General Education Review Committee
Minutes of September 12, 1997 Meeting
A summary was prepared from Patti Cutspec's and Barbara Lovin's notes from the initial meeting of the committee with Chancellor Bardo. Copies of this summary of our charge were distributed to the committee. It was noted that the committee has not yet considered models of general education programs. We have looked at elements of models, but not at complete models. This should come up more as we consider implementation; we have intentionally kept away from models to free us to think independently about new possibilities for general education programs. There are three elements to consider in our task: the principles, other models, and the program we currently have.
Curtis Wood reminded the committee of the text Revitalizing General Education in a Time of Scarcity, which discusses the process of conducting review and revision of general education programs. A summary article of this material appeared recently in Change, and copies of this article were distributed. We should re-examine the mechanics of taking a new program to the university community as described in these readings.
Questions we might anticipate include "what is the point of general education at WCU?" This ties into the fundamental principles: do they address this question, and how do they tie into the new mission statement. There is an interesting counterpoint that some described the mission statement as "too generic" but the principles statement is not, especially with the inclusion of the Student Sense of Place section, which provides a regional context.
We need to plan the structure of our Forum. Several previous forum models were discussed. We want to minimize lecturing and maximize input from the University community, but we want the input to be directed to some extent. We must avoid over-explaining and -defending the principles. Do we want to use small group discussion? At the Honors College forum, the groups were not used as the open discussion was very fruitful, but some people may be hesitant to speak out in a large group. Small groups will need specific questions to drive the discussion, though often input is not limited to answers to the posed questions. We might consider a brief introduction from the committee, then small group discussions, then a whole group discussion which is not limited to reporting of small groups. We must avoid saying there are things that shouldn't be discussed. We should avoid a closing that is just a summary of small group discussions; this is better handles with a written summary prepared after the forum. We should decide how much we wish to allow discussion of the principles and how much model building we want. We might need to consider a second forum in the spring devoted more to model building as hashing out the principles and model building in a single forum may be too ambitious.
We spent some time considering the number and nature of questions for small groups. Three questions is a suitable number. We do not want the groups to form around the six principles alone, in case one of them "dies" before the groups begin discussion. George DeSain's question about the purpose of general education at WCU should be a basis for one of the questions.
Curtis will send an email message to the faculty reminding them to study the Principles and about the forum. At our next meeting, we will compare any feedback that we have received so far. We should continue to think about questions, and review the readings on process before next Wednesday.
The next meeting is on Wednesday September 17 at 4 pm.
Respectfully submitted,
Nory Prochaska, recording secretary