AROUND SUNY
General
Education Retaining Distinctiveness, While Meeting SUNY Trustees'
Requirements
By Greta Petry
In December 1998 the State University of New York Board of Trustees passed a resolution requiring all SUNY campuses to develop a core general education curriculum in a series of key academic areas. They further mandated that all campuses have these requirements in place by fall 2000.
The University at Albany's own General Education Committee, expanded last fall to a task force that includes both faculty and professional staff, has the challenge of meeting the Trustees' mandate while retaining those features of UAlbany's current General Education program which have wide support among faculty.
The campus General Education Task Force worked all spring and summer, in response to guidelines set forth by the SUNY Trustees and interpreted by a SUNY-wide task force, to determine what type, range and depth of courses give undergraduates a solid educational foundation.
Sue Faerman, the new dean of Undergraduate Studies, and English professor Judith Fetterley, the new associate dean for General Education, will lead Albany's efforts to meet the Trustees' mandate.
The General Education Committee, the group that is developing the campus proposal this fall, is made up of many of the same people who are continuing from the group that met over the spring and summer. Faerman said, “The committee made a lot of progress this spring and summer but the final clarifications, which were issued by the SUNY-wide task force at the beginning of August, will allow us to complete the process. We are close to having a proposal to put forth to the University governance process.”
The General Education Committee is an advisory committee to the dean of Undergraduate Studies and works closely with the Undergraduate Academic Council, Faerman said.
“We are seeking input from the deans and chairs and will be working with campus governance to sponsor campus-wide public forums for general discussion on the proposed general education curriculum,” Faerman said.
Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Judy Genshaft said, “The University at Albany's General Education Committee has had an important task to complete in a relatively short period of time. I want to commend the committee members for their efforts. Also, I encourage our deans, chairs and faculty to lend their assistance to this group. Dean Faerman's office would welcome specific ideas about how the Trustees' requirements might be addressed in their areas.”
Dean Faerman said, “This situation gives us an opportunity to discuss the importance of general education on campus. We will retain the uniqueness of our program. What we are doing is maintaining an Albany flavor as we do this. This will be not just a response to the Trustees, but will be about what our faculty members feel are the necessary underpinnings of a bachelor's degree.”
In August the SUNY Provost's Task Force on General Education, co-chaired by Muriel A. Howard, president of the SUNY College at Buffalo, and Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Peter Salins issued a report indicating that SUNY's plans for core requirements will respect campus autonomy and leave specific course syllabi in the hands of professors. SUNY campuses are to submit their plans for meeting these requirements by Dec. 31, 1999.
“We want to make it clear that on this campus we are not using the term core curriculum. We refer to it as general education, and it is a program, not a set of courses,” Faerman said.
Faerman is an associate professor in the Department of Public Administration and Policy. Her immediate predecessor in the Undergraduate Studies office, John Pipkin, has returned to the faculty of the Department of Geography and Planning, and was active this summer on the campus task force.
Fetterley, the new associate dean for General Education, said, “The idea is to try to keep what is already good about this general education program, and to see where there is faculty support for changes.”
Pipkin said, “We don't want a grab bag of courses. What we prize in our general education program is coherency around its four main characteristics. In particular, we strongly value respect for multiculturalism, and this topic was not addressed in the Trustees' resolution.”
The characteristics of the current general education courses are as follows and can be found on p. 50 of the new Undergraduate Bulletin:
1. They offer general, non-specialized introduction to central topics in a discipline or interdisciplinary field; while they may satisfy major or minor requirements, their purpose is to serve students who do not intend to pursue more advanced work;
2. They encourage reflectiveness about disciplinary knowledge; they explain what it means to be a practitioner of a discipline; they convey explicit rather than tacit understanding of the nature and importance of a discipline;
3. They encourage active rather than passive learning; they attend, as appropriate, to reasoning and/or aesthetic aptitudes, and to reading, writing, and computational abilities;
4. They are sensitive to the multiple perspectives of a pluralistic culture both within and beyond the University.
Pipkin has often told new students there are many
majors at the University in which they have never had a single high school
course.
“I have seen students explore these General Education
subjects, some of which they have never experienced before, and some of
them have ended up making a life-long career out of them,” he said.
After the SUNY Board of Trustees' vote last December
to mandate core requirements, faculty at 27 SUNY campuses gave the board
a vote of no confidence and protested that they had been left out of the
decision-making process. The latest statement from the SUNY-wide task force
regarding the restoration of campus autonomy is a step toward resolving
the initial conflict.
Concerns still remain, however, including how to
pay for the new mandated courses and how to measure what students learn
in these classes.
“How will we do this with current resources
and where will we have to ask for additional resources,” are key questions
according to Pipkin. He added the Trustees have made a provision for campuses
to seek additional resources to implement their general education programs;
they may also seek waivers to delay implementation based on resource limitations.
The mandate by the SUNY Trustees requires that students
take 30 credits in 10 subject areas. The areas are: mathematics, natural
sciences, social sciences, American history, Western civilization, other
world civilizations, the humanities, the arts, foreign language, and basic
communication. In addition, students would be required to complete competencies
in critical thinking (reasoning), and information management.
In some areas, like foreign language, questions
remain over whether a three-credit introductory course would give a student
adequate command of a language. Albany does not have a General Education
foreign language requirement, but offers students an extensive array of
foreign language courses which satisfy requirements in the current General
Education program. Intermediate as well as introductory courses are available
under the current program.
In mathematics, other questions arise. Students
will be required to show competence in arithmetic, algebra, geometry, data
analysis and quantitative reasoning. However, as Fetterley said, “Arithmetic,
algebra and geometry are taught in high school. We assume students enter
Albany having already taken these subjects.” It would make more sense for
Albany classes to start at the level of data analysis and quantitative
reasoning, she said.
Another concern is whether the new requirements
would lead to larger classes, when common sense and studies suggest that
smaller class size is best for learning.
“Courses should be small and they should be taught
by full-time faculty,” Pipkin said. If funded at appropriate levels, the
new mandates could lead to small, introductory courses taught by full-time
faculty, an educational plus for students.
Albany's unique mission of research needs inclusion
as well.
“As a research university, our focus is not only
on the content of knowledge, but also on the approach to the discovery
of knowledge,” Faerman added.
Any final proposal will go through regular policy
channels, including review by the appropriate faculty committees (the Undergraduate
Academic Council, which reviews curricula, and the Council on Educational
Policy, which considers financial implications and new degree programs)
before going before the full University Senate, Faerman explained. If approved
by the University Senate, the campus's proposal will go to the President
for approval before going to SUNY administration.
Finally, while the campus has retained autonomy
to devise its own general education program, in the end when Albany's proposal
leaves the campus it is subject to the approval of SUNY administrators.
A committee to be led by SUNY Provost Peter Salins must approve each campus's
general education curriculum.