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

1. VCAA Search update—Dr. Nelms reported on the status of the VCAA search, noting that we have received about 22 applications so far. The formal position announcement and job description will soon appear in The Chronicle of Higher Education and other publications.

2. George Lucas visit (AALE)—Dr. Pons presented a brief review of the 21 September sessions. Interested faculty may view Lucas’s presentation on video. Copies of his Power Point presentation are also available. Dr. Pons reported that AALE has offered to pay for a General Education consultant, if we are interested; they are also willing to pay fees for a first AALE accreditation, if we are interested in participating in the program. The offer of a consultant is not contingent on our participation in their accreditation program.

3. Shared files for APC Reports—Dr. Krumpe has begun putting into a shared file on the Unity server digital versions of departmental and program reports to APC. They are in a pdf format. GERTF members can access and print these reports by getting into Entire Network in the Network Neighborhood on your computer desktop; the access the Unity server in the Computer Center folder, going to the Shared folder, and then going to the GERTF files. Another way to access the files is to go to Network Neighborhood and type \\Unity in the address slot at the top of the window. It should take you right to the Unity server.

4. Students for Task Force—Faculty will nominate additional students for the task force. We need to appoint a student from the Humanities and from the Social Sciences. Sarah Clere, who had moved from the Humanities student slot to the Alumni slot; however, she has recently found a job that unfortunately conflicts with her GERTF responsibilities, so she also will have to step down. We will also need to place an alumni member to the task force.

5. Discussion of APC Reports—We continued our discussion of "The Status of General Education at UNCA: A Summary Report by APC."

Dr. Friedenberg said that she thought that we will need to return, from time to time, to a problem of taxonomy as we discuss the General Education program and revised curriculum. She noted that General Education seems to mean something different from the other skills-oriented courses required by educated people. We need to explore how these sorts of courses differ from one another. We may have to revisit this question as our discussions progress.

Dr. Katz noted that we need to keep three things in mind as we move forward: 1) The skills and content dimensions of General Education can be placed in a matrix as we work on the design of the revised program. 2) From time to time, we may have to clarify the General Education mission statement so that it reflects the program we are designing and so that we can use it as a marketing tool. We need to market General Education internally, to faculty and students, so that they will be eager to participate in the program. Dr. Moseley noted that this may be more important even than seeing General Education as an external marketing issue. 3) We will need to make contact with the mission statement when we write the rationales for the new General Education components.

We turned our attention to the statement in the APC report that General Education stood in need of "an institutionally sanctioned group responsible for coordinating general education." Many task force members agreed that the lack of a central coordinating office or person was a very serious problem. We discussed possibilities ranging from the establishment of a Director of General Education position, to Dean-level or Associate Vice Chancellor-level positions. Instituting an Office of General Education, or something like it, would ensure that there would be continuous monitoring, development, and assessment of General Education; we would thus avoid long intervals between revisions, as General Education curricular development would be on-going. In any of the above cases, it was felt that a consultative and representative faculty group would be a necessary part of ongoing curricular development, oversight, and assessment. It was also suggested that the Director, Dean, or other administrator should come from among the faculty and have experience in teaching General Education courses.

Dr. Moseley noted, in response to the APC Summary Report, that the lack of support for General Education was also a very serious problem. He noted that a powerful advocate, in the form of an administrator or a central office responsible for General Education, might help defend against this deterioration in support.

6. The next meeting will be Wednesday, 24 October, at 4:30-5:30 in the Red Oak Room. We will also meet the following Wednesday, 31 October. We will begin discussing APC General Education Review Reports on specific program components (TBA).