Saint Mary's College General Education

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

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Meeting with SAC on Monday, February 19
There was discussion of the plan for meeting with Student Academic council. The final decision was to begin by asking rather than saying, looking for student perspectives on general education, the goals and the effectiveness. We would hope for discussion to flow from the student perspectives.

Friday Meetings with Faculty
The plan for the first Friday meeting with departments was discussed and settled.

The questions sent out earlier seem unlikely to produce a deep discussion now, but will be reiterated with the indication that we now have models to give context to these questions.

The four models of goals and (outlined) structures will be sent to the faculty attending the meeting. The opening statements about goals (pretty much as written) will open the statements, and be followed by brief descriptions of the structures. Specific course names, specific numbers of courses will not be included – it seems too early for that level of detail.

The wording of the areas and requirements might be changed to allow many disciplines to recognize places they could contribute – Joe will do some (minimal) rephrasing of descriptions in this direction. There will be four models – since there are four ways of structuring the goals, and more models are probably preferable to fewer, at this stage.

The heading of each should begin with a labeled ‘vision’ statement – leading to more specific goals and to the structure. some editing was done, Joe will do a bit more before sending out the models.

There is agreement that we should see the documents as part of an evolutionary process – they will change as they are discussed.

An acknowledgement and statement of commonalities and of some general agreements from the faculty development day would be good. The list discussed:

• Preference for a Skills-based structure
  
• Experiential and service learning
  
• Some intercultural experience desirable
  
• Proficiency in oral and written expression
  
• Inclusion of the strengths and perspectives of the professional programs
  

The material sent to each group for discussion will be posted on the blog, with a general notice that it is there and an invitation to faculty to peruse it (and comment on it) so that everyone willing and interested can follow the development of the ideas.

Announcement
Joe noted that among the programs cited on the AACU website, Salve Regina’s is particularly striking and worthy of study for its clarity and use of the stated goals and for the use of an e-portfolio structure that should encourage reflection as a natural part of the process. In closing, there was some discussion about which general education components would be minimally required at a Catholic college.