Summary of current status of deliberations about GE program

for 9^th GE Work Group Meeting on 4/4/03, by Harold Marcuse, April 4, 2003
html version created 4/12/03 by hm

Criteria for inclusion on list of core courses:

1. Must be open to non-majors on first registration pass
2. No prerequisites EXCEPT one other GE course (intended for sequence courses only)
    Dan: also not restricted to UD only [Beth/soc: leave 10 spaces in UD/majors only for GE]
3. preferably, but not necessarily, either writing-intensive or quantitative relationships
    Dan's guideline: each dept. with GE offerings must offer some courses with WRT or QNT.
4. Must be offered at least 3 times per 5 years
5. Topically appropriate for core or special requirement, as per descriptions
6. Dan: relatively broad in scope, providing an overview of a subject area
    [Harold's idea: "surveys of knowledge" would be broad; "frontiers of inquiry" focused.]
7. appropriate for students w/o background, ergo typically LD

Changes to Core Areas

Area A: update description to include information technology (etc.).
Possibility of giving guideline size (30?), so that faculty/depts. can ask for resources?

Area B: no change (or: raise AP score from 3 to 4, and high school grade from C to B?)

Area C: Leave at 3 courses. Pare down list of approved courses as per criteria.

Area D: discuss chairs' feelings about reduction from 3 to 2 (pedagogic rationale);
courses from these departments in new core Area X.

Area E: various options.
1. (TF) reduce from 3 to 2 courses, remove subdivision, pare down list. (WCiv as special req.)
2. (Dan) 3 courses in 3 subdivisions: WCiv, Non-WCiv, "intersections"

Areas F and G: various options
1. (TF) leave as they are with new descriptions, pare down list
2. (Harold): combine and reduce from 4 to 3 courses, preferably without subdivision
3. Reduce further to 2 courses; new offerings in new core Area X.

Special requirements
Quantitative: raise minimum AP score from 3 to 4.
Ethnicity: no change in existing; possible addition of 2^nd as spec. requirement or in core area X
Non-Western Culture: no change, or new subcategory of Area E under Dan's proposal
Western civ.: TF proposed new special requirement
Writing-intensive: class size limitation (25/30?), rolling 3-year review

Proposal

Area X: "Frontiers of Inquiry". In contrast to the other core areas, which offer overviews of broad areas of knowledge or illustrate a wide range of approaches used in a discipline, this area would contain courses that explore topics in new ways. They would either have an interdisciplinary approach to subject matter usually examined within a single discipline, or investigate concepts or subjects that are relatively new areas that are not yet established subjects in a given field.

2 or 3 courses would be required: they would balance a reduction by one each in Areas D, E, and F+G.