Under the gun to update the College’s General Studies Program by the spring, the General Studies Task Force on Tuesday held the first of what it predicts to be a series of town hall meetings. About two dozen faculty members attended.
“The General Studies Program in place now was created in the late 1980s and has been only tweaked since then,” Letters, Arts and Sciences Dean Joan Foster, who chairs the task force, told participants at the first of two meetings held Nov. 17. “Our accrediting body (the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, or HLC) is requiring us to redesign the program, with more comprehensive goals and measurable outcomes.”
Charged in early September with proposing a revised General Studies Program for a faculty vote in the spring semester, the task force presented a draft of four general studies goals and, for one of the goals, expected student-learning outcomes.
Meeting weekly since Sept. 11, the task force developed the draft goals using a number of information sources: information and proposals from the previous general studies committee, the current general studies program, the fall 2008 Metro State faculty survey on educational goals, the state-mandated guaranteed transfer guidelines, data from the American Association of Colleges and Universities, and model programs from other colleges. The four draft goals are:
- Develop intellectual and practical skills
- Explore essential knowledge, perspectives and methods in arts and humanities, history, social and behavioral sciences, and natural and physical sciences
- Understand the relatedness of diverse individuals, communities and societies
- Integrate knowledge and skills
After Interim Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs Sheila Thompson stressed that the task force needs to hear from faculty about what they need and expect students to get out of the general studies curriculum, faculty members Linda Marangia, Jeff London, Ramon del Castillo and Art Campa provided specific feedback. Director of the Center for Faculty Development Mark Potter added that a well- thought-out component of faculty development integrated into the General Studies Program would help ensure that desired student-learning outcomes are being met.
Faculty members who were unable to attend the town hall meetings are urged to provide their feedback on the drafts of the four goals and the student-learning outcomes for Goal 1 on the General Studies Task Force Web site.
Several attempts to review and revise the College’s General Studies Program to meet the needs of current students have occurred in the last 10 years. Each effort elicited college-wide conversation but none produced an updated General Studies Program.
The HLC told the College in 1997 that it was troubled by the lack of clear learning outcomes associated with general studies, and in 2007 that it was disturbed by the lack of progress toward revising the general education program. It stated that “a focused visit on the revision and implementation of the general education program will be scheduled for fall 2010.” For the 2010 visit, the HLC expects Metro State to show substantial progress in addressing HLC concerns regarding a program that lacks clear, measurable learning outcomes which serve as the foundation for the program structure and provide coherence to the student experience.
According to its charge, the task force must prepare, by April 2010, a proposal that includes a set of program learning outcomes, the framework or structure of the general studies curriculum (presently Level I and Level II), an assessment plan to measure the degree to which students are achieving the learning outcomes, and an implementation plan for the revised program. The proposal must be approved by a vote of the tenure-track and tenured faculty by the end of spring 2010 semester.
For more information on the general studies or the task force, go to its Web site.
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