General Education Task Force - Charge
Charge | Members | Purpose and Mission | Minutes | Resources
General education represents a major component of our students' education, a large portion of our university budget, and a major component of our faculty's workload. Over the past several years, we have heard numerous criticisms of our general education program and we have been disheartened by the results of our assessment of our students' general education learning outcomes. Our governance bodies have considered several proposals for general education reform - some proposing changes on a grand scale, others proposing only modest changes. None, however, has won the support of the campus community. As a result, we continue with a general education program that has changed little over the years. It is often confusing to students, difficult to administer, and hard to defend in terms of our learning outcomes assessment results.
The charge to the Task Force is as follows:
- Familiarize yourselves with national scholarship, trends, models, and best practices with respect to general education. My office will provide funding for your professional development in this area.
- Develop a clear problem statement regarding general education at UW-Green Bay. This clear identification of and agreement as to the definition of "the problem" is a necessary step before we move forward toward identifying solutions or proposals. Without a shared agreement as to "the problem," we talk past each other and have no shared basis on which to evaluate options or proposals.
- Review our current general education program and offer recommendations for reform. Your recommendations should be feasible, informed by evidence, and connected to current scholarship and thinking on general education.
- Keep the campus community and governance groups informed of your deliberations and discussions throughout the process. Share issues and key decision points throughout the process so that each phase of your work does not "slide back to Square One."
- Finally, do not rush to a "solution." Complex problems require significant study, thought, debate, and attention to evidence. They may require experimentation and evaluation. This work will likely take some years, well beyond the time frame associated with our usual committee assignments. Your membership on the Task Force will be expected to continue for up to 5 years in order to enable you to successfully complete this assignment.
Finally, general education is too massive to be a curricular "orphan" without administrative responsibility and accountability. During discussions with consultant Michael Dolence, our academic leadership agreed that the Dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences is the position of the University best suited to be administratively responsible and accountable for the delivery and quality of this program. The General Education Council, of course, will retain its traditional responsibility for course approvals, advice, and recommendations to the Provost or the Senate.