4) What changes in the General Education program would allow it to better serve your department, our students, and the University as a whole? (set 1)

We should offer more gen ed summer classes, particularly for those transfers who want to get caught up and those who work a great deal during the academic year. 

We may want to consider making our interdisciplinary science requirement more Humanities-like in terms of the notion of team-teaching – shared faculty, etc.  There are pros and cons to this arrangement and we should explore them further.  We do agree that this set-up should not be required for all, but it might serve as an appealing option.   

It might be worthwhile to discuss a sort of screening process regarding innovative gen ed options; this would be quicker than going through A.P.C. each time one wants to explore certifying new gen ed alternatives. 

A problem to watch for is that if the general education hours were lowered, the extra hours available would be gobbled up by the majors.   A “Director of General Education” is not necessary. Individual disciplines and instructors know best about what to teach.

General Education is comprised of experiences as well as academic courses - study abroad is one important example.  We need to incorporate more experiences such as this in order to become the kind of school we want to be.

Faculty suggested that General Education should include many opportunities for students to develop a greater appreciation for other cultures. 

One faculty member suggested that foreign language study through the intermediate level should be required; this would allow us to take advantage of the new system-wide entrance standard to raise our own standards for General Education.

Students should have math at the level of college algebra, with a focus on applying math to everyday life.  

While interdisciplinarity is a worthy goal for gen-ed, it could better be achieved by: 1. team-teaching in discrete courses; 2. allowing different faculty to contribute as experts in their disciplines; 3. allowing teachers to contribute in creative ways without dedicating so much of their teaching load to responsibility for whole courses.

Team-teaching. Comments ranged from faculty across divisions teaching together in one course to a single faculty member teaching an interdisciplinary course where faculty across campus are available as resources when specific content information/clarification is needed.

Gen Ed reviewers should actually visit each others' classes rather than simply study syllabi. Reviewers should raise questions with faculty after such visits in order to discuss concerns and hear responses and explanations (because single visits cannot "represent" the context or process of the larger course).

There needs to be assurance that the outcome of the review process is not predetermined according to some bias, such as an unspoken definition of "liberal arts" or other concepts, and that all teachers' creative ideas will be seriously considered.

 The Listening Project is a great first start. For example, this very process of inviting a department's faculty to comment on gen-ed is an essential start to revising the curriculum with fairness and quality.

There was some discussion during the last General Education review of requiring in-depth study of another area outside the major.  Some faculty would like for this idea to be explored again – perhaps requiring a certain number of hours, such as twelve, specifying that courses should be concentrated in one or two areas.

Faculty raised the issue that General Education courses should be scheduled so as to be available to all students – this means evening and weekend classes, as well as coordination across departments and programs.  As a particular example, the five-hour natural science requirement is difficult to schedule for non-traditional students.

In a new General Education program, some means of ensuring rigor across all sections of a course will need to be put in place.  Perhaps this will mean developing common projects or evaluations across all sections.

Increase foreign language requirement to three courses rather than two.  Some discussion of a split requirement: e.g., for students who have had at least one year of a foreign language in high school, the requirement for competency at UNCA is through the third semester.  For "new" languages, through the second semester.  The feeling is that students taking two semesters of Classics courses are stopping just when they are ready to begin reading.

Some members of the department argued that we need an explicit history requirement.  There would be value in having a World Civilizations requirement separate from Humanities.  It would enable the Humanities program to focus more attention on intellectual and aesthetic history.  We need to more clearly articulate precisely what the Humanities program is to accomplish.

Others were opposed to a history requirement, because in the current system, students who take history are there because they want to be there, not because they have to be there.

 We need to be more aware of the NC High School curriculum so that we know what our students bring with them when they enroll.

 We ought to continue to work to strengthen the connections between Arts 310 and Humanities 414.

 We may need greater co-ordination and centralization of oversight of General Education.  This would result in greater attention being paid to the relationship between core components so that ideas being taught in various classes supplement each other.