Saint Mary's College General Education

Present: Chris Cobb, Janet Fore, Kitty Green, Joe Incandela, Nancy Nekvasil, Charlie Peltier, Patti Sayre

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Minutes from the December 13 meeting were approved with one typographical correction.

Next meeting of committee:
Monday, Jan. 8, 1:00-3:00 (President’s Conference Room)

Announcement
Joe mentioned two upcoming AAC & U conferences of relevance to the work of the committee, noting that members of the committee might want to attend: (1) a conference on General Education and Assessment, March 1-3 in Miami, and (2) a conference on General Education in Newport, Rhode Island, May 18-23. The latter of these two requires an application for a team of five by February 23.

Faculty Development Day
The bulk of the meeting was concerned with planning for the upcoming Faculty Development day on January 12. (A communication about the day will be sent out, along with the Committee’s timetable, very soon.) The plan for the day is currently as follows:

Morning: Goals for General Education at Saint Mary’s College

Phase I: Participants are assigned randomly to one of six groups to discuss a possible basis for articulating a new conceptualization of the goals of the General Education program at Saint Mary’s:
(1) list of twelve goals given in the Self-Study for the HLC
(2) proposal from General Education Task Force
(3) outline of goals written by Gail Mandell
(4) “Ways of Knowing” statement
(5) hybrid statement (drawing on all of the above)
(6) wild card statement (an attempt at a new set of goals)
The aim of the discussion is to prepare a presentation (5 minutes maximum) that informs the group at large about the option under consideration, pointing out its key features as well as its strengths and weaknesses.

Phase II: Participants form a new set of groups, with each participant choosing their group based on the option they believe to be most promising; the newly constituted small groups work on and further refine the option under consideration, and, at the end of the discussion period, the option is presented once again to the group at large. Participants then get to vote (using sticky notes, or some such device) on which option(s) they prefer.

Afternoon: Models for General Education at Saint Mary’s College

Phase I: To stimulate creative thinking about possible models for general education at Saint Mary’s, a number of different models with exemplars currently in place are presented. Once again, participants are randomly broken down into groups, one group for each model. The groups discuss the model they are assigned in terms of its appeal and workability, reporting back to the group as a whole.

Phase II: Remaining with the same small group, participants brainstorm about what they would like to see in a model for general education at Saint Mary’s (aspirations and fears), and then, once again, report back to the group as a whole.

The primary aim at our next meeting will be to pin down the afternoon activities more precisely. In preparation for that, Chris Cobb has offered to research schools that might serve as exemplars for different models, bringing the results of his research to our Monday meeting.