General Education Committee
Minutes
For the March 21, 2011
2:00pm, 1A-308
General Education Committee: W. Fritz, C. Saulnier, A. Levine, L. Manne, M. Recor,
M. Kruk, L. Petingi, J. Jiang, R. Powers, J. Cope, A. Champanerkar, V. Tevere,
G. Lombardi, P. Given, S. Wilson, D. McCloskey, J. Arena, A. Amunikoro
Staff: W. Bell, P. Brower-Garrett, V. DiMeglio, D. Scimeca,
Excused: D. DeSimone, M. Rice Bellamy, M. White, H. Green, A. Hoffner
Guests: F. Soto, S. Holak, M.Derbyshire
Date: March 21, 2011
1. The minutes from the General Education Committee Meeting of February 14,
2011 were unanimously approved with minor corrections.
2. The March agenda was approved.
3. Proposal from the Department of Nursing for:
a. Change in existing course: NRS 305 Women’s Health Issues Across the
Lifecycle (request to add the designation of p&d) was unanimously
approved.
4. Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) was tabled and moved to the April agenda.
5. The Committee raised some concerns with the revised General Education Goals.
A subcommittee consisting of R. Powers, L. Manne and A. Champanerkar are to
meet and include a three sentence/point explanation for each learning goal. The
following was expressed:
a. S. Zelkovitz (Computer Science) – S. Imberman sent the following email
to the Committee: We (Department of Computer Science) believe that we
need to modify these learning objectives to include the technical and
computational thinking skills needed by today's graduate in order to be an
educationally well rounded individual. Computational thinking, in the
computer science education literature, has come to be synonymous with
the skill set needed to be able to solve problems and to do critical thinking
using computers and technology. We would like to suggest a minor edit
to the current document. Can we modify "Information literacy" to read:
"Technological and information literacy" and to add to the line where it
says Quantitative reasoning, "Quantitative reasoning and Computational
thinking".
b. S. Holak (Associate Provost) reflected on the experience of the small
group that participated at the AAC&U Gen Ed Assessment Institute last
summer. She noted that it was important that we consider that each goal
must be assessed. She expressed concern about the total number of
goals and suggested that the proposed set of eight was an appropriate,
manageable number, given assessment needs. The goals should take a
broad, overarching perspective, rather than one reflective of specific
disciplines.
c. R. Powers (History). The preface sent to the Faculty Senate is different
from the one we worked out at the meeting; we had decided to get rid of
the word "literacy"; we were considering the math department's request to
replace "quantitative" with "mathematical"; and we wanted to draw up
explanatory material beneath each objective. The goals as submitted to
the Senate are incomplete, do not reflect the wishes of the General
Education Committee, and should be withdrawn.
d. R. Powers also noted that the Inclusive Excellence Committee will also
propose some changes to bullet point 2 (Knowledge and Cultures).
e. A. Champanerkar from the Mathematics department relayed that his
department suggested replacing "Quantitative Reasoning" with
"Mathematical Reasoning" since the department feels that the phrase
"Quantitative Reasoning" is a narrow description of the contribution of the
Mathematics department(s) to General Education.
f. S. Wilson from PCA explained that there is no reference to "intercultural
skills" and instead we use what seems like an outdated and vague
vocabulary of "human civilizations." S. Wilson also suggested that
lumping all of the general education goals together could be one of the
reasons for the confusion. For example, "Critical Reasoning" is
understood very differently in the context of science, philosophy, and art.
This point is not one to do with departmental turf war issues, but rather I
thought that we might be better off paying closer attention to the divisions
that we already have in general education and thinking about how the
goals worked in relation to them.
g. D. McCloskey pointed out that the lack of reference to technological skills
or computational reasoning was an omission on our part as this is an
expectation we have of all of our students (from word processing to
learning statistical software). He knows that it is implied and will be
included in the description, but felt the wording of our goals should
directly reflect it.
6. Dr. Alexandra W. Logue, Executive Vice Chancellor and University Provost and
Dr. Julia Wrigley attended the meeting to discuss the recent proposal of CUNY
Pathways. The talk focused around “one” university operating as an integrated
system which allowed students to transfer more seamlessly across campuses.
The models presented allow for campuses to keep their own “character”. It was
noted that more than 50% of all CUNY graduates do not start at the school they
graduate from. F. Soto from the Department of Modern Languages discussed
our general education curriculum and the benefits of our model. Currently, we
are the only CUNY that has a General Education Committee with representation
from each Department and most recently revamped our general education
curriculum from the menu like choices to a common core required for all
baccalaureate degree programs. F. Soto hopes that we will “preserve the
excellence” that we have instilled in our general education curriculum.