General Education Course Proposal Form 2010
Capstone Courses
General-education course proposals must include this page, the pages on Criteria Response and Narrative, and a syllabus
that includes a calendar. Send the general-education coordinator this sheet, signed by those listed below, via interoffice
mail. Send the entire completed form and syllabus electronically to the coordinator, Tod Porter at tsporter@ysu.edu.
Note: Cells will expand as you type in them (this is a Word table). You can also copy material into the cells from other
documents as needed.
Department or Program:
Course number, title, and catalog description:
Faculty teaching the course:
Estimated number of sections to be offered in
Other departments requiring this course:
Fall semester:
Spring semester:
Department or program chair signature
Date
Dean’s signature
Date
Coordinator, GEC, signature
Date
Chair, Academic Senate, signature
Date
GEC Proposal Number (GEC Use Only):
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General Education Course Proposal Form 2010
Narrative
Write a narrative justifying the inclusion of the course as a capstone. The narrative should speak directly to the
outcomes required (including outcomes 1, 2, and 3—see Appendix below for the specific criteria), and demonstrate how
those outcomes will be met and assessed.
Remember in your response that the General-Education Committee is an interdisciplinary committee composed of
members who may not be familiar with the discipline being represented.
Please note that this proposal needs only to address the incorporation of skill-based learning outcomes 1, 2, and 3.
Your department will almost certainly have discipline-specific outcomes that are not related to general-education
writing, speaking, research, and critical-thinking goals.
GEC Proposal Number (GEC Use Only):
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General Education Course Proposal Form 2010
Appendix
Capstone Information
Capstone from the Model
Students must take one upper-division capstone course in the major or from another area that satisfies general-education criteria.
Capstone courses are expected to incorporate writing, oral communication, data acquisition and use, and reasoning critically as
appropriate in each discipline
Capstone Learning Outcomes
Students will demonstrate the ability to:
1: Write and speak effectively.
2: Acquire, process and present quantitative and qualitative information using the most appropriate technologies.
3: Reason critically, to distinguish among forms of argumentation, and to derive justified conclusions.
General-Education Information
Submit newly proposed courses for certification as general-education courses and previously approved by the University
Curriculum Committee (UCC) directly to the General Education Committee (GEC). Proposed courses or those with changes in title,
description, prerequisite, etc., should also be submitted to the college-curriculum committee. Send the material to the generaleducation coordinator via e-mail; send the signed cover sheet via regular interoffice mail.
The General-Education Committee (GEC) reviews and certifies courses for general-education credit and reviews and certifies capstone courses in
the major or program. The GEC will use the outcomes and the criteria to make judgments about certification and to ensure, to the extent possible,
that the outcomes of general education are achieved. Departments, programs, colleges, and the GEC are mutually accountable for ensuring that
their majors achieve breadth and depth of coverage.
All general-education courses will attempt to integrate the following learning outcomes wherever possible:
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LO 1: Write and speak effectively.
LO 2: Acquire, process and present quantitative and qualitative information using the most appropriate technologies.
LO 3: Reason critically, to distinguish among forms of argumentation, and to derive justified conclusions.
LO 5: The use mathematics for problem-solving and decision-making.
LO 10: The development of cultures and organizations of human societies throughout the world and their changing
interrelationships with Western Society.
LO 12: Diversity in America in all of its forms.
The GEC expects that writing assignments will extend beyond writing for tests.
All general-education courses must satisfy the outcomes in a given domain and must be designed for the general student body. Exceptions to this
principle include courses submitted by departments to satisfy the capstone requirement in the major; and courses approved as substitutes for
general-education requirements. The requirements of general education in a given domain may be met by substitution of a more advanced course
when that course satisfies the outcomes for that domain and obtains certification.
Any department proposing courses must offer assurances to the GEC that faculty members who teach a general-education course meet the
minimal qualifications required by Higher Learning Commission guidelines (“hold graduate degrees that include substantial study [typically a
minimum of 18 semester hours at the graduate level] appropriate to the academic field in which they are teaching”). The GEC interprets this
guideline to mean that anyone teaching in an interdisciplinary program need meet the minimum for only one of the disciplines involved in that
interdisciplinary program.
In each of the domains where multiple outcomes are to be addressed, the General-Education Committee will be looking for a substantive
description that explicitly and directly addresses how the course fulfills the primary outcomes. When outcomes beyond those designated as the
featured or primary outcomes of a particular domain are involved, such as in Artistic and Literary Perspectives, the course must explicitly and
directly address the secondary outcome only within the context of the primary outcomes.
GEC Proposal Number (GEC Use Only):
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