Saint Mary's College General Education

Present: Vince Berdayes, Stacy Davis, Ryan Dombkowski, Kitty Green, Laura Haigwood, Joe Incandela, Mary Ann Kanieski (co-chair), Fran Kominkiewicz, Elaine Meyer-Lee, Annette Peacock-Johnson, Ujvala Rajadhyaksha, Julie Storme (co-chair), Laurel Thomas

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We began with remarks by Joe Incandela who reminded us of the importance of process, but also the importance to move beyond process and produce a proposal. He encouraged us not to envision general education as a list of courses. Pointing out that both the way we accomplish our work as well as the proposal we produce will create a direction or "a groove" for the design teams to follow, he nonetheless reminded us that the final decision regarding the future of general education at Saint Mary's does not and will not belong to us alone.

Julie Storme provided background on decisions made regarding the size of the design team, its organization into subcommittees, and feedback from other groups. Mary Ann, Joe, Kitty, and Julie had originally planned to invite only a few faculty members to form a design team of 6-7, by virtue of their discussions, they concluded that it would be preferable to constitute a larger team that could provide better representation of various constituencies. They also decided to identify groups from whom the Design Team should seek feedback. At this point, groups identified include 1) Holy Cross sisters, 2) students, 3) the service learning group chaired by Carrie Call (Kitty and Joe are members), and 4) Saint Mary's faculty with long years of experience. A suggestion was made that we also include the faculty group on Internationalization and it was generally agreed that we should do so. Julie Storme then indicated that frequent and effective communication both within and amongst the subcommittees will be essential to an effective execution of our charge. Subcommittees can use email lists or the general education blog and can hold face to face or electronic meetings, according to their preference. Finally, she encouraged us to stand on the shoulders of work that has been done before us and said that she would try and bring to our attention any recommendations pertinent to general education that were made by the Diversity Task Force convened under a previous strategic planning initiative. Another member of the committee offered to send everyone the link where that report can be found.

Additionally, Julie indicated that the team would put the question of the foreign language requirement on hold for a short while and that the design team would use a different process to consider that particular question.

Mary Ann Kanieski then took up the matter of the way forward. As she, Joe, Kitty, and Julie began to discuss how to divide up the work, they realized that this was a difficult decision that would significantly shape the Design Team's final proposal. She then explained that they preferred to put the question to the entire team asking them whether or not the subcommittees should share the same charge or, alternatively, whether each should receive a distinct charge. She presented 3 possible organizational models for the subcommittees, explaining the rationale behind each one. She then invited the Design Team to consider how the subcommittees would begin their work.

Discussion followed. Several members expressed a preference for Model III with some support for Model I as well. It was suggested that Model II could serve as a list of possible general education requirements for consideration by subcommittees organized according Model I or II. There was general consensus that this was the most efficient way to use Model II.

A request was made that the Design Team receive a list of suggestions made at the Faculty Development Day on Jan. 11th. Mary Ann said that she would produce and share such a list.

An inquiry was made as to whether or not it would be appropriate for the Design Team to consider issues related to disability. It was generally agreed that this Design Team was an appropriate venue and should consider disability as it moves forward. A member of the design team will bring some pertinent material to the Design Team. Mary Ann K. pointed out that the comments from Faculty Development day mostly recommended flexibility and a broad approach to diversity. At this point, Julie S. referred everyone to the list of Recommendations on the handout and added another, namely to make their proposals both flexible and comprehensive.

A suggestion was then made that each subcommittee receive the same charge, i.e. to design a proposal for Learning Outcome 3 as a whole.

It was generally agreed that this was the best way to proceed at this point in time.

The Design Team then discussed how to determine the membership of each subcommittee. It was suggested to form 4 subcommittees since there are 4 members on our "steering committee" (Mary Ann Kanieski, Julie Storme, Joe Incandela, and Kitty Green) and because the Design Team has a representative from each of the 4 professional programs. After a few false starts, 4 subcommittees were formed by beginning with a representative of a professional program and a representative of the steering committee. The membership was completed with faculty who had complementary interests or shared available meeting times. The following subcommittees were formed:

Subcommittee 1	Kitty Green	Stacy Davis	Laura Haigwood
Subcommittee 2	Mary Ann Kanieski	Vince Berdayes	Ujvala Rajadhyaksha
Subcommittee 3	Joe Incandela	Elaine Meyer-Lee	Annette Peacock-Johnson	Laurel Thomas
Subcommittee 4	Fran Kominkiewicz	Jan Pilarski	Ryan Dombkowski	Julie Storme

Each subcommittee will determine its own meeting times and whether or not to hold face to face or electronic meetings. It was strongly urged that we have additional meetings of the entire Design Team. At least one more meeting will be necessary, but the question of how many such meetings will occur was left open.

There was some clarification of the timetable, the charge to the subcommittees, as well as the process to be followed as we move forward.
The Design Team must have a proposal that can be presented at the General Education luncheon on Wednesday, Feb. 27th, which means that the work of the subcommittees must be completed by Monday, Feb. 25th. Julie and Mary Ann asked the subcommittees to submit a preliminary proposal to them (and all other team members) by Tuesday, Feb. 5th, but also requested that they communicate the result of their work to all members during the interval between today and Feb. 5th. It is possible that the charge of the subcommittees will eventually evolve into distinct charges, but for the moment, they will all consider Learning Outcome 3 as a whole. We will NOT proceed by developing 4 distinct proposals that will then be merged or voted on. Instead, the subcommittees will receive feedback and direction from the co-chairs after each of the 4 "due dates", the hope being that we will ultimately create a single proposal by identifying, at week long intervals, consensus amongst the 4 subcommittees. This should allow us to envision and design an increasingly coherent proposal as our work progresses.