The General Education Realignment Working Group
Charge
Background
General education should be a place for an institution to live its values. It should tell a story of who we are and who we want our students to become. Since our current gen ed program was initiated in 2013, several changes have occurred as a university: we now have a 4 college structure with 4 campus locations, we have changed our institutional mission, we have become an access institution, and we initiated and subsequently ended an incentive based budgeting model. Given all of these changes, we should refocus our gen ed efforts to make sure it is meeting our overall goals. The need for general education reform was noted as one of the recommendations from the 2021 Comprehensive Program Review. In addition, general education realignment was recommended in the initial HLC feedback report we received.
Composition
The working group will be composed of the following:
- Chair: Val Murrenus Pilmaier, Assessment Coordinator
- Arts & Humanities Faculty Representative: Alison Gates
- Natural Sciences Faculty Representative: James Kabrhel
- Social Sciences Faculty Representative: Jason Cowell
- Professional Studies Faculty Representative: Christin DePouw
- At-large faculty: Clif Ganyard
- Administrative Liaison to Gen Ed Council (ex officio, non voting): Ryan Martin
Committee Charge
The committee is charged with accomplishing the following:
- Review current general education program
- Determine what is working well and what needs to be revised.
- Revise general education program to be aligned with our mission.
- Access. Our current list of 435 gen ed classes with 20% counting in multiple categories is unwieldy and confusing to students (and faculty/advisers). We need to significantly shrink this list of courses and minimize the cross-counting so that students can better understand what courses they should pursue. UW-Milwaukee is in a similar situation. As a fellow open access institution, they are significantly reducing the number of gen ed offerings so they have no more than 100 courses in total. As part of our refocusing, we would also be able to address upper-level courses that count toward gen ed, where students would need to complete a prereq before they enrolled in the upper-level course.
- From our select mission, "The culture and vision of the University reflect a deep commitment to diversity, inclusion, social justice, civic engagement, and educational opportunity at all levels. Our core values embrace community-based partnerships, collaborative faculty scholarship and innovation."
- Strategic Priorities (e.g., Student Success, Inclusivity, Digital Transformation, Community Connections, and Sustainability)
- Determine the key competencies, skills, and knowledge we want our students to possess upon graduation.
- The revised general education program should be able to articulate these to our students in an understandable way via our categories and courses represented.
- Our approach needs to better tell the story about why general education is a core part of the curriculum to students, rather than approaching with a "checkbox mentality". Some other institutions even use their general education curriculum as a selling point and recruitment tool (See UW-Oshkosh and University of Virginia for two examples of this).
- Ensure robust assessment procedures of general education.
- Shared assessment of designated learning outcomes
- Create shared institutional philosophy and principles on general education for use by Gen Ed Council to ensure continued future alignment despite turnover of the Gen Ed Council.
Tentative Timeline
The committee’s work will primarily run from January 2022 through May 2023. The committee will meet during Summer 2022 and faculty members will be compensated for this work.
