Saint Mary's College General Education

Present: Chris Cobb (via teleconference), Janet Fore, Kitty Green, Joe Incandela, Daniel Party, Charlie Peltier, Patti Sayre

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The first part of the discussion focused on questions to take to the meetings with groups of departments – particularly looking toward the meeting with the Social Sciences departments on September 19.
There was agreement that there should be some questions asked of all areas/departments – for comparability and for general information – and others specific to areas or departments.

Discussion led to the decision that the focus of the questions we bring should be:
What do departments feel they might fit in the plan as proposed, what adjustments might be needed to make the fit better?
What kind of teaching, relevant to general education goals, is specific to the departments?
What do the departments contribute that is not made explicit?

Time and effort was spent on developing questions – with an agreement that Joe will try to frame a set and circulate them for further development by Friday.

There was agreement that our agenda is to get clear answers so we can continue the planning process. We expect to continue working with the framework developed – there will be changes but for now, at least, this is the framework.

The matrix representation is problematic but we need to keep it in the discussion because it has been used so much to date. Question: How can we fix it, define “slots” so they make sense and give programs a clear sense of a role?

There is a need for another meeting on Monday 9/22 to firm up plans for the General Education lunch on Wednesday. The focus for that lunch will be on questions around the Critical Thinking seminar.