The Chancellor’s Executive Order 595 indicating the pattern of G.E. breadth requirements permits individual campuses to determine their own version of the breadth pattern. Here is a suggestion for an alternate way of satisfying the Executive Order mandate.
I hope that the principles elicit some interest, or at least a positive critical response, which can lead to something better than the one we now have on this campus.
In brief the idea would work something like this:
About 30 units of courses directed to skills, integration and general breadth,and
About 20 units in a minor outside of the school of the major. These include beginning, intermediate and advanced courses in a field well removed from the major.
* Transfer students meet the GE requirements of their respective institutions.
Advantages:
- We can drop some Upper Division GE Courses now manufactured for the requirement and taken by students with no preparation for a genuinely advanced course. The FTE release could be devoted to the integrated component.
- Departments gain by receiving a rich mix of students from other Schools taking a minor (or minor specially designed for GE) and expect them to have appropriate preparation for these courses.
- The disciplines are strengthened while significant interdisciplinary experience is acquired.
- Inasmuch as the second field falls within the GE component, time remains for electives or a second minor before students accumulate the 124 units required for graduation.
- This flexibility makes it easier for students to graduate in a reasonable time and make some changes of major without penalty, inasmuch as the minor may include courses that can be applied to a major, were a switch made between the two fields. Conversely, the minor, or the beginnings of a previously selected major could be applied to the elective component, permitting a switch to a new field without penalty.
- Last, but not least, our students will gain in-depth experience in two or more fields. Such experience will prepare them better for the present-day job market which tends to be multi-faceted, moving workers in and out of job tasks, often hiring them on a temporary or consultative basis.
The proposal:
Taken together these principles fit the Academic Senate’s charge made to the Academic Planning Committee at the inception of the long-range assumptions planning process: that students acquire appropriate skills, learn diverse modes of inquiry and be exposed to a variety of perspectives in their course of study. Along with disciplinary inquiry, we recognize and foster interdisciplinary perspectives as valuable for full intellectual exploration (Point 1 of the Universal Principles).
I have talked with a number of faculty members about this idea. As principle it might be palatable: departments buy into the integrative package and receive in return strengthened disciplinary support. Students will get a wide, yet deep educational experience and gain flexibility in the curriculum both at the GE level and beyond.
Susan McKillop
Professor of Art
December 12, 1994
This proposal was submitted to the Long Range Academic Planning Committee in December 1994. Although some changes have taken place since then, for example, the 120-unit graduation requirement, some problems that I sought to address have come home to us powerfully over time.
Many departments now find themselves overwhelmed with lower-division GE responsibilities to the detriment of the major. We have only so many faculty members, and they are increasingly assigned large freshman and sophomore classes. By spreading the GE throughout the curriculum rather than concentrating it course-by-course in the first two years, and by requiring some depth in a second field, we strengthen upper-division offerings across the campus. If desired, a further component might be a three course integrative experience, such as the present Medieval/Renaissance Studies and Global Studies packages. Similar integrative packages might be developed in, say, the political/historical/social realm or the biological sciences/kinesiology/ESPN realm. Many others are possible. The integrative component would be open to the general student.
I am somewhat divided as to whether the integrative component would be best at the upper or the lower division level. At the lower division level, students would early be introduced to integrative patterns of thinking. At the upper division level, students who entered as freshmen would already possess basic skills and a breadth of experience. And junior transfers, less likely to have been exposed to integrative thinking in community college, would graduate with a set of related courses that fulfill both the upper-division GE requirement and the interdisciplinary perspective specified in the Universal Principles underlying our long-range academic plan adopted by the Academic Senate in 1995.
If we adopt a 48-unit GE requirement, 9 units of GE could be integrative. 20 units would come from the chosen minor or from a minor designed specifically for GE, leaving 19 units for math, English and elective breadth. If we retain 51 units of GE, the latter would be increased by 3 units. A close reading of the Executive Order suggests that some requirements need not be represented by distinct courses. This fact alone opens possibilities for GE design.
The biggest stumbling block, as I see it, is that Departments have historically justified their existence on big GE courses. All it takes is an administration with courage and imagination to figure out how to evaluate the campus FTES more broadly and guarantee that departments WILL NOT LOSE by surrendering their traditional support structure. With the end of the Orange Book in the early 90's the campuses were freed from narrow formulae. Yet throughout the state campus administrations adopted the new freedom for management but held the deans and faculty accountable to Orange Book numbers. Thus they left little maneuvering room for departments or programs to try out new patterns. I have often said--and I have said in the past to any administrator who would listen, from Don Farish on--that ALL IT TAKES is for a local administration to figure out how to interpret allocations as campus totals and within those totals to guarantee support for departments that try something new.
We presently do not take sophomore transfers. Thus we can expect our JC transfers to have completed Lower Division GE requirements before they enter SSU. If under special circumstances a lower division transfer is accepted, SSU should agree to interpret GE from the former institution with great generosity. What I am talking about in this document is a GE pattern for our native cohort. Junior college transfers would adhere upon matriculation to our 9-unit integrative pattern.
Clearly, my proposal involves problems, but it offers a new way to think--one I believe that can yield wonderful results if planned carefully.