Present—Hardy, Konz, Krumpe, McKnight, Ruiz, White-Carter, Katz; Pat McClellan, visiting

1. Forums—We have decided to schedule the Faculty Forum on General Education for Friday, 8 November, in the Laurel Forum.

The Student Forum on General Education is scheduled presently for 11-12 Nov, 4:30-5:45 pm, in DH 242. We will follow the format of the listening project so we will need to have 2-3 note-takers for each day; Katz will facilitate the sessions.

2. Meeting with Dr Padilla, VCAA—Dr Katz reviewed his meeting last Wednesday, 9 Oct, with Dr Padilla. They discussed the forums, progress on design principles, and resource development. The also discussed meetings that had taken place with Dr Spellman, Dean of Curriculum, and Dr Keith Ray.

Drs Katz and Hardy had met with Dr Spellman to discuss current efforts to revise the Arts and Ideas Program. Dr Spellman said he was very supportive of this effort, noting that the ideas for change are very compelling, intellectually sound, and academically rigorous. He noted that he was not necessarily opposed to reconfiguration of the Humanities and Arts and Ideas Program, so that they worked effectively together, while preserving the strengths of each. Dr Spellman is interested in continuing this discussion in future meetings.

Dr Katz met with Dr Ray to discuss the Health and Fitness component. Dr Ray said that he is interested in serving the needs of the University. He said that his preference is to have a 3-credit-hour course on Health Promotion and Wellness with an embedded fitness component. He would be willing, however, to explore both a 2-credit and 3-credit HF option, with or without an applied component. He said that he was also willing to explore other curricular options for participating in the general education program.

3. Learning Communities Experiment—Pat McClellan, Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning, reported to the team about a one or two learning communities that are being developed for pre-med and engineering students, involving as many as four courses in which students will enroll. Dr Katz observed that all the current experimentation was laying a good foundation for the revision process.

4. Statements of Principle—The team created a new organization for the Statement of Principles for the Design. Katz will revise the document with the new organization and will send them to Design Team members for further input. If the document Team approves the document (via email), then Katz will convene a meeting of the GERTF as a whole, in order to discuss the Statement of Principles as a full Task Force. Once the draft of the Principles is complete, they will be ready to present to the faculty at the Forum on General Education; following this, the team will move on to the design phase.

5. Next meeting—The next meeting will be Wednesday, 23 October, at 4:30 pm, in the Red Oak Room. It will a meeting of the GERTF as a whole, which will discuss the Statement of Principles for the Design.