Final Report of the General Education Committee, 2013-14
Submitted by Meredith Thomsen, June 2014
The General Education Committee’s charge from Faculty Senate for 2013-14 was to carry out the
committee’s normal duties, and in addition to consider and report on two special charges:


Help GEAC with compliance issues regarding GE courses that have not been assessed for the past
two years, so must be assessed this third year. Note that GE course that are not in compliance
can be eliminated from the GE program for that non-compliance. Report to SEC with any
problems.
Now that UWL is embracing the idea of an Associate’s Degree, update the “two-semester
sequence” requirement with GE course that fit that requirement.
I will detail the activities of the GEC falling within each of these categories below.
Normal duties
We heard and voted on several student appeals, and approved the deletion of two courses from the
General Education program (POL 206: Human Nature and Political Life and BIO/PSY 107: Brain Basics).
We also approved two new General Education courses, CHI 320: Introduction to Chinese Civilization and
GER 398: German Thinkers and Pop Culture).
Compliance charge
Information regarding the compliance charge is detailed in the GEAC Final Report, submitted in tandem
with ours. The GEC worked closely with the GEAC to reach out to departments with courses that had not
been assessed during the previous two years. We were in this way able to bring almost all GE courses
into compliance, which we defined as having submitted a Form A at some point during the three-year
cycle ending in Spring 2014. In total, only two of the 128 active GE courses listed in the GEAC database
failed to take any action with regard to assessment by the time of the GEAC final report, and only eight
remained without approved Form As. Departments are also making good progress with respect to the
submission of Form B and Form C; final due dates for those for the current cycle will be July 1, 2014 and
2015, respectively.
The GEC discussed several methods for dealing with departments that remain out of compliance and/or
required extensive prodding to submit assessment materials. Ultimately, we chose to reach out to those
departments and emphasize to them their duties with respect to GE assessment. If the 8 classes without
approved Form As during the just-completed cycle do not improve their performance with regard to
assessment, the GEC will review these courses for deletion from the GE curriculum.
Associate’s Degree charge
Dr. Mary Tollefson contacted the College Deans to produce a list of additional courses to include in the
“two-semester sequence” list for the Associate’s Degree. These courses are listed in Appendix A and will
be presented to Faculty Senate early in Fall 2014 for approval as part of the Associate’s Degree.
Revision of General Education Student Learning Outcomes and GEAC Procedures
In addition to the items included in our charge from Faculty Senate, the GEC worked to improve UW-L’s
assessment of the General Education program through two other undertakings. First, we revised the
Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) for the General Education program, creating more general SLOs
corresponding to the categories in which the previous SLOs were organized. The new SLOs correspond
closely to the UW System’s Shared Learning Goals and the Essential Learning Outcomes developed by
the Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP) program of the American Association of Colleges
and Universities. Our structure adds a sixth category to the UWS/LEAP learning outcomes, emphasizing
student understanding of aesthetic perspectives and meaning. As detailed in the document, it is our
hope that the revised SLOs will provide departments with more flexibility with regard to how they
evaluate student achievement of General Education learning goals. The new SLOs will also improve our
ability to compare student performance at UW-L to that at institutions using similar SLOs.
The GEC also revised the policies and procedures for the assessment of the General Education Program.
The three main changes include a change to a two-year assessment cycle, the addition of a GE
Assessment Plan, and a new requirement that a course-specific SLO be written that falls within the GE
SLO being assessed within each class. A major goal of the revised procedures is to streamline the
workload of the GEAC, and to make it easier for Departments to use a single assessment tool to meet
their own and GE assessment needs.
Search for New Assessment Software
Drs. Nabamita Dutta and Kenny Hunt joined me and other university representatives in beginning the
search for assessment software to replace our home-grown GEAC database software, and to meet the
growing assessment needs of other University entities (the three Colleges and the School of Education).
This group attended two product demonstrations during spring semester, and decided to go forward
with a Request for Proposals process early next fall. The Provost’s office has expressed a willingness to
provide the financial support necessary to assure that the existing GEAC system remains updated and
functional until a new system is in place.
30-Credit Transfer Committee
As Chair of the General Education Committee I served as UW-L’s representative on the UW System’s 30Credit Transfer Committee, and reported back to the GEC and the Provost several times during the
spring. The committee worked to identify a minimum of 30 “fully transferable” credits that fulfill degree
requirements across the University of Wisconsin and Wisconsin Technical College systems. The
University of Wisconsin Board of Regents approved the 30-Credit Transfer agreement in early June 2014.
Summer Activities
Several other important GEC-related tasks will continue over the summer. Patrick Barlow and Bryan
Knapp will work on an assessment report combining several sources of information about student
learning with respect to the Effective Communication GE SLO. Courses recently approved for inclusion in
the General Education program have been added to the GEAC database. Georges Cravins (Chair of the
GEAC) and I met with the software developer for the GEAC database to identify necessary updates to
reflect the SLO and Procedures revisions that happened this spring. Patrick Barlow will take the lead on
updating the General Education Assessment website to reflect those same changes. Finally, with the
support of the Provost’s office I will prepare short presentations for the three Fall 2014 College
meetings, highlighting examples of high-quality General Education assessments conducted across the
University. Our hope is to promote a culture of assessment at our institution by demonstrating how
assessment efforts result in insights for instructors, departments, and the institution. These
presentations will be posted on the UW-L website for future reference, serving as evidence of our
commitment to General Education assessment.
Future Activities
1. The successes the GEC had this year were due in large part to what was apparently an unusual degree
of coordination between the GEAC and the GEC. We echo the GEAC’s suggestions regarding the need to
more formally assure the ongoing communication and coordination which must occur between the two
committees. I personally think the easiest way to do this would be to make the Chair of the GEAC an
official Consultant to the GEC, via a change in the GEC’s bylaws. We should consider making the
University Assessment Coordinator an official consultant to the GEC at the same time.
2. As is outlined in the GEAC report, that committee experiences an unreasonably high workload.
Although we have made changes this year which address the GEAC workload, more needs to happen
regarding this issue. I would like to have the GEC and the GEAC explore the idea of creating a description
of duties for the University’s Assessment Coordinator relating to General Education assessment. One
thing I think could be relatively easily passed along to that person is assessment database maintenance,
which would lighten the GEAC’s workload and greatly improve continuity across academic years. I would
also suggest that the Assessment Coordinator become the point person for departmental questions
regarding assessment software usage. Even with the greater technical support that will come with new
assessment software there will be a need for an on-campus coordinator; it makes more sense to me for
that to be the permanent Assessment Coordinator rather than an ever-rotating array of GEC or GEAC
Chairs. I recognize that the GEAC needs to retain control of the evaluation of assessment tools, etc., that
occurs within our assessment process. I feel, however, that the Assessment Coordinator could
coordinate some of these activities without being involved in the ultimate judgments made by members
of the GEAC. If there is agreement in the GEC, GEAC and Faculty Senate on which duties could be
assigned to the University Assessment Coordinator, that request could be taken to the Provost for
review.
3. The GEC and GEAC have made great strides in the area of the assessment of the General Education
program. However, the GEC’s bylaws also state that the committee’s responsibilities include:
2. Conducting a systematic review of the General Education Program by examining existing
courses on a regular, rotating basis, and recommending curricular changes.
It is my opinion that this aspect of the GEC’s responsibilities remains somewhat underdeveloped, and
that having a formal mechanism by which such evaluation is to be conducted would promote such
activities. I recommend that the GEC examine potential mechanisms for program-level review, e.g. those
used by the APR committee, and develop a plan for the evaluation of the GE Program.
Appendix A: Broadening Options for the Associate Degree Program
The Faculty Senate charged the General Education Committee to investigate the 2-course sequence
options for Associate Degree candidates.
Current 2-semester course offerings listed as an
option for the Associate’s Degree program:
Suggested additions to the 2-semester
sequence options:
ACC 221 and ACC 222
ART 162 and ART 166
BIO 312 and BIO 313
CHM 103 and CHM 104
CS 120 and CS 220
ECO 110 and ECO 120
ENG 201 and ENG 202
ENG 203 and ENG 204
ENG 205 and ENG 206
ESS 205 and ESS 206
HIS 101 and HIS 102
MUS 201 and MUS 202
MUS 235 and MUS 236
PHL 205 and PHL 206
PHY 103 and PHY 104
PHY 203 and PHY 204
PSY 210 and one from PSY 356, PSY 357 or PSY
358
PSY 212 and one from PSY 356, PSY 357 or PSY
358
THA 250 and THA 251
THA 350 and THA 351
ART 162 and ART 164
ART 164 and ART 166
BIO 105 and BIO 203 or MIC 230
CST 110 AND CST 271
ENG 200 and ENG 302
ENG 301 and ENG 311
ENG 303 and ENG 333
ENG 332 and ENG 432
ENG 335 and ENG 307 or ENG 308
ENG 325 and ENG 326
ERS 100 and ERS 220
ESC 101 and ESC 221 or ESC 222
HIS 101 and HIS 202
HIS 102 and HIS 202
HIS 230 and HIS 240
HIS 330 and HIS 326 or HIS 327 or HIS 328 or HIS
329
HIS/ARC 331 and HIS/ARC 332
HIS 334 and HIS 335
HIS 341 and HIS 342
HIS 350 and HIS 351
HIS 363 and HIS 364
HIS 393 and HIS 403
MTH 207 and MTH 208
POL 101 and POL 221 or POL 301 or POL 302 or
POL 306
POL 202 and POL 344 or POL 345
POL 205 and POL 405 or POL 437 or POL 439
POL 234 and POL 330 or POL 333 or POL 334 or
POL 336 or POL 337 or POL 338 or POL 339
POL 251 and POL 350 or POL 351 or POL 353 or
POL 355
PSY 100 AND PSY 210 or PSY 212
PSY 100 AND PSY 204
PSY 100 AND PSY 241
PSY 100 AND PSY 205
PSY 212 AND PSY 210 and PSY 204
PSY 100 AND PSY 356
History and Psychology request that the
sequences listed in red above be changed to
those noted in the opposite column.