Saint Mary's College General Education

Present: Chris Cobb, Janet Fore, Kitty Green (until 3:30), Joe Incandela, Charlie Peltier, Patti Sayre

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Announcements:

1. Joe met with the Student Governance Association. Since many of them were not aware of the progress on the Gen Ed program, much of the short time was devoted to updating them. He did leave them with two possible projects (1) Looking at the outcomes to determine how many of them have been met under the current program and (2) Revising the “preamble”
   
2. Joe did talk to Prof. Donna Engelmann at Alverno (Catholic women’s college in Milwaukee.) They have no religion or philosophy required classes. The only religion they might get is in a “unit” in a core class, much like a first year seminar. There are five required discipline specific courses in the curriculum in general education: one humanities and one art interdisciplinary course, one lab science, one psychology, one social science course. She is willing to be a consultant for us. Alverno sees itself as a laboratory with 30-40 years of experience.

The group reflected on the meetings with the Fine Arts group and the Natural Sciences group. The science group nearly all voiced that the experience must be a laboratory and that you cannot do it all in one semester; you can’t appreciate science without doing it.

The group also discussed the response by the Fine Arts group when the draft of the sub-outcomes that Jessica had suggested was introduced. It seemed clear that in redrafting the sub-outcomes we need both a perspective with Assessment expertise and someone from a relevant academic discipline.

We keep getting the questions about how courses link up with the outcomes. And we haven’t fully answered that question.

The remaining departments are: History, English, Humanistic Studies, Math, Modern Languages, all Professional Programs, the W group and the Interdisciplinary programs. We suggested meeting with history, English, HUST and Communication 2 weeks after break.

The group then briefly discussed the framework for the next Gen Ed lunch (10/29/08) which will be a continuation of the discussion of the Critical Thinking Seminar. We will meet on Monday after break (10/27/08 3 pm) to further prepare (no meeting during break.)

What is remaining of our work to accomplish by the end of the semester? If we want a program for Faculty Development Day, January 2009, we may need an all day session. We will plan more on this on Monday after break.