaged in. He currently has the topics focused on the Mission of General Education and the role of the Liberal Arts; the Natural Sciences and General Education; the Social Sciences and General Education; the Humanities and General Education (including the Humanities Program specifically); and Models for General Education. It was suggested that the faculty discussion of the Humanities should follow the listening project with faculty in the Humanities Program. Drs. Katz, Friedenberg, and Krumpe will serve as the listening-project team for this session.

GERTF members are invited to submit other discussion topics to Katz either to substitute for those above or to add to them.

5. Criteria for the Curricular Design—Dr. Katz asked GERTF members to begin thinking of the criteria that we want the design team to abide by when they begin shaping the revised curriculum. Many potential criteria are already present in the Directive Recommendations (Curricular and Structural); some will become very important and others may not be as important to us as we had first thought. As our discussions proceed on the current program elements we will be prioritizing our criteria for curricular design.

6. Additional content for the Mission Statement—Dr. Moseley and Dr. Friedenberg discussed a possible revision to the current draft of the Mission Statement. Merritt wrote the revision itself, and Lisa added four descriptive sentences clarifying what distinguishes General Education from other curricular components. The Mission Statement follows:

Revision of Mission Statement

A liberating education emphasizes humane values in thought and action and promotes the free and rigorous pursuit of truth. It develops good citizens, individuals who assume responsibility for their thoughts and actions and their impact on the world. Liberally educated men and women can think critically and communicate their ideas; they can solve a variety of problems creatively and purposefully; they can adapt to changing times and circumstances; they are self-aware, thoughtful, and tolerant.

In this liberating education students follow major concentrations, which have primary responsibility for developing the ideas and methodologies to communicate within a disciplinary community. Major departments also serve the general aims of liberal education.

Alongside the major, the General Education Program provides a broader context for disciplinary specialization. General Education offers exposure to the ideas essential for students to understand how their work relates to the world and how they are part of a larger web of ideas, experiences and cultures. It focuses on students' needs for making a comprehensible, productive, and satisfying life as well as a career. The General Education curriculum is distinctive in these four ways:

1) It gives students the opportunity to be instructed by faculty outside their major.

2) It gives students the opportunity to interact intellectually with students outside their major.

3) General Education courses have no disciplinary prerequisites.

4) General Education courses are taken by all UNCA students.

The aims of General Education are those which all students should attain, irrespective of major. The values of General Education are those which all graduates should share.

[Then list the goals.]

Following our discussion of the revision above, we decided that we would discuss the revision further at the next meeting.

7. APC Reports: a) The Status of General Education at UNCA: A Summary Report by APC (continued); b) APC Report on Foreign Languages (with the original Foreign Language report submitted to APC)—We finished discussing the Summary Report and moved on to discuss the APC Report on Foreign Languages. While APC found that the Foreign Language requirement met the rationale for the current curriculum, the rationale itself was unrealistic, in that it assumes that two courses "provide more than minimal communication skills." We discussed at length the Foreign Language Department’s proposed alternative, which is to base the Foreign Language requirement on competency rather than on credit hours alone. That is, students would be required to demonstrate competence through the 220-level and would receive credit only for 6 hours of Foreign Language. Dr. Pons said that this would create an incentive for students to take the placement exams more seriously and to try to place at a higher level; currently, she said, some students play the system by placing at a lower level, in the hope of boosting their GPAs or of taking an easier class. We discussed potential resource problems with this proposal and the issue of remediation, which the legislature opposes. Dr. Pons noted that in many ways the time is right for such an alternative: the Legislature is interested in institutions increasing the requirements in Foreign Languages and, by 2004, the UNC-system is requiring all entering students to have 2 years of instruction in a language. Dr. Pons said she was meeting this week with Dr. Betty Brown, a UNC-system Vice President who is chairing a committee on Foreign Language requirements in General Education; she will discuss the remediation issue with Dr. Brown and will also look at NCSU’s requirements, which seem similar to this proposed alternative. GERTF members were favorably disposed toward such ideas, but only if the remediation and resource concerns were resolved.

We will finish discussing the Foreign Language Report and begin looking at the Language 101 and 102 Report at our next meeting.

8. Our next meeting will be on Wednesday, 31 October, 4:30 pm, in the Red Oak Room.