5) What do you think are the barriers to making those changes? (set 3)

An over use of non-regular faculty is a barrier to multidisciplinary development. 

There is currently no reward structure for encouraging faculty participation in Gen Ed.  There is also little University leadership from the administration for General Education.  We are asking Humanities to do too much for General Education.

We are not clear enough about our liberal arts mission when recruiting faculty. 

Training in teaching out-of-field is often not adequate.  Individual faculty need time to develop skills and a knowledge base in order to feel comfortable in teaching in areas outside their discipline.  Fiscal and personnel resources are often inadequate.  Time and money are constraints that ought to be addressed, especially if general education and the liberal arts are at the center of our mission.  The administration does not work hard enough to market our identity as a liberal arts institution: this in turn limits support for general education across campus.  We need to have administrative leadership and support for our culture of collegiality in the liberal arts; administrators need to understand better what we do and how we do it, so that we are better supplied, supported, and led.

The current historical-literary approach in our General Education core courses is a barrier.  A more flexible structure would be one based on themes.  Thematic courses would fit with a wider range of faculty including those in the natural and social sciences.

Right now, transfer students create somewhat of a barrier to the success of General Education.  The Chancellor needs to assert himself downstate regarding the articulation agreement and UNCA's special mission.  We need to do more to create cohorts of students who enter at different years, to create bonds between them through the General Education courses.

There seems to be an implicit assumption that nothing much will change regarding General Education.  Right now students have 20 SHs of HUM/ARTS which we can't afford to staff.  Much of what these courses cover appears to be "coffee table" stuff.  If the original point of the HUM courses was to address the key questions raised earlier, it doesn't seem to be happening any more.  Why not go back to those key questions through a new approach?

Aside from the need for more resources, team teaching may be difficult to set up given the way UNCA is currently structured.  However, scientists are often more willing to cross-disciplinary boundaries than non-scientists, so these problems may be resolvable.