Minutes of the General Education Assessment Committee Meeting of 5/21/2008

1. Drs. Chapdelaine, Thomas, Cacicedo, Falabella, Koosed, Mech, Rice, and Kalouche were present. 

2. The meeting started with an exchange of information about the committee’s membership and upcoming conferences:

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      1. Dr. Irene Langran will be joining the committee as a social science representative, and Dr. Karen Campbell will join for a one-semester replacement of Dr. Steve Mech as one of the natural science representatives.
      2. Dr. Thomas reminded committee members about the AGLS annual conference to be held on Sept 25-27 in Asheville, NC. This year's conference will highlight the concept of "wholeness" as it applies to three long-standing concerns of general education program faculty and administrators: building curricula, assessing programs, and modeling best practices.

3. The committee started discussing the faculty response to the freshman seminar course. Dr. Thomas announced that he has already received communication from three faculty interested in teaching a seminar. Other members mentioned that they have received very positive comments, although there was a concern about the number and kinds of required meetings associated with the seminar development. The next part of the discussion focused on outlining what would these meetings cover and how they would be structured. It was agreed that an email reminder would be sent out to all faculty regarding the freshman Seminar that a) reiterates the invitation to express interest in teaching a class and to send a short description; b) highlights this endeavor's importance for the college,; c) outlines the process and the fact that the course does count toward load; and d) notes the peer-driven nature of the six required meetings.  The following was decided:

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      1. The workshops or meeting sessions for the freshman seminar development would most probably be six in number, and will be structured as a large group discussion, preceded by short presentation of information and handouts of resources; GEAC members would take turn serving as a resource and/or moderator for the discussions.
      2. Topics covered during the sessions should address all the six elements outlined in the “Guidelines for Freshman Seminar Proposals” (Reading; Writing; Oral Communication; Research and Information Literacy; Liberal Arts; Academic Experiences) as well as other structural elements, such as advising, assessment, experiential learning, etc.
      3. Topics could be paired, and the faculty discussion should result in specific descriptions, planning, and decisions. So we need to record the proceeding and have a coordinator in place (maybe assign one GEAC member for each).
      4. It would make sense to start the first session with a discussion of the learning outcomes and elements of how to advise students; the second meeting could cover English 101 and 102 and writing center briefings, as well as a discussion of the reading and writing goals; the next meetings would combine discussions of how to integrate liberal arts, Information literacy, Experiences, Research opportunities (ACRE, Honors, Internships, etc.) at the same time it is addressing important issues associated with advising, assessment, and integrative learning.\
      5. A listserv for all faculty teaching freshman seminars should be created; maybe through the creation of a discussion board on the blackboard site. It was mentioned that besides Blackboard, we may want to explore the possibility of establishing a blog, or Wiki, with feeders and a wider and easier access to all faculty—and not just those teaching the seminars.
      6. The Committee needs to start thinking about a coordinator, maybe an administrative assistant, who would keep all this going and handle the meetings and handouts, etc.
      7. We need to look into all resources and possible handouts that have been cumulating throughout the committee’s work: 1) All AACU materials (from the summer institute until the latest publications) and Archives of previous research (of models but especially articles on specific elements of the GE curriculum); 2) Dr. Koosed’s U. of Maine conference materials (with reference to handbooks, and booklets of information that may want to acquire); and the University of South Carolina’s Website on First Year Seminars.

4. The next part of the discussion focused on the next steps in the General Education Curriculum Development. The following was discussed:

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      1. Foundations should consist of 4 and not 3 courses, since besides taking foundations courses in three out of the four divisions (with arts separated from humanities), students should also take a mathematics foundation course (or a quantitative analysis foundation course).
      2. For the Clusters, we should start thinking about consolidating and drawing on our existing programs (such as Latin American Studies, Environmental Studies, Holocaust Studies, etc.) and some revised programs (Gender and Sexuality Studies, etc.) or new programs (Evolutionary Studies, Medieval and Renaissance Studies), including those associated with the Global Studies Project (Africana Studies, Asian Studies, etc.). We would require 3 out of 5 courses within these programs (instead of developing all-new clusters) and that would encourage students to co-concentrate (if they already have to take 3 courses, they could add two or more courses to get a co-concentration, since double-dipping would be allowed). The only problem is that most of the programs are not across the three main divisions, but in one or two at most. Some support and development needs to take place and we should think of revisiting our initial aim of having three divisions covered.
      3. The question of the Capstone may be associated with the question of clusters; maybe the capstone in each of the programs offered may be revised and structured to become the GE capstone or maybe we could develop a capstone building on what is not covered in the clusters.
      4. Dr. Rice reminded the committee that we should address the current steps to take before starting to consider our next steps. We still have not resolved what we will be proposing to the faculty at the vote for the freshman seminar addition. The committee reviewed the existing options, including the subsequent elimination of 102 and having and IDS class in the second semester. The question remained whether we should ask for a vote on adding the freshman seminar as a stand alone course, and announce that we will be eliminating 102 once the second semester seminar is developed and implemented, or whether we should ask that a humanities distribution requirement be dropped in the meanwhile? The consensus was that the freshman seminar replaces ENG 102, but within the framework of moving the IDS to the second semester.
      5. Some students could take the ENG 101 in the second semester in order to alleviate on the faculty staffing for the first semester, and prepare for the incremental phasing out of ENG 102.
      6. The foreign language requirement was briefly mentioned in relation to an inquiry about whether we will be changing the number of required courses to 2 instead of 3. Dr. Kalouche reminded the committee that our initial proposal (at the summer retreat) required at least 3 language/culture classes (without exemptions allowed through placement), in order to permit our students with some grasp of a foreign language to take advanced literature and culture courses. But the issue is still to be discussed, especially since the study-abroad component was not considered in relation to foreign language/culture.

5. The committee decided to meet a couple of times during the summer to prepare for the next steps, and the first meeting is to be scheduled the week of June 16th, preferably on that Monday. These meetings would be lunch meetings that would cover a number of outstanding issues, including the preparation for the freshman seminar development (including training, resources, etc.) so that the committee could focus on the next steps of the GE Curriculum next year.

6. The meeting was adjourned at 2 pm.

Fouad Kalouche 6/3/08