E-mailed Comments from Faculty

Spring 2002

See also responses to online assessment form.

Thanks for soliciting comments Carey. We seem to lack a public speaking class and I have heard many folks complain about this. The students are ill prepared for public presentations.

We should give students an education. That would include required courses in human physiology (they need to know something about their bodies and how it is affected by substances applied to it), world and American history, history of thought (philosophy), logic and critical thinking, chemistry, physics, mathematics through calculus, statistics, world literature, writing composition, introductory psychology, social psychology, introductory sociology, introductory cultural anthropology, physical anthropology, physical education from the perspective of the relationship between exercise and physiology with the goal of establishing life long habits of exercise, physical education from the perspective of games/play/physical action as meditation, music appreciation, human sexuality, comparative government, micro and macro economics, world religions, oral communication, geography, and geology. I may have missed some important things, but this is a start. In other words let us stop "training" students as means to economic ends and educate them as ends in themselves to enhance the quality of their experience of life. All these would be required course with a passing grade of "C" or better.

....here are a few ideas that I have developed over a while. I will address them in order referencing the Proposed Mission Statement:

Introduction: in addition, give them the tools to become life-long learners.

Effective Reasoning: should have oral communication component included in the basic skills requirement section.

Broad and Deep Learning: Perhaps should require Intercultural Education class like is included in the Professional Education sequence. See page 84, left hand column in current catalog. The classes one can choose from include Anthropology 130, Ethnic Awareness 101, Sociology 365.

The Inclination to Inquire: Encourage students to include classes of interest to them in addition to general education and potential major classes. Be more liberal about letting some of these substitute into areas in the General Education requirements.

Conclusion: REQUIRE completion of 2 years of high school or 1 year of college foreign language including those students doing a Bachelor of Science with a transfer AA degree. (All students should leave CWU bilingual.)

Respectfully submitted, based on years of observation and working as an academic advisor.

Questions:

1. What is your view of the role of the General Education Program in a CWU education? The general education program lacks specific outcomes and assessment. Also, upper division general education courses are needed to accomodate the growing number of cc students who did not complete a transferable AA degree but who need a BS. The current program seems to be a collection of department-driven courses with no balance, scope and sequence, nor continuity. 3. Is the Gen Ed program meeting its mission and goals? We are particularly interested in your impression of our students' preparation in the areas of written and oral communication, diversity awareness, numeracy, critical thinking, and other areas. I see little evidence of writing skill, grammar skill, and writing mechanics. 4. What suggestions do you have for improving the General Education program? Develop specific outcomes, redesign the curriculum to meet those outcomes, and develop an assessment system for those outcomes. 5. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the Gen Ed program? Weaknesses: outdated, confusing mix of courses, difficult set of criteria to follow, difficulty to advise students

Strengths: none

Response to questions: #2. The new statement is long, but much more meaningful. I think it's a much better explanation of the purpose of the Gen Ed program. My only concern is that both the old and new statements refer to the importance of competency in speaking/oral communication skills; but as best as I can tell, there are no courses in the Gen Ed program that deal with oral communication.

#3. Faculty members could better assess whether or not the program is meeting its mission and goals based on students' demonstrated skills in the classroom. From an advisor's perspective, I often see it as a hindrance to a freshman's motivation and academic success when they spend much of their first year in courses for which they have no interest, and often very little ability. Perhaps two things could help that: an advising system where more emphasis is placed from the beginning in directing students to a mix of courses that fulfill major or career goals as well as gen ed; and permitting students to take more than one course in a single department in the different areas, based on interest. They would still be getting a liberal education, but one that might be more interesting as well, which might also help with retention.

I have helped many students investigate transferring away from CWU, and it seems that most universities do not have the specificity of requirements that Central does (for instance, 3 science courses are required, but students aren't limited to specific courses in specific areas.) Conversely, students transferring in are sometimes hurt credit-wise if they have taken, for instance, science courses at another university, but the course doesn't equate to one of the specific ones listed for Gen Ed.

#4. Permit students to take more than one course from a single department.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide feedback. I look forward to seeing the results of your survey.

Dear Colleagues,

Carey, first of all, thanks for sending me, separately, the mission statement. Actually, it sounds very much like the current one. And I have only one comment: I would place #3 under goals in the first place.

What is wrong with General Education at CWU is not the program. We have worked and worked on it over the years, and last time we revised it, we paid particular attention, at least in the Social and Natural Sciences, to directing the students' attention to the purpose of the program and the ways in which students could think about integrating certain components. If you want to add to the strengths of the present program, you might try to persuade the arts and humanities to devise statements concerning purpose similar to those in the other two categories.

Apart from the totally inadequate preparation of our students in the basic skills (reading as well as writing and arithmetic) and their lack of interest in anything beyond their own everyday, personal sphere, I think there is a lack of support by the faculty for the practice of the liberal arts. In the seventies and eighties, we had a director of advising, who was a tenured faculty member, who was a fervent believer in the liberal arts. When he held advising orientation sessions, he literally preached to us about the importance of sharing with students the purpose of the program: to expose them to all the different ways of looking at the world and human beings. He wanted us to eschew saying that the general education program was something students had to "get through." Rather, he wanted us to tell them about the value of a broad liberal arts education. He wanted us to tell them that it was necessary to know more than just the narrow field that they majored in. He wanted us to know and to tell the students the difference between education--what the liberal arts are all about--and training.

I won't say that every faculty member followed his example, and I do recall that one of his constant laments was that he could never find enough faculty advisors for general education, but there was a sense that general education in the liberal arts was an ethic, and not just a program. I think the faculty has lost that "ethical" sense. Rather than tinkering with the program, I think the general education committee might consider how to restore the faculty's interest in its higher purpose.

I must confess that I do not know how to do that. Perhaps your survey, if enough people answer, will give you an idea of where to start, or verify if I am even right about the faculty's having lost the liberal arts ethic. Anyway, I don't think the committee can do much about one of the chief weaknesses of the program--the inadequate preparation of our students, even in reading--, unless you want to browbeat the administration into considering how to raise admissions standards and still keep up enrollment.

This message turned out to be longer than I intended, so that's all.

Just one more thing. You and the committee might want to read the May 10 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education wherein there's an article, "Students Become Guinea Pigs." It's about the travails of reconstructing the general education program at the University of Pennsylvania. I don't advocate undertaking an experiment such as the article describes, but it would give the committee a sense of sharing problems with another insitution.

Dear Committee Members:

The role of the General Education Program in a CWU education is to counter the narrowness which professional and occupational education frequently produce. General Education helps to ensure that no student graduates from CWU without having meaningfully encountered a representative selection of the truly great literary, artistic, scientific and philosophical achievements which engendered, maintain, and continue to improve the civilizations of the world.

The gravest weakness of the current CWU General Education Program is that, by virtually requiring its courses to be offered at the freshman and sophomore levels, it confuses "general" with "introductory." At many universities, excellent general education courses are to be found at the junior and senior levels. Such courses presuppose greater maturity than typical freshman and sophomore courses do. Yet they are not specialized, major-type courses. An example of such a course might be: "Eight Great Tragic Dramas of the World."

The greatest strength of the current CWU General Education Preogram is that it fosters improvement in the basic intellectual skills: reading, writing, speaking, listening, observing, and reasoning.

The Committee is to be commended for its openmindedness and its receptivity to fresh conceptions.