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 3)

General Education participation needs to be built into the reward structure here.  We need to think systematically about fulfilling our resource needs.  Departments need to think of themselves as citizens of the university as a whole. 

In the past there was more of commitment to General Education on the part of senior faculty.  We need to clarify our responsibilities again, and to cultivate leadership, especially among our senior faculty.

We should consider a reduction in the General Education program to allow for more electives.  Perhaps cut the Humanities core to three courses.  Have a core experience in the first semester of freshman year—a freshman seminar—then have students begin Humanities with Hum 124 in the Spring.

We might consider developing other core experiences in addition to our Humanities program.

We need more administrative leadership for General Education, especially in terms of how faculty resources are distributed and used.  Perhaps some faculty could teach 12/12 and not do scholarship and service, while others focus on scholarship.  Faculty who teach well and devote themselves to General Education should be rewarded.

We ought to consider renaming the Humanities Program.

We need to have a better assessment of General Education at UNCA.

Put our adjuncts into the departments to teach intro courses and bring fulltime faculty into the General Education courses.

Logic and ethics should be important within the general education program, but not as a stand-alone course; ethics should be integrated into every aspect of the general education program, particularly the Humanities.  Diversity should be embedded across the curriculum.  Ghettoizing diversity is not a good thing; diversity should not be marginalized, but rather, seen in its larger context .  We need to be active in foregrounding our liberal arts identity, especially in the recruitment of students and faculty.  We need to have a more coherent vision of what general education means at UNCA.  We need to consider more fully how student development relates to general education.

General Education does need revision but the process can be incremental rather than all-or-none revision.  We can add some innovative elements to General Education to some of the elements we have now, pilot the new elements and assess their success.  Making small revisions on a more frequent basis to General Education is more likely to be productive, to create a better product.

We say that many of our General Education courses are interdisciplinary, but the type of interdisciplinary course that really helps students is one in which they see instructors from many different disciplines presenting within the same course, discussing the same issue from their different perspectives.  We need more of this type of interdisciplinary experience for our students.  Most of our courses are very disciplinary-centric.  We talk the talk about interdisciplinary, but most of what we offer at best could be called multi-disciplinary.

At a small school with limited resources, we need to learn from each other.  Learning communities for faculty are a great way to let this happen.  If we had more interdisciplinary, theme-based General Education courses, faculty could get together in small groups with common purposes--both junior and senior faculty.  We should be learning more outside the classroom to help our students learn more inside the classroom.  Once we have these kinds of learning communities for faculty, we can use them as the basis of forming similar learning communities for students.

We can benefit from the experiences of programs like the African-American Colloquium.  They work because they include both formal and informal elements.  The informal component--those experiences outside of class--are critical to creating the trust and bond needed for the formal part to succeed.  And we must ensure that faculty get the credit they deserve for teaching these courses.

We need more of a liberal arts culture on campus.  General Education is a part of that culture but we need to create more out-of-class experiences that reinforce that culture.

We need to do a better job of orienting faculty and students to that liberal arts culture, including transfer students, returning students and those ready to declare majors.  We need to make explicit the connection between the liberal arts and the majors.

Faculty development must be a component; we need it to remind us of what we're here to do.

We need a program characterized by flexibility so that the next generation of faculty can contribute.

We need assessment and follow-up to see what is working and to ensure that students continue to make connections between General Education and their majors.  This is difficult to do without more money and more time for faculty to evaluate their teaching.

We need to do more regarding diversity.  In terms of curriculum, we need to recognize the plurality of American culture.  We need greater diversity in our teaching methods to address the diversity we see in students' learning styles.  In terms of students, we have ridiculous numbers of Black, Hispanic and Native American students on campus given the demographics of this state.  Diversifying the student body will contribute directly to diversifying the curriculum, and vice versa.  If there are real and legitimate reasons to explain the lack of racial/ethnic diversity on campus, we need to hear about them, to discuss them.  There is a big gap between where we are and where we should be.

If we retain courses like HUM, we should change the model.  The people who teach the HUM courses should be the ones to do the large lectures.  The current system of using "guest speakers" infantilizes those who teach--if they need to call in "experts" to discuss central issues, then something is wrong.  It weakens the ability of those who teach the sections to feel that they own the courses.

We could modify the current HUM courses to more of a special topics approach.  This would allow us to explore theme-based courses.

We need a smaller General Education curriculum to give students more flexibility--allow for more free electives, more study abroad opportunities.

We are not taking advantage of the strengths of our faculty.  General Education should be structured so that people outside history/philosophy/literature can contribute from their areas of strength.

Several department members expressed the desire for instituting an upper level GE science course.  One person suggested a capstone science course, “Great advances in science” that would be designed as an interdisciplinary, integrated course, like Humanities, on topics like kinetics, thermodynamics, evolution, etc. This course should be a team taught by scientist.

Another solution was offered in having two interdisciplinary (environmental) science courses one early and an upper division course each with a laboratory component.  ...  

A different idea was to link courses together.  For example, one could combine ENVR 130 with a writing course.   This would result in a 6 hour writing intensive science course.

Appropriate levels of staffing.  Faculty should not have to sacrifice major instruction for General Education instruction or vice versa.  All we are doing now is shifting adjuncts from one place to another.

Appropriate levels of funding.  ARTS 310 is a perfect example--this course is not funded in the way it should be funded to achieve its goals.

Create consistency of rigor across courses.  Set more consistent guidelines for what should be taught and what is required to succeed in these courses.

Give departments/faculty acknowledgment and credit for their General Education teaching--all their General Education teaching...not just Humanities.

Provide more leadership for General Education to ensure that the above changes are made.  Possibly a General Education Dean...but the person would need real clout for this to be an effective strategy.

Encourage faculty to participate in the classes as students so that they can really learn more about these classes.

Fix HUM 414.  Decide on its goal, keep it consistent across sections.  Don’t reorganize the course and readings every academic year.  If not, redesign it from the ground up. Some favor decreasing the number of Humanities courses or the number of hours per course (e.g., making them 3 SH courses).  This could help increase free elective hours for students.