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Date: Mon, 02 Dec 1996 16:00:57 -0400 (EDT)
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From: heldrichr@cofc.edu (Rick Heldrich)
Subject: Minutes of Group 17 Final Fall 96 Meeting
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To: GENED@cofc.edu
Cc: CohenD@cofc.edu, CudahyD@cofc.edu, DanielsR@cofc.edu,
Eichelberger@cofc.edu, HaroldA@cofc.edu, ThomasLH@cofc.edu, WhiteS@cofc.edu,
WraggJ@cofc.edu
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Reply-to: GENED@cofc.edu

Group 17 Members: David Cohen (Library/Provost's Office), Diane Cudahy (Ed), Roger Daniels (BA/Econ), Julia Eichelberger (Eng), Rick Heldrich (Chem), Tony Harold (Biol), Leila Thomas (Skills/Learning), Sara White (Ed), Jeff Wragg (Phys)

Our inquiry group met on November 13th for well over an hour. We all participated in an extensive discussion of the goals of general education and how to realize these goals.

Item #1.
We did our best to combine all the suggestions that individuals had made over the past month and to put them into a shorter list. There was some discussion over the difference between a goal and an aim, a distinction I completely failed to grasp. I think a goal was, to some people, bigger than an aim and less quantifiable. But anyway, we agreed basically with Rick's condensed list of things that should happen to or within a student during his or her C of C experience. We also noted how much overlap there ultimately was between even these categories. Our discussion turned to ways these goals/aims should be implemented: what should the College provide students, both in and out of the classroom, to encourage these things to occur?

There seemed to be a consensus on several things. One was a rigorous set of Gen Ed requirements, very similar to what we have now: {which includes lab science, math, and two years of foreign language; two semesters of freshman composition (which is currently taught with a very heavy emphasis on literature), two semesters of History (although several remarks made throughout the semester suggested that we would affirm any efforts in Hist 101-102 to acknowledge non-Western cultures, if only as a point of comparison); 12 hours of humanities, 6 hours of social sciences}. All this is required of every major from business to studio art to chemistry, and we all believe in this basic curriculum as a very important means of creating well-educated graduates. The fact that all students have to complete several courses outside of whatever School they will eventually graduate from is, we feel, a strength. Roger Daniels, for example, mentioned that this is an asset to business students in the workplace as well. We did not ever sit down and affirm, one by one, all the current Gen Ed requirements. However, no one ever seemed to express the opinion that there should be no requirements, nor did anyone argue at any length that there should be fewer requirements. People did acknowledge more than once that it would be possible to impose too many requirements, and that we had about enough right now. But few people seemed to be advocating much reform of the general requirements.

Item #2.
We talked a lot on Nov. 13th about the extra-curricular dimensions of student life. By extra-curricular we meant all those things that we, as professors, do not have control over. We control our syllabi, classroom procedures, and such. We do not control the classroom space, nor the campus's physical environment, nor its location in downtown Charleston. But, as we all agreed, all these factors have a powerful impact on our students' overall experience at the C of C. To wit:

--Classrooms need to be comfortable, of sufficient size to acomodate the number of students, quiet and well-lit, temperate, clean, etc. When these characteristics are not present, students' education is diminished.

--Classrooms need to be in buildings that are sufficiently spacious so as to encourage student-faculty and student-student interaction. There should not be a suffocating crush of students between classes. Students should not able to find places to sit or congregate in and near the classroom buildings. Present space is too tight to facilitate the kind of interaction that could foster students' intellectual curiosity, interpersonal relationships, and contact with faculty.

--Students need to have plenty of study space available to them. The library should have many more study rooms to encourage work on group projects. There should be other space available throughout the campus, in the dorms and in the cafeteria and snack bars. Present space is woefully inadequate if we hope to foster students' learning and study after they leave our classrooms. "Study" does not just mean studying for an exam--informal conversations can help students grasp or apply concepts beyond the classroom context, and we also believe that forming friendships is an extremely important dimension of a college experience. But even if we are only talking about having a place to study for an exam, our discussion emphasized that there is not enough room for this on our present campus.

--On the plus side, our campus is a beautiful place to look at and to walk through. Many professors' offices and some classrooms are in beautiful historic houses. The campus grounds are beautifully landscaped and maintained. Not only does all this attract students to come here. It also has a positive effect on students while they are here, even while they are attending overcrowded classes and living in tiny dorm rooms. The beauty of the campus contributes to our students' pride in their school and to their own sense of well-being. Like the rest of historic Charleston, its architecture is on a human scale, specially designed for pedestrians. Students feel that this is a small place and that they are not lost here, because there are no gigantic buildings and acres of parking lots. David Cohen points out that the school always looks smaller than it is to visitors. It feels cozy and welcoming (even though the facts may sometimes be different). We agreed that this is a very important dimension of our students' experience and that all efforts to preserve and promote the cozy, historic, gracious character of the campus should be considered as legitimate contributions to the goals of our general education curriculum.

--Other dimensions of campus life that are "off the syllabus" but nevertheless factors in our students' education and development: Greek life. Some schools have moved Rush to Spring semester and it seems to have a positive effect. Rush takes up a huge amount of time for those who participate, not to mention producing disappointment and feelings of exclusion in those who don't receive a bid or who don't feel welcome in the process. Letting freshemn arrive and experience one semester just as freshmen would allow more students time to adjust before all these additional variables are introduced. It would also be good to have more non-Greek alternatives that are not as costly or socially homogeneous as Rush is sometimes perceived to be. (E.g, there should be alternative clubs; non-greeks should also have physical space in which to gather.) The College ought to discourage the escalation of Rush activities, or even move Rush to Spring, as a way of promoting its goal of producing liberally educated people. --Advising should reinforce stronger mentoring by faculty over a longer period of time. Some people felt this should begin the first week a student arrives here and continue through graduation, instead of focusing only on preregistration as it has up to now. The College should allocate more resources to advising in its effort to produce liberally educated people.

A final note was that we spoke several times about the "historic character" of the College. Not only is it an old campus, but our curriculum has a strong emphasis on the past and on areas of study that might seem a bit arcane to the average high school student. We believe (some of us had observed this directly and for some of us it was only a hunch) that students are somewhat attracted to this characteristic of the college. We think that they actually like the idea of geting a somewhat old-fashioned education, of studying ivory-tower stuff, and of joining a tradition of liberally educated people. We believe, therefore, that the college, while it does need to adapt to a changing world, need not worry too much about studying things that are not of immediate technical and practical benefit. (One motto that was mentioned was : This Ain't Clemson. I personally like to think "This Ain't the DMV" is an apt one as well.)

Item #3. Our listing of the goals of a liberal education. Diane Cudahy worked on designing a T-shirt emblem, to match these goals.

We want our students to acquire and increase their KNOWLEDGE (of academic disciplines, of the physcial world, of history and of diverse cultures, etc); SKILLS (in writen and oral expression, in research and problem solving, in quantitative analysis, in ability to read and interpret, etc.); and their HUMANITY. By this last we mean that students should be able to live more productively, to feel more deeply, and to participate more fully and with greater civility in society.

This formulation moves from most quantifiable to least quantifiable, but the last section will, in fact, be enhanced by the quantifiable stuff, and we all have agreed in one way or another over the course of the semester that producing decent, productive, and personally fulfilled people is the highest goal of every teacher.

Submitted by Julia Eichelberger, edited by Rick Heldrich

F. J. Heldrich
Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry
College of Charleston
Charleston, SC 29424
phone: (803) 953-5515
fax: (803) 953-1404