The topics for tonight's meeting include:

1. A report of Curtis' meeting with Chancellor Bardo, Vice-Chancellor Collings, and Faculty Chair Kinnear regarding the approval process for our proposal;
2. A discussion of last Friday's meeting with the English department; this was a very helpful and beneficial meeting and we should encourage people to read the minutes of this discussion;
3. A report of the Learning Communities workshop last Friday with Vincent Tinto; several sources of further information were offered, and a useful discussion of assessment was included. It was clear from hearing these discussions that this committee has done its homework, as there were few surprises;
4. We still need to discuss the administrative aspects of our program and to help the sub-group working on this part of the proposal.

Curtis reported that, even after his meeting with Drs. Bardo, Collings and Kinnear, the approval process has not been completely worked out. There will be another meeting with Curtis, Collings, Kinnear, Fred Hinson as Director of General Education, and Suzanne Moore as Chair of the Council on Instruction and Curriculum, who are all involved in the curriculum change process regarding General Education. The approval process itself must be approved by the Faculty Senate, and this will be completed by the end of this academic year. The thoughts at this point are that our final proposal would go to Dr. Collings, who would give it to the General Education Committee. Upon approval by the General Education Committee, it would go to the Faculty Senate. Of particular concern is what would happen in the event of strong suggestions for changes in the proposal, or rejection of all or part of the proposal, either by the General Education Committee or the Senate. It is very important that such suggestions for change be sent back to this committee for consideration. To allow "tinkering" by other groups who do not have the benefit of the background study and thought that this committee has had would seriously devalue the careful process by which our proposal will have been created. It is also not a good idea for the proposal to be modified in a piecemeal fashion; a serious modification of any part would require reconsideration of the entire program, which, again, can only be done effectively by this committee.

The meeting with Drs. Bardo, Collings and Kinnear included interesting discussion of the development process and the response we have received so far. The approval process will be much more fluid if the discussion that precedes it is thoughtful, civil and thoroughly comprehensive. Dr. Bardo is adamant that the development and approval process is done thoroughly and well, and, above all, by the faculty. It is up to the committee to make a good case for the fundamental quality issues, so that we are engaging in the discussion with a faculty to whom a quality general education program is prominently important. Those to whom General Education is not important should not be involved.

There is evidence of some concern among faculty regarding influence by administration on the program proposal development process. The fact that Dr. Bardo feels this discussion is so important might imply that basic change is important. However, the committee is aware of no involvement by the Chancellor or Vice-Chancellor regarding program content. Academic Affairs is exploring and piloting the use of Learning Communities, which are also a component of our program proposal. Does this experiment imply that Academic Affairs is imposing learning communities on general education? The committee feels strongly that this dual appearance of learning communities is nothing more than a coincidence of Academic Affairs' interest in retention, and separately, of the committee's study of the current trends in General Education. We do not feel that the administration has attempted to influence our thinking about learning communities. We appreciate the useful educational contribution of Dr. Tinto's visit, and appreciate that the outcome of Academic Affairs' experiment with learning communities could color faculty receptivity to learning communities.

Administrative participation will be sought in the development process when the committee has specific questions about resource issues. It is important to the approval process that the final proposal be the wishes of the faculty supported by assurance of resources for implementation. At some point, we will have to ask Vice-Chancellor Collings for very specific answers about, for example, the resource feasibility of 60 sections of freshman seminar. A proposal that suggests significant resource reallocations will result in lively discussion. The committee must do a really good job of advocating for general education positions and causes, without allowing the discussion to degenerate to a quarrel about individual interests. We will have to be willing to take hard stands for the issues, but be willing to compromise without loosing sight of the goal of an excellent, workable general education program.

We turned the discussion to the visit with the English department representatives. This conversation suggested that we need to do some homework with regard to accommodating transfer students. Curtis has tasked a graduate assistant with collecting the general education programs of the other NC institutions for us to compare to our proposal. The English discussion also highlighted parts of the proposal that need further thinking. There are still numerous questions about the implementation of a freshman seminar. The Perspectives areas and the distribution of hours needs more consideration (though the categories and hours distribution was closely based on the present program, but with more traditional category names). The issues of counting upper level courses in place of general education courses, "double dipping" by majors, and use of major courses to meet general education requirements will arise in further discussions, and the committee needs to establish a position regarding these issues. The English representatives feel strongly that six hours of composition are needed at the freshman level to address the developmental nature of writing skills. They reported that in the present courses students write about personal experiences to motivate writing as a thinking tool rather than a thinking product. Many committee members feel that students need a content to write about to genuinely develop their thinking-to-writing process. The English representatives made a good case for their expertise and experience in composition instruction. Their questions about what we have in mind for an upper level writing course show that we need to do more thinking about this course and state much more precisely what it would entail. In general, their response to our program proposal was thoughtful and clearly invites further discussion of ideas about the best writing program for our students. The committee still feels strongly that what we are suggesting is not reducing from six to three hours of composition, but rather adding writing in many other places in the program, including the freshman seminar, the upper level course, learning communities, and an enforced writing across the curriculum element.

Bruce Henderson attempted to prompt some further thought about the core by suggesting that it has a remedial look about it. John Habel countered that the first year is structured to get students to begin to read, write, and think. There is room (another 15-17 hours) for perspectives courses or major courses to extend the work of the core. Faculty must be cautious that learning communities do not become three courses with the workload of one course. This could happen if faculty share assignments to a great extent without demanding a workload in their area of responsibility. Alternatively, faculty in a learning community could be in a better position to monitor the overall work load of the linked courses without overloading the students. The freshman seminar and the present English 101 course share some important similarities, including personal writing, which promotes sense of place. The committee feels strongly that a freshman seminar, a single composition course, and the use of learning communities could cover many of the same bases as the present two-course composition requirement. The responsibility for writing across the curriculum needs to be clearly and firmly established.

Clearly there is room for more discussion with the English faculty regarding composition and writing in the general education program. We value their feedback about what will or will not work. However, it is unfair to the rest of the university community to continue this single discussion when many constituencies have not yet seen the program proposal. We need to get the proposal out to the public in order to maintain and build the momentum of this discussion. There were arguments presented in favor of mailing hard copies of the proposal or placing it on the Web. We finally decided to do both, with the thought that the apparent permanence of a printed copy might inspire more reaction and discussion than an electronic draft.

The committee will meet again on Friday, February 27 at 8:00 am in Stillwell 102 to discuss the administrative sub-group proposal. Meanwhile, we will try to distribute printed copies of the program proposal by the end of this week.

Respectfully submitted,

Nory Prochaska, recording secretary