GROUP 5

Spring 1998

INTRODUCTION

The curriculum Group 5 proposes seeks to secure both the foundations for general education and particular disciplines as well as to provide some study in depth as part of general education. Our hope is to address the objectives of general education in stages over the entire four years that a typical student spends at the College. This curriculum helps students to develop important verbal, numerical, and writing skills, to analyze and synthesize information, construct, arguments and identify and solve problems.

We recognize that our current curriculum contains many valuable features, which we hope to retain. However two weaknesses in particular that we seek to address include a lack of curricular flexibility and a lack of coherence. We base our definition of curricular coherence on the development of key intellectual skills and awareness of competing knowledge paradigms. We also suggest that the value and aims of general education should be a part of what is conveyed at an academic orientation for new students.

ORIENTATION

First-year and transfer students will be required to come to campus before the beginning of their first semester for three days. Students will receive a letter from the President upon their acceptance, notifying them of this requirement and discussing the value of a liberal arts and sciences education. This letter should also try to convey the importance of this opportunity to introduce new students to the College's expectations and our general education philosophy.

General Objectives:

-A serious academic orientation is part of creating a coherent curriculum. Faculty and students need to comprehend and articulate the goals of general education early and regularly.

-We want to emphasize the student as learner over the student as consumer.

-Help students set realistic academic goals.

-Give students prompt feedback on their preparedness and confirm their ability to learn.

Specific Objectives:

-Orient students to our general education curriculum and philosophy.

-Begin to instill a sense of the dimensions of the College's intellectual life.

-Identify the College's academic expectations of students.

-Assess in a meaningful manner students preparedness.

-Link intellectual activity inside the classroom to activity outside the classroom.

Format:

-Each department/program required to select a number of roster faculty to participate each August. (Estimate - 120).

-Classes conducted as large seminars with approximately 25 students each.

-Classes meet over 3.5 days.

-Students receive one hour of graded credit.

-Classes meet approximately 5-6 hours each day (3 hours the half day).

-To be decided: Students randomly assigned to professors or assigned based on identified area of study.

-A general theme selected by faculty and emphasized across all sections (in readings, etc.)

-All sections come together at least once during the orientation period.

-All sections come together at least once during the Fall semester.

-Convocation held during the Fall semester to address the theme introduced during the orientation.

Content:

-Intensive writing and reading exercises.

-Oral presentation required of each student.

-Collaborative learning assignment built in.

-Advising - peer and professional.

-Co-curricular activity (?)

-In-class assessment of students' skills and the program.

FOUNDATIONS

- The Base -

History/English/Foreign Language

Introduction: The College must encourage in its students the skills and knowledge that enable them to adapt to changing conditions while they maintain a strong sense of how change develops from tradition. The College should require of all its graduates familiarity with history as it leads to an understanding of the present, and cultivates a critical awareness that enables students to assess the perspectives and accomplishments of the past and move to the future. The College also should require its graduates to demonstrate a competency in writing English and constructing valid arguments and criticizing arguments. Additionally, demonstrated competency in a foreign language is essential to participation in an increasingly integrated world.

English 101-102, 6 hours. Students must complete English 101-102 within their first year at the College. Students demonstrating a proficiency in the skills covered in English 101 may enroll in English 102. Students demonstrating a proficiency in the skills covered in English 101 and 102 are not required to enroll in either class. Students will not receive credit hours if they pass out of English 101 or English 101 and 102. This rule does not apply to students qualifying for AP credit hours. The English department will establish the methods of assessment and the proficiency standard.

History 101/102 or 103/104, 6 hours. It is recommended that students take one of these sequences during their first year. Students must complete one of the sequences before they enter their junior year.

Foreign Language, 0-12 hours. All students must demonstrate a foreign language proficiency at the 202 level. If a student has had two years of a language in high school or demonstrates a level of competency (set by the Languages departments) through other means (again, determined by the appropriate departments), he or she may not receive credit for language 101 or 102 in that language. Students will not receive credit for 101 and/or 102 if they place into a higher level and pass that higher level course as they now do. Students placing into and passing 300-level language study will have satisfied the language requirement.

- The Early-Middle -

Science, Mathematics and Formal Reasoning, 13 hours. We want our graduates to demonstrate knowledge of higher mathematics or logic sufficient to understand the bases of mathematical or formal reasoning. Knowledge of the methods, intellectual approaches, social significance, and history of the physical and natural sciences is also an important component of a quality core curriculum. All students must take at least one science lab course and one math or formal reasoning course. Students may not take more than two course from the same field. We wish to expand the mathematics or logic requirement to include formal reasoning in computer science. Only those Computer Science courses that foster competencies in formal reasoning such as the logic of programming will satisfy this will satisfy this general education requirement. Thus, computer literacy courses such as those that familiarize students with basic word processing do not count.

In addition to broadening the math/logic requirement, we seek to introduce flexibility. Students might be served well by taking a non-lab course offered by a science department. We hope that science departments will introduce new courses of this sort into the curriculum. Students also could take science courses in several departments to satisfy the requirement. By combining the math/logic requirement with the science requirement and requiring only one math/logic course, we also introduce flexibility in obvious ways. Finally, we have reduced the total math/logic and science requirement by one hour to increase the number of credit hours available for thematic clusters and the orientation requirement.

Social Science, 6 hours. Knowledge of the history, theories, methods and intellectual approaches of the social and behavioral sciences, including similarities and differences with respect to one another and to other modes of understanding should be required.

Humanities (excluding History) and Fine Arts, 9 hours. Understanding of the conceptual approaches and history of at least one of the arts, as a means of comprehending the aesthetic patterns that underlie human creativity. Understanding of literary, philosophical, religious concepts and contemporary trends in interpretation as a way of comprehending the human experience is required.

In order to help find space for the thematic clusters and orientation requirement, we recommend reducing the humanities requirement by 3 hours. Although some courses in the thematic clusters will be double-counted so as to satisfy other parts of general education, the total hours required for general education will likely increase slightly for the typical student under our proposal. We hope to minimize this increase as much as possible. We eliminated history courses from the nine-hour revised humanities requirement in part because we retained a separate six-hour history requirement (An alternative was to reduce the six-hour history requirement.) We wished to encourage students to be exposed to a range of humanities and fine arts courses. Since students can still take history courses as part of thematic clusters, it is likely that many will select history courses to satisfy that part of the general education requirement.

THEMATIC CLUSTERS - Higher level learning

Clusters = Three-course thematic units

The College's general education curriculum should guarantee students adequate opportunity to acquire a high quality, disciplinary or interdisciplinary (we openly acknowledge the presence of interdisciplinarity in disciplines) experience at some level of depth beyond introductory survey courses. We believe our graduates should demonstrate intellectual flexibility and explore the bridges and barriers among various forms of understanding. An upper-level disciplinary or interdisciplinary/out-of-the-major requirement should aid students' understanding the nature and limits of different ways of knowing and different academic fields. We acknowledge that students learn more from courses that build on one another. The cluster format taken during the junior or senior year will provide for the ongoing practice of skills and, by the completion of the third course, a synthesizing experience. Thus, we hope to help build coherence into the general education curriculum and formulate general education as a four year program having developmental stages.

This phase of the general education curriculum is meant to reinforce skills and expose students to different ways of knowing in a designed manner. Therefore only one course out of the designated three may be an introductory (100-level) course. It is expected that most clusters will be composed of courses at the 200-level and above.

Students may not enroll in a cluster until they have earned 60 credit hours. Students may not select a cluster within their primary major in order to fulfill this part of general education. It is possible that departments that are not currently part of general education will offer new courses that can satisfy the thematic cluster requirement.

Two Interdisciplinary Examples:

1) The Impact of Darwinian Explanation. This cluster includes courses from the biology department, philosophy department, and psychology department on different aspects of the effect of evolutionary theory.

2) Education and the Nature of Culture. This cluster includes courses from sociology, history and education on how different educational models have influenced liberal democracies.

We also hope that individual departments will mount new courses of thematic coherence that are not aimed at majors. For example,

3) The Ancient Greek World. This cluster includes courses in gender studies, literacy, cross cultural issues such as Egyptian impact on Greek culture. All courses would be offered by the Classics department.

CAPSTONE

We believe that senior-level synthesizing experiences (capstone or cornerstone courses) are best left to the departments. A student's major department can better coordinate the linkage of curricular goals with out-of-class experiences. The departments are equally committed to building into their senior-level courses the reinforcement and practice of core skills (e.g., research, collaborative work, problem-solving and writing).

Multicultural

Group 5 did not come to any final agreement about a multicultural requirement as part of a general education curriculum. We discussed defining the directive broadly (exposure to cultures "different than the dominant cultural heritage of the U.S.") versus a more narrow version (focus on the emerging world and Non-west cultures). We compared various ways to implement such a requirement: 1) Create a list of courses that satisfy the directive however defined; 2) Require all students take History 103/104.

ADMINISTRATION

A successful general education curriculum must be attached to an organizational structure that encourages enthusiastic participation of faculty members in framing and teaching relevant courses and promotes consensus as to the goals of general education. We support a structure that is faculty driven, faculty managed and faculty reviewed.