| Spring 2022 |
Collect feedback from general education stakeholders (Gen Ed Council, students, faculty, staff, employers/community) |
| Summer 2022 |
Synthesize realignment ideas based on feedback from stakeholders
Develop rough draft of realignment proposal |
| Fall 2022 |
Collaborate with Gen Ed Council on rough draft
Finish rough draft of realignment proposal |
| Spring 2023 |
Open forums for feedback
Revise and finalize proposal (May 2023) |
| Fall 2023 |
Present proposal at Senate (2 readings: September and October)
Enter into Courseleaf (December) |
| Fall 2024 |
Start date of revised general education program |
Proposed General Education Program Models
| |
Credits |
| First Year Seminar |
3 |
| Fine Arts |
3 |
| Social Sciences |
6 |
| Humanities |
6 |
| Biological Sciences |
3 |
| Natural Sciences |
3-5 |
| Sustainability Perspective |
3-4 |
| Ethnic Studies Perspective |
3 |
| Global Culture |
3 |
| Quantitative Literacy |
3-7 |
| Writing Competency 100 (Graduation Requirement) |
3 |
| Writing Competency 105 (Graduation Requirement) |
3 |
| Math Competency (Graduation Requirement) |
3 |
| Capstone (Graduation Requirement) |
3 |
| |
48-56 |
First Year Seminar
| |
Credits |
| First Year Seminar |
3 |
Foundational Skills and Dispositions Courses
| |
Credits |
| Ethics and Social Responsibility |
3 |
| Introduction to Writing (WF 100) |
3 |
| Advanced Writing (currently WF 105 or other professional writing course) |
3 |
| Math/Quantitative Reasoning |
3 |
| Oral Communication |
3 |
| Inquiry and Informational Literacy |
3 |
| Intercultural Competency (Global Studies) |
3 |
| Math Competency (Graduation Requirement) |
3 |
| |
24 |
*Expectation is that students take these courses early on (first two years) and that the purpose is to instruct on these topics and not just practice them.
**these do not double-count with other gen ed areas (some will likely double-count with majors/minors)
Content Knowledge and Breadth
| |
Credits |
| Fine Arts |
3 |
| Humanities |
3 |
| Social Sciences |
3 |
| Biological Sciences |
3 |
| Natural Sciences |
3 |
| Environmental Sustainability |
3 |
| Ethnic Studies |
3 |
| |
21 |
*Expectation is that these are lower-level, introductory courses where the intent is to provide a broad understanding of the topic area.
**These courses cannot double-count with the foundational skills courses.
Total
First Year Seminar
Introductory course as “on ramp” to the university that includes interdisciplinarity, communication, and information literacy.
| |
Credits |
| First Year Seminar |
3 |
Foundational Learning
Breadth of foundational learning across major areas of academic inquiry, including natural and biological sciences, arts and humanities, and social sciences.
Discipline-appropriate information literacy, communication, research skills should be part of learning outcomes for these courses (i.e., learn to think like a biologist, think like an historian, think like an artist, etc.)
| |
Credits |
| Natural and Applied Science + lab (2 courses plus lab) |
7+ |
| Humanities |
3 |
| Fine Arts |
3 |
| Social Sciences |
3 |
| Global Studies (disciplines with an international/transnational focus) |
3 |
| |
19+ |
Sustainability
Foundational learning about ecological, social, economic, political relationships that supports skills, knowledge, values needed for intersectional sustainability and environmentally responsible citizenship
Communications
Essential communication and research skills. Courses in this category must include information literacy.
| |
Credits |
| Writing Competency 100 |
3 |
| Writing Competency 105 |
3 |
| Advanced Communication (courses that build on foundational communication, research, and information literacy skills and build them in relationship to other course materials) |
3 |
| |
9 |
Quantitative Literacy
Forming conclusions, judgments, or inferences from quantitative information (description from UW’s gen ed page) information literacy.
| |
Credits |
| Emerging Quantitative Literacy (mathematics, computer science, statistics, or formal logic) |
3 |
| Advanced Quantitative Literacy (build upon foundational quantitative literacy and apply these tools in the context of other course material across discipline) |
3 |
| |
6 |
Ethnic Studies
Racial / information literacy around cultural and knowledge claims related to race, racism, and inequality; historical and institutional contexts and root causes of inequalities today; self-reflection and self-knowledge in relation to these issues; civic and community engagement and agency.
Civics
"The study of government and the state with particular emphasis on the rights and duties of the citizen" (OED)
Total
Listening Sessions
Tuesday, September 27 from 3:30-4:30 pm in the 1965 Room
Wednesday, September 28 from 3:30-4:30 in the 1965 Room
Virtual options will be available. Feedback will be collected on this form.
Please contact Valerie Murrenus Pilmaier, chair, at murrenuv@uwgb.edu with any questions, comments or concerns that you may have.