1) What is your department’s vision of General Education? (set 3)
The current model is a good one. There is a balance between distribution credits and the Humanities core. The historical component is very important. The multidisciplinary aspect of Humanities is also important. Students should be exposed to students in other disciplines; they are enriched by this contact, bringing in knowledge from other methodologies and disciplines. General Education should fulfill our institution’s mission statement.
General Education enables critical thinking and reflection on values; it encourages learning about different perspectives and points of view.
If UNCA is about the liberal arts, then general education needs to be integral to the education students receive. It needs to be interdisciplinary in nature. By integral, we mean to say that it should not be only about training or cultivating a discreet set of skills; rather, general education should prepare students to address future problems, to be able to meet social changes, to become active citizens.
General Education should teach people to communicate (write/speak and listen) and give them ideas with which to think. One way to conceptualize this is to imagine two categories of requirements: communication courses (e.g., writing, foreign language, math, library research, technology) and ideas courses. The latter would help people understand how ideas evolve, specifically those ideas relevant to our world (i.e., to contemporary life).
A key aspect of General Education is helping students learn how to learn, introducing them to the methodologies of learning. For example, students could learn about how to read a newspaper, how to analyze global and domestic events from the perspective of a committed by objective (or disinterested) perspective. We must take a realistic look at our students, demographically, scholastically, and design a system that meets their needs.
General Education is less about content, more about process. The content of General Education courses could vary along any number of themes. Our focus should be to model a passion for learning. When General Education courses become totally content-driven, they risk becoming formalistic and may miss discussion of how people create contents/ideas.
As an organizing theme, the questions of "Who am I?" "Why am I here?" and "Where am I going" are fundamental to the liberal arts. Many of our students have no clue as to the nature of the community from which they come or in which they find themselves.
General Education courses should use general contents/themes rather than discipline-focused content. If we want many faculty to participate, and we use general contents/themes, faculty will gravitate towards the ones that fit with their interests and expertise. For General Education to be successful, instructors must feel that they have command of the material, be invested in the courses, have a connection to the process.
Some faculty view General Education primarily as fitting in the first 2 years of students' programs; others favor a model that spreads courses across all 4 years.
May need to have distribution requirements both in the communication and ideas segments to ensure broad skill development and idea-building.
GE should not only teach students information, but help them apply specifics to their lives. Courses should give information with context. A science GE course should teach the scientific process and the major concepts.
General Education should provide a broad liberal arts education. This includes two main goals: providing general knowledge in a variety of fields and teaching basic skills (e.g., how to study). These elements also help prepare students for study in their major fields.
General Education courses could themselves be first courses in the major. In some cases students may be beyond the skill/knowledge level of a General Education course and are better served by taking a more advanced course. One example of this is natural science majors who are ready to take more sophisticated lab science courses as new freshmen.
Data (examined by one faculty member) indicate that within the UNC system, UNCA graduates are at the bottom of the earning pool after graduation, below even graduates from some traditionally Black colleges. This suggests that UNCA students may not be as well prepared in their majors as students from other UNC campuses. UNCA should not focus on General Education to the exclusion of major education.
The number of semester hours dedicated to General Education at UNCA may be a problem. Some majors (e.g., natural sciences) require many cognate courses. If we are committed to excellence in the major, and also want to give students some opportunities to take purely elective courses, the General Education core may need to shrink. Letting first courses in the major fulfill General Education requirements actually reduces the extent of this problem. Free electives are important to students’ education.
This does not mean faculty reject the notion of a strong General Education core. Some faculty like the current structure and do not favor significant reductions. All faculty prefer the current type of mixed model in which there are some core General Education and also some sets of distribution/menu choices. Faculty want students to be broadly educated but there is a variety of opinions on how much guidance they need to ensure this. Some believe students left to their own devices will sample broadly; others see a need for structured General Education program with specified requirements across areas.