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

Not enough clarification of our mission as a liberal arts school, of our liberal arts identity.  Both students and faculty need this clarification.

There is too much reliance on fulltime lecturers.  More fulltime lecturers are necessary.

Some departments seem to have opted out of General Education.

ARTS 310--separated out as it is from the rest of the program—seems trivialized structurally.  The general education curriculum does not effectively incorporate diversity into the students’ experience; diversity needs to be incorporated throughout the curriculum and not put into one course or a set of courses.  There are rays of hope, but it’s not really working.

Faculty do not have time to prepare adequately for general education courses.  If structural circumstances demand it or if resources are limited, commitment to non-disciplinary courses will often take a back seat.  We are not doing as well as we ought in clarifying to students and faculty that we are a liberal arts institution.

The Humanities core serves as a student’s introduction to History, Literature, and Philosophy—in reality, it may not accomplish this aim.  These should be at the heart of general education.  Humanities has worked to diversify its curriculum, and it does work in this part of the program, but this is not enough.

This comment from an alumnus who teaches here: the social science requirements often lack depth—offering only introductory-level social science courses for general education credit is a problem.

Right now, what we call a General Education course seems somewhat arbitrary.  It is not clear what "qualifies" a course to fulfill a General Education requirement (other than its presence on the list).

The current model raises issues of culture and monopoly.  When there is a monopoly on knowledge, it can become very brittle.  General Education needs a flexible structure that allows for innovation.  It should be tested periodically to see what is effective and modified to become more effective.  This is not something we really have done at UNCA.

We need to be able to explain why we make students take these courses.  Right now, this sometimes is hard because the connections between courses are not really institutionalized.

There was a general dissatisfaction with the science component of general education. The feeling was that the present science General Education courses are watered down versions of the course for the majors. The chemistry faculty expressed a sense of frustration at the general attitudes toward the mathematics and the sciences. They felt that UNCA should have higher standards in math and science. A science student takes the same Humanities course as a humanities major, but the humanities major is allowed to take watered down mathematics and science courses. Also the wisdom of having non-experts teaching in humanities (i.e. scientists teaching Shakespeare) was questioned.  One person mentioned that he/she was unclear what the purpose of HUM 414 was.

The amount of hours in the humanities was viewed as too high.

The present GE lab-science courses are not viewed as adequate.  They failed in giving the needed broader base of science knowledge. Even science students need more on the context and implications of scientific knowledge.  

It was also lamented that there were so few links between courses.

There is some concern that the current model limits students’ ability to explore areas outside the major in depth, especially students with credit-intensive major programs.  Although distribution requirements in General Education may dictate two courses, it is not necessarily the case that these courses would be in the same area.  Other faculty feel that depth should be created by students’ use of free electives...but if students don’t have free electives, this can’t happen.

One key problem with the current General Education program is ensuring consistency of course rigor across different sections of a course (e.g., Humanities) and across different courses fulfilling the same requirement (e.g., lab science courses).  Students quickly learn which sections to select if they want a reduced workload.  Time on task should be consistent across sections/courses.  Ability to succeed (i.e., earn a high grade) should be dependent on the same amount of work.  Why can students earn high grades in some courses without even attending regularly, whereas students in other courses cannot?  Is it really fair to say students in these different courses are getting the same General Education experience?

In fact, the scheduling of different courses fulfilling the same requirement is not always consistent:  Within the natural sciences, the 105 lab science courses do not all require the same number of lab hours.  This creates workload inequities among faculty in different departments.  Why aren’t the courses set up the same way?

Several faculty expressed concern about ARTS 310.  It is inadequately funded and students report that it is difficult to understand its actual purpose.  Some faculty favor an arts appreciation course; others say that art appreciation is part of Humanities...albeit a decreased part since the introduction of ARTS 310.  Perhaps that component could be restored to Humanities.

Regarding the Arts lab requirement, some faculty are unsure of its purpose, especially as students do not necessarily take the course concurrent with ARTS 310.  The Arts lab experience should be linked with the experience of being an artist.

Modifying the HUM/ARTS components of General Education could have important benefits:  more free electives for students, reduction in adjunct hiring.

Regarding the prevalence of adjunct teaching in General Education, faculty believe it is important to set standards and have guidelines for General Education teaching.  In terms of full-time faculty, we need to emphasize the importance of General Education teaching in recruitment and hiring, and to consider it more carefully in tenure/promotion decisions.

Part of the problem in evaluating the current structure is the lack of real assessment data.  Some faculty believe we really don’t know much about how well it is working.

Some faculty expressed concern about the writing component of General Education.  Why do we see students in 300-/400-level courses who can’t write?  Something somewhere is failing. Faculty acknowledged that this is a difficult and resource-intensive program but were mixed about using a “writing-across-the-curriculum” approach to enhance writing instruction.  Some felt that they could not be truly effective writing instructors and that an intensive writing component did not fit within their courses.