Present: Faculty—Bruce, Dohse, Friedenberg, Hardy, Konz, McKnight, Moseley, Nelms, Pons, Rizzo, White-Carter, Katz; Alumni—Perry

1. The next phase of the revision—We discussed several issues that will be central in moving to the next phase of our work. These issues included: faculty and student forums; analysis of the Listening Project; and setting parameters for the design team.

In shaping student and faculty forums, it was suggested that we think carefully about the topics we focus on. The forums should serve both to educate the campus about general education and to gain support for the future curriculum design. Topics to consider include: types of models used at institutions across the nation; review of our current goals for general education at UNCA, including discussion of student outcomes and assessment models; a review of the GERTF Listening Project, perhaps as a part of some other larger topic, such as general education goals; discussion of the process we will employ in designing the curriculum.

It was observed that throughout the process interested faculty should be encouraged to participate in and contribute to our work. We need to think about how this participation should be structured so that the design might proceed effectively.

We discussed the importance of including Student Development in this next phase of our work. One possibility for doing this might be to offer opportunities for leaders in Student Development to attend Design and Research Team meetings in order to share their expertise with the Task Force.

We also need to be sure to provide opportunities for student input. One option would be to have a student forum before the end of the semester as we had planned to do. It was noted that at this point in the semester it might be too late to arrange for this; also, students and faculty both are showing signs of end-of-semester fatigue. It might be better to use the summer to set up a series of student forums for the fall. We should also explore what connections there might be between the general education models at other institutions and student satisfaction there.

We discussed the matter of parameters briefly. There was concern over whether at this stage we really could identify parameters for a design. Several Task Force members suggested that there were some things we could agree on, and noted too that these issues often should up as themes in the Listening Project. For example, there seems to be consensus on not increasing the number of credit hours in the general education requirements; on our commitment to general education courses across all four years; on maintaining some sort of core experience for our students; on maintaining the flexibility of some sort of mixed model. We agreed that we will need to study the state’s articulation agreement more fully.

Before the next meeting Katz will make the Design and Research Team assignments. Rather than form a team to analyze the Listening Project, we will have a team to research curricular issues and another to research resource issues. Katz will work on analyzing the Listening Project this summer, with the help of faculty with experience in such matters. It was suggested that when Katz sends out the team assignments, he also give the teams some summer work to get started on, so that GERTF is up an running in the fall.

2. Our next meeting will be 1 May, at 4:30 pm, in the Red Oak Room. Also, remember to keep the Wednesday, 4:30-5:30 timeslot clear throughout this semester and next year.