Saint Mary's College General Education

The Committee met in the parlor of Holy Cross Hall with faculty from Art, Philosophy, and Social Work. The three different models for SMC General Education (2.0) were discussed. A summary of that conversation appears below. Afterwards, the Committee met among itself to discuss the faculty survey on general education that will be distributed shortly and the format for the final general education lunch of the semester on Monday, April 23.

---

Faculty were asked to comment on the structures of the three models, noting areas of strengths and weaknesses as they saw them.

A faculty member began by asking about the recent student presentations on general education. Those talks from the previous GenEd lunch were either that particular student's own perspective or one she had been assigned by the group to contribute. Students have been polling their peers and expect to present the results of their survey on May 1. Students also have a copy of the three models, but are not bound by them to come up with their own program for general education.

Another faculty member raised four points for the group's consideration:

1. Interdisciplinary learning. We ought to be clear what it is and what it isn't. Interdisciplinary learning requires sustained conversations between students either in one class with two professors or in two classes (as in tandems) linked together. Because we're a smaller college, this is something that we are able to do very well.
   
2. The relation between student and world. This relates to the previous point. Since we live in a world where everything pushes on everything else, we need to prepare students for thinking between and across traditional disciplinary boundaries.
   
3. Public relations. Our primary focus should be on designing what we should do rather than being concerned about what we want others to think we do.
   
4. Student understanding of general education. We need a way to present general education that addresses both first-year students and fourth-year students. We can't expect that seniors will have the same understanding of general education that first-years do. So we need to make the presentation of general education simpler and more accessible to students just starting out. At the same time, we have to think about what we want to have accomplished at the end of their program. What is the emergent end which would only be comprehensible at the end of a student's education at the College. Students should be able to have a realization about what general education is for that they wouldn't have had earlier in their academic career. There are, therefore, multiple audiences here, and we need to be sensitive about all of them at some level. Parents are another audience.
   

Someone from another department picked up on some of these points and said that what would be valuable inclusions for her in a general education program are interdisciplinary perspectives, global education, technological proficiency, and Women's Studies.

The committee was then asked about assessment of general education. A member of the committee responded that assessment issues have not been far from our mind, but that we shouldn't build a program just with assessable outcomes. Part of the progress on assessment will come when the future direction of general education is more specified. In that sense, the committee has used a backwards design: The Faculty Development Day in January gave us a view of what we wanted general education to look like when we're done. Then came structures and models. And out of the models will come some ways to assess the program.

A faculty member from Art then asked about the flexibility of the models, especially in light of the majors' program in her department. Could majors which were more front-loaded in a student's earlier years at the College be able to do any of these program models while also completing her major on time? For example, clustered courses sound great, but they may not work with all majors. It would be nice if there were broad general education goals that each department could address as best it could. A member of the Social Work Department said that her students are adult learners. But when they look at the general education program, they just see a list of what they 'have to take.' They can later see the rationale for what they had to take, but didn't necessarily feel that the program treated them as adult learners. Real choices that they had among classes were not as apparent at the time of registration. So flexibility is indeed a significant value here in allowing students to craft their own programs. Part of being flexible here is to open up general education classes to more than introductory courses. Another faculty member from Art underscored the importance of flexibility. Perhaps what we might consider is some way to test out of certain requirements. But doesn't that mean, asked another, that we're construing general education primarily in terms of information or knowledge? We have a complicated situation at Saint Mary's because we have liberal arts disciplines with a number of accredited programs (mostly in the professional arts). Yet, we're trying to provide some commonality for all our students. That led to a discussion about whether students are really getting that commonality even within the same-numbered course taught by different instructors. A member of the committee responded that in some ways, a particular general education structure can address these matters, but not solve them. Another professor appealed to modern languages as an example of some of these considerations. Maybe there can be proficiency exams in particular languages followed up with courses in language & culture, for which the language proficiency is the foundation.

The same person then said that he viewed Model B as the strongest. It meets the test of simplicity in how it's structured. Model A was too introspective. It also seemed to begin in a contradictory way with Sr. Madeleva's quotation which affirmed the priority of the individual, only to then move as a model to a concern for the common good. Another faculty member said she also felt that the introductory paragraph in Model B was the clearest. That was seconded by another faculty member, who felt, however, that "investigative skills" might not be readily understood. Model B features both process and content. The world isn't such that we can specify what every student should know. Thus, a skills approach is forefronted. But knowledge is required to learn the skills.

Questions then arose about the life skills component of the models. A faculty member commented that there are indeed things that students need to know that we (the faculty) don't need to teach. One member of the committee responded that we have a large and excellent set of professional programs, and the committee thinks that including them in general education would be valuable. These courses may include the one on women's health in Nursing and the course on sexuality in Social Work. In general, Social Work could contribute the perspective it has from working with diverse populations. All sorts of tandems and other pedagogical combinations could be very attractive possibilities.

A member of the Art Department suggested that it would be beneficial to include some course that acknowledges that today's students process more things visually. This person also suggested that the committee consider compacting the general education requirement by paring it down. In short, might we be able to do more with less? Another member of the Art Department agreed with this suggestion. But another person at the table thought it less important to compact than it was to not expand.

The 3/3 load was then brought up. Moving to 3/3 will put pressure on some majors, especially those who require support courses from other departments. Staffing issues are real, especially for professional programs who have faculty devoted to courses in accredited majors. How would they be able to welcome a wider clientele? For these reasons, all of the models try not to tie most requirements to specific departments, and hence make a virtue out of necessity.

The last issue brought up was whether general education at Saint Mary's ought to be unique, especially in light of our identity as a women's college? Right now, there is really nothing unique or specific to this identity in the present program. There are all sorts of delicate pedagogical maneuvers that challenge our students' comfort zone, but that is a very important thing to do for our students.

---

Any comments on the models or on any of the other issues discussed above can be posted below by anyone from the community.