The following comments were written on the large sheets at our November 2 faculty meeting during our discussion on the proposed general education curriculum revision. The comments were in four sections:
Questions
- Who will staff the 2-credit seminars? (Why not have two 4-credit seminars?)
- Where are the Arts?
- How will students understand this curriculum more clearly than the current one?
- How do we avoid substituting enthusiasm for actual planning in the implementation
- Are critical thinking skills somewhere (for sure?)
- Would faculty workloads change because of 2-credit courses?
- Which “staff” will participate in CiPs? How?
- What does “intercultural” mean in the new curriculum?
- What is “Design Thinking?” And why is it appropriate to our goals and values?
- Could a student take a Nature Breadth course that was not a lab science?
- Will students be permitted to delay 1st and 2nd year Gen Ed courses to final semester? (ex. Quantitative or Foreign Language)
- What might be an appropriate place for courses that have an international and/or global component? How would “experiential learning” be implemented for courses whose focus is outside the U.S.?
- If a semester is 12 weeks, would class sessions meet for longer?
- Where do IDS courses fit – will there be IDS prefixes? How do they mesh with the “courses from different departments” stipulation?
- Would “Last Course” be offered only in the spring? Seems restrictive; what if a student fails? Has to wait another year to retake?
- How will we fund significant changes in teaching expectations?
- Where is the budget process happening?
- What does this make easier for me so I can have time to get involved in CiPs?
Concerns
- Should all of our students have this much community engagement?
- Use of the word “discrete” is confusing to many students when considering major/minor course selections. Please clarify with examples for students
- Do we lose writing skills? Not clear new curriculum is as in-depth as 101, 102, HP…
- Not clear how CiPs are distributed around campus (workload/responsibility)
- Too much double-counting might leave us with CiPs that are too closely related to or linked to majors
- No mention of transfer or CCE in implementation guide
- We really need to see worked-through examples/models of CiPs before moving ahead, i.e. approving in-the-dark
- CiPs sound potentially clique-ish and a site for territorial battles
- Increases workload of faculty teaching Gen Ed course exponentially
- Does not build on existing talent/interests/strengths of the faculty.
- Need commitment from admin for appropriate funding/resources/course releases to do this right!
- Do we know where GELO skills are being imparted/assessed?
- *Draft 2: What happened to community seminars? Necessary curricular component for interdisciplinary programs.
- How do we know whether students will understand or want this format
- I haven’t seen any clear explanation for what makes this better rather than just different.
- Too great a need for additional administration/increased workload
- How would this affect advising? / Evaluation of advising?
- If students get too focused on gen ed their 1st to 2nd years, it may be difficult for them to complete highly sequenced majors and programs (just like now – so advising)
- It’s a very applied curriculum
- What do we think about a new layer of administration and costs?
- We lose part of who we are if we don’t include SJ, ER, DUS, ICUL–>Non-Western. HUGE LOSS.
- We need HP skills built into curriculum
- Not enough explicit, universal emphasis on what were Critical Perspectives or anti-oppression work
- How to/if translate for adult and transfer students
- Are benefits greater than costs?
- The switch to 4 x 2-credit experiential seminars in the C.I.P.s eliminates studio arts courses from fulfilling these seminar requirements, which is where we thought studio ARTS could fit into C.I.Ps.
Roadblocks
- How would this plan fit schedules of CCE students? Especially if 12-1-3
- Teaching a 3-week night class seems like a big burden on faculty.
- Not sure this is a roadblock, but I’m having a hard time getting excited about the gateway seminar, especially without the unifying place-based theme; seems like a little bit of a wasted 8-credit requirement
- Can students and faculty accommodate the 12-1-3 model?
- (connected to previous point by another writer) Yes! What do we gain from changing the calendar. Not clear.
- The CiPs feel onerous for non-extroverted students or students w/ certain learning differences and mental illnesses.
- Really need explicit requirement for a way to switch CiPs
- What is the net revenue gain?
- Clarity about explicit gen ed writing instruction above English 102
- We need enough support to make these changes. Faculty and student development will be expensive.
- Nowhere even close to approving this
- Does this work with on-line course formats?
- PLACE IS IMPORTANT
- 2 semesters of Gateway Seminar sounds like too much of a not necessarily good thing
- Want to assure anti-racism content/curriculum is EXPLICIT
- Where do we ensure global (not European) studies?
Commendations
- I appreciate the potential integacism and cultural competency into the general curriculum and TEAM TEACHING OPPORTUNITIES, including collaborating and inter-disciplinary pedagogy.
- (one person added FSMM, which I now know is “Friend Speaks My Mind”)
- CiP’s are a great idea
- Like the creative, new parts – looking forward to working on them (CiP, Gateway …)
- Love the idea of increasing the knowledge of second and/or third languages to the minimum of national standards to increase students’ intercultural competence.
- Interdisciplinary and integrative collaboration between and among faculty, staff, and students will provide much deeper teaching AND learning opportunities for everyone! Hooray!
- (one person added FSMM)
- CiPs have a lot of potential
- Minimum 2 semesters of foreign language! Yay!!!!! FINALLY!
- (one person added ‘+1’)
- I like the cohesive nature of the overall idea.
- I love the possibilities of experiential opportunities with the new proposed schedule
- I love the concepts!
- Love the interdisciplinary emphasis
What would folks think about infusing the core SLOs from our current ICUL, SJ, ER, DUS into either theGateway courses or the CiPs? (i.e., I want to acknowledge that we are in an anti-multicultural / backlash political moment and I hope we can ensure that our curriculum will not backslide).
And a question to LAGER (and forgive me if you’ve already answered this & I missed it !): why not propose that the final course for CiPs be interdisciplinary? OR is it that the seminars that include integrative reflection on curricular & co-curricular work in the CiP, also ensures opportunities for interdisciplinary/academic integrative work?
THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR EXCELLENT WORK
Nancy