It s my great pleasure to circulate A Report based on an Invitation from the President, the Provost and the Chair of the University Faculty Senate to Examine General Education – August 2012. It is the product of the work of a Committee, headed by Jeremy Cohen and
including Cynthia Brewer, Cary Eckhardt, Tanya Furman, Cynthia
Lightfoot, Tom Litzinger, Mark Munn and Mary Beth Williams.
(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2012)
I hope that all members of the Penn State community will vigorously participate in the conversations that we hope to initiate on the future of general education at the university.The Report will be presented to the Penn State University Faculty Senate at its October 16, 2012 meeting to be held in the Kern Building at 1:30 P.M. The presentation will be led by Associate Vice President and Senior Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education Jeremy Cohen.
A Report based on an Invitation from the
President, the Provost and the Chair of the University Faculty Senate to
Examine General Education – August 2012
Preface
General
education in North America is today in a state of intellectual ferment.
Newton’s first law predicts that an
object at rest stays at rest. The
identification of thoughtful general education curricular ideals is robust, but
faculty ideas have outpaced academic transformation at colleges and universities
across the country. General education curricular change at most
institutions is stagnant.
The
report that follows began with a December 12, 2011 invited colloquium at Penn
State entitled, General Education’s Ideas
and Ideals. It was initiated by the Office of Undergraduate Education, The
University Faculty Senate and the Penn State University Press. Colleagues from
Harvard, University of Southern California, University of Michigan, and
Portland State University described their institution’s general education
grogram and commented on the national general education landscape. Four elements of agreement emerged:
·
A singular, all-encompassing definition of
general education does not exist. It never has.
·
Few universities provide a cohesive general
education curriculum capable of transcending vague calls to give students well rounded educations that produce critical thinking and good communication
and numeracy skills.
·
College and university programs serve students
best when they represent the academic strengths of the faculty and provide
clear, explicitly defined learning
goals.
·
Ethically-based decision making and citizenship are
longstanding general education goals. They continue to be primary elements –-
perhaps the primary elements -- of nearly every general education wish list.
Yet today, their implementation is submerged beneath the menu-based sprawl of cafeteria-style
breadth requirements that most
institutions have adopted. Generally,
there are few explicit connections in broad menu-based curricular aggregations to
either the academic understanding or the practice of citizenship and ethically-based
decision making.
Concurrent
with the colloquium, the President, Provost and University Faculty Senate Chair
issued an invitation to a small group of faculty members to meet as a seminar
for one semester and then to share their observations. The faculty were asked
to take into account the technological, social, and student changes that have
emerged since Penn State’s last general education review in 1997 and to
consider the acceleration of calls by government, accrediting agencies, the
public, and especially our own scholarly community to clearly justify the
relevance and fit of a general education program that accounts for as much as
one fourth of every student’s undergraduate education. A separate analysis by
the Office of Undergraduate Education is included in this report to: (1) place
general education in the 21st century into historical, contemporary,
national and local contexts; and (2)
provide
a snapshot of general education at Penn State.
The
seminar voiced consensus that many current Penn State general education goals
are worthy, that they are not always fulfilled, and that interest in raising
the general education bar at Penn State is timely and essential. The seminar
also noted that meaningful change will require effort and a willingness to
embrace organizational transformation and creative intellect.
The challenges
to Penn State’s understanding of itself and to its clarity of mission since
November 2011 echo and underscore general education goals present in nearly all
national and sister institution discussions, yet rarely implemented with specificity.
General education should provide an
intellectual foundation capable of helping students to develop moral and
ethical principles that will them guide through complex, sometimes wrenching
decisions long after graduation. Freeh Report Recommendation 1.1 (3) calls on
the university to “establish values and ethics-based decision making as the
standard for all university faculty, staff and students.” Higher education’s recognition
of the importance of ethics-based decision making is not new. It remains at the
core of national discussions of general education, though it is rarely at the center
of what a general education curriculum actually does and the means of
accomplishing such a goal was not an element of the seminar’s discussions. Integration of ethics-based decision making into
the Penn State general education curriculum could acknowledge challenges set by
national discussions of what general education should do, as well as provide a meaningful academic response to the
Freeh Report.
The
following is presented in three parts.
Part I provides a brief survey of the
general education landscape in the United States and a bibliography of relevant
readings prepared by the Office of Undergraduate Education.
Part II is a snapshot of our current general education
program at Penn State based on preliminary data collected in 2011-2012.
Part III
consists of a set of principles and challenges developed over the
course of the Spring 2012 semester by the seminar cohort. Meeting as a study
group the cohort focused on first principles and challenges. Their findings and
recommendations represent a collegial accord, but not necessarily unanimous
agreement on specific approaches or requirements.
The
study group was comprised of:
·
Cynthia Brewer, Professor of Geography, College
of Earth and Mineral Sciences
·
Jeremy Cohen, Professor of Mass Communication
and Associate Vice President and Senior Associate Dean for Undergraduate
Education
·
Caroline Eckhardt, Professor of Comparative
Literature and English, College of the Liberal Arts
·
Tanya Furman, Professor of Geosciences,
Assistant Vice President and Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education
·
Cynthia Lightfoot, Professor of Human
Development and Family Studies, Penn State Brandywine.
·
Thomas Litzinger, Professor of Mechanical
Engineering and Director of the Leonard Center for the Enhancement of
Engineering Education
·
Mark Munn, Professor of Ancient Greek
History, Greek Archaeology, and Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies,
College of the Liberal Arts
·
Mary Beth Williams, Associate Professor
of Chemistry, Associate Dean of the Eberly College of Science.
Part I
The General Education Landscape
General
education is a term widely used to describe university requirements that lay
outside of a student’s professional or disciplinary concentration. A well rounded education that nurtures critical thinking and habits of life long learning, along with a degree of
competency in communication and numeracy, is frequently emphasized as the raison d’être for general
education curricular requirements that consume a fourth or more of
baccalaureate education. References to global
understanding, citizenship, moral grounding and diversity
also are common.
There
are, however, substantial flaws in the notion that contemporary general
education curricula and practices are sufficient to create good habits such as
critical thinking and moral grounding that colleges and universities explicitly
promise. “Habits are just habits, and those that require any effort tend to
succumb to inertia in the absence of principle,” writes philosopher Susan
Neiman. If students are to adopt
meaningful principles and actions based upon enlightened understanding of the
sciences and humanities, as well as excellence in communication and numeracy
and full awareness of themselves and others, then it stands to reason that a
purposeful curriculum relevant to the development of explicit intellectual
outcomes is necessary to break the undisciplined decision making habits that
all students bring with them to the university.
For many years, general education was intended
to provide students, not with a vague concept of menu-based breadth, but with an
explicit grounding in the liberal arts. John
Stuart Mill (1859) suggested that we look at: "national education, as
being, in truth, the peculiar training of a citizen, the practical part of the
political education of a free people, taking them out of the narrow circle of
personal and family selfishness, and accustoming them to the comprehension of
joint concerns-habituating them to act from public or semi-public motives, and
guide their conduct by aims which unite instead of isolating them from one
another." Mill’s work set a
foundation for the general education and citizenship programs that emerged in
the 20th century.
Louis
Menand, a Harvard professor of English and American Literature and Language, is
adamant. “Knowledge is social memory, a
connection to the past; and it is social hope, an investment in the
future. The ability to create knowledge
and put it to use is the adaptive characteristic
of humans. It is how we reproduce
ourselves as human beings and how we change – how we keep our feet on the
ground and our heads in the clouds.”
Menand doesn’t question the value of the disciplines and professions. Rather, the outcomes he describes speak to
the need to bring context and salience to students equal to the understanding
they develop within their major concentrations.
The
recognition that undergraduate education should provide new knowledge and
understanding is hardly limited to Menand’s optimistic tenets.
“The
dominant pedagogical aim,” democracy and
law philosopher Ronald Dworkin wrote in 2006, “must be to instill some sense of
the complexity of these issues, some understanding of positions different from
those the students are likely to find at home or among friends, and some idea
of what a conscientious and respectful argument over these issues might be
like. The dominant pedagogical strategy
should be an attempt to locate . . . [cultural, social, political and
scientific] controversies in different interpretations of principles the
students might be expected themselves to accept: for example, the . . . principles of human dignity that I believe are
common ground in America now.” For
Dworkin, such an education is an imperative. “We cheat our children inexcusably
if we allow the nation to continue only to masquerade as democratic,” he says.
The
literature suggests that the most common general education pedagogy in the
United States in the 21st century falls short of Dworkin’s call for
contextual grounding and intellectual critical thinking. Often, general
education curriculum is both too broad and too narrow. It consists of a broad
menu of lower division introductory courses that meander across wide swaths of
classes. It is too narrow in that
general education courses often correspond to contracted faculty research
interests or are taught as elementary disciplinary classes rather than as
integrative challenges that inspire students to think across the disciplines
and professions. Additionally, general education curricula usually have few and
often no commonly required courses. A student may well have three science
courses, yet the seemingly limitless choices available challenge any notion of
a shared understanding of either scientific values or of science as a tool for
informed decision-making by humanists as well as by scientists.
Students
today select classes on their own from scores of electives in order to meet
breadth obligations in the arts, social sciences, humanities, math, physical
and natural sciences, and occasionally, in technology, global studies, and
diversity. Breadth advocates suggest
that in addition to developing a well-rounded understanding and familiarity
with multiple ways of knowing, optimizing choices enables students to discover disciplines and fields that otherwise would
never have entered their consciousness. There is scant evidence to support these
claims.
The
exploratory function was addressed by a recent multi-year examination of undergraduate
education at Harvard. General education courses, the Harvard faculty now tell
students and others, “aim not to draw students into a discipline, but to bring
the disciplines into students’ lives . . . in ways that link the arts and sciences with
the 21st century world that students will face and the lives they
will lead after college.”
The
recommendations of the University of California “Report on General Education in
the 21st Century” take the menu system to task. Rather than “the
sprawl of cafeteria style breadth requirements – we recommend the creation of
structured interdisciplinary bundles on timely intellectual and applied issues,
made available to students as discrete, named sets and identified as such on
student transcripts,” the state-wide report concludes. Ohio University, a
public research university, has instituted “learning communities ” as a related
and pragmatic response. In both the
California and the Harvard statements there is recognition that general
education is more than the sum of its parts; that general education should help
students to place their disciplinary and professional scholarship into a
meaningful context; and that it is important to help students learn to see
general education as salient beyond vocational preparation.
The
idea of an integrated general education as an antidote to broad, unlimited
choice menus envisions curriculum built upon a purposeful scholarship that
moves beyond introductory discovery. Ernest Boyer’s Scholarship Reconsidered (1990) neatly summarized the distinction
between disciplinary discovery and scholarly integration by identifying the
types of questions posed in each element.
Those
involved in discovery ask, “what is to be known? What is yet to be found?”
Those engaged in integration ask, ‘”What do the findings mean? Is it possible to interpret what’s been discovered in ways
that provide a larger, more comprehensive understanding?” Questions such as
these call for the power of critical analysis and interpretation. They have a
legitimacy of their own and if carefully pursued can lead the scholar from information to knowledge and even,
perhaps, to wisdom.
A
majority of institutions continue to implement general education as a nearly
unlimited menu of course choices. The choices appear to be evermore inclusive
of narrow faculty interests and/or departmental attention to filling seats to
justify otherwise under-enrolled elective courses. There is scant evidence that
such unrestricted breadth bares any relation to oft-stated goals such as
critical thinking, a foundation sufficient to support sustained learning after
college, or decision making in the face of the clashing claims of science, politics, and cultural
allegiances.
The
financial burdens implicit in college education is another element in many
discussions. Rising tuition