3) What does not work in our current General Education program? (set 1)

Some of us don’t like the five-hour lab science – recitation should be dropped and the credit hours reduced to 4 (total natural science:  7 hours, rather than 8).  Another view:  we may want to add a recitation to [our science requirement] to allow more time for class discussion; that would make the class 4 hours, then a lab would be another 4 hours.  We realize that this may pose a problem, however, in terms of scheduling/logistics (this may indicate some inflexibility within the gen ed “system”). 

Many students complain about ARTS 310.  Something is going wrong in terms of the delivery of the class.  Even faculty members are often not enthused about teaching ARTS 310. 

Library Research is good in theory, but something is missing (particularly for science students and majors).  Science students must be made more familiar with resources.   

We are doing a lot more for general education than is comfortable right now, with substantial portions of everyone's load devoted to it, and with large enrollments. In addition to offering courses that meet the social science requirement, department members also offer courses for education, Humanities, and the MLA Program.

There are too many hours in the General Education program.

The Humanities requirement should not be "sacrosanct"; but it does seem like it is.  This creates some problems: 1.  Social science expertise is not appreciated; no one social science should dominate.  2. Are Humanities faculty willing and able to re-evaluate their own program? Can they examine it objectively or accept revisions in the spirit of cooperatively improving all of General Education? This would be difficult even in non-competitive, well-funded times. In these lean times, with jobs on the line, how likely is it that Humanities faculty can consider eliminating Humanities courses, sections, or instructors?

Humanities discussion sections may treat topics on which the instructor does not have expertise.  One option is to allow faculty not teaching discussion sections to present large lectures in their areas of expertise, and to count that service as a contribution to both the Humanities program and to the General Education curriculum.  In addition we should explore ways of bringing experts into Humanities faculty meetings, in order to conduct workshops that may assist instructors when they return to their sections.

There is little support for faculty development, enabling people to visit each others' courses and learn from resident experts.

As advisors, we often find it frustrating when certain gen ed classes aren’t offered or available.  Example:  are there enough social science sections offered?  Shouldn’t other social science classes, not defined as “gen ed” in the catalog, count as gen ed?  Why are only certain ones selected to fulfill the requirement?

We hear some complaints from students who feel that they spend an excessive amount of time focusing on gen ed.  But would majors eat up more extra hours and not allow for Absolutely Free Electives?

Faculty expressed some concern about students’ writing skills and wondered whether a more developmental approach to the teaching of writing might be called for.  For example, in UR, the drafting model is followed: students write one paper over the semester, but continually re-write to improve ideas and form.  The quality of our students has risen over the past few years, but the quality of student writing has not.  Shouldn’t we be raising our standards for student writing?  Do students enter the university with writing deficiencies?  If so, then how should we handle this?

Some faculty are concerned that the Articulation Agreement with community colleges allows students to bypass some of the courses that are crucial to providing a common General Education experience for our graduates.

Some faculty expressed concern about ARTS 310.  As originally conceived, this course had a strong experiential component, but a lack of resources has undermined this purpose.  Students enjoy the experience of the ARTS 310 lab, so faculty would favor keeping this.

Faculty in general thought that General Education should be reviewed more often than it has been in the past.

 We have some very serious reservations about ARTS 310

There are some less serious but still significant reservations about Hum 414, particularly by contrast with other three courses. Some feeling that the first three courses are overcrowded, the fourth somewhat lacking in substance.

There is the feeling that the university's attitude toward Humanities in inconsistent: lots of rhetoric about it as the jewel in the crown of the curriculum, combined with faculty members deriding it and some failure of support; a perception (from student comments) that there is too much unevenness in instruction in Humanities classes; a frustration that the way Hum course syllabi are stuffed with material there is not enough time to teach it carefully. 

Some feeling that advisors need better explanation of the rationale for the general education classes that students are being asked to take.

We need to work more closely with transfers in order to enable them to integrate into the general education program midway through the program.

There are two areas that should be addressed:  a) Humanities--There is blurriness between Humanities courses and World Civ courses, even though Humanities don=t do enough for historical perspective.  In particular, some of the lectures aren=t good Ahistory@ lectures.  The way that we give transfer credit illustrates this problem, as students receive credit for some of the Humanities requirement by transferring history courses.  The Humanities courses are insufficient preparation for upper division history courses.  There is a need for better articulation of what Humanities courses try to accomplish in terms of history.  One problem is the degree of autonomy which individual instructors have in teaching Humanities; some will focus more on history than others.  Humanities needs a more specifically historical component.  b) Foreign Language--Our current requirement is ludicrously small.  Students need to have competency at the intermediate level.  It would be valuable to have foreign language taught across the curriculum--to have upper division disciplinary courses taught in a foreign language.  Our major seeking to go to graduate school need to have better preparation in foreign languages.  We have a need for non-traditional languages (other than French, Spanish, German, and Italian).