Saint Mary's College General Education

This is the email that went out to faculty for the Friday, February 16th meeting:

We thank you for your time and willingness to meet with the Ad Hoc Committee on General Education this Friday in the parlor of Holy Cross Hall. Since some on the committee have 1:00 classes (and perhaps some of you), we will probably begin the meeting at 2:10 to give everyone a chance to assemble. We expect to be done no later than 3:30.

We will begin with a discussion of the questions previously distributed to all faculty.

§ What skills or courses outside of your own discipline would you want your majors to have that general education at Saint Mary's should provide?

§ What do you believe a Saint Mary's student should get out of her general education course work beyond the content/gen. ed. courses that may be provided by your own discipline?

In an accompanying email to all faculty, we have distributed some preliminary models for general education. We ask that you read through those models and come ready to respond to them in light of how you answer the two questions above.

Again, please accept our gratitude for your involvement in these important discussions at this busy time of the semester. We look forward to seeing you on Friday.


This is the email that went out to all faculty on Wednesday, February 14th:

The Ad Hoc Committee on General Education is moving to the next phase of our work and is about to begin conversations with faculty from clusters of academic departments and programs. In response to what we heard from our colleagues on the Faculty Development Day on January 12th, we have compiled a document containing four models for general education programs at Saint Mary’s. Each of these models contains a vision statement, a goals statement, and a preliminary description of structure--meant as a sketch of what organization of courses and requirements best responds to the vision and goals of that particular model. (Note that a vision component was added in response to suggestions received on January 12th.) We have felt ourselves capable at this point of more specificity about the vision and goals of general education than about structure. In all cases, what we attempted to do was to incorporate what we learned through the development day first about goals and then about the scope, sequencing, and context of various structures. All of the current models in the attached document are largely skills-based, which we judged had the widest support and was the most promising to develop. All models also included interdisciplinary/intercultural experience, oral proficiency, and writing proficiency. In addition, all models included a life-skills component that utilizes the professional programs and some form of experiential/service learning.

Our expectation is that, as our conversations with colleagues continue this semester, these models will be refined, amended, etc., in response to what we hear and the feedback we receive. Of course, new models with different approaches may emerge and current candidates may drop out. You may follow the refinements of these models, as well as other progress on general education discussions, through the blog where minutes of committee meetings and other relevant documents are posted (http://smcgened.blogspot.com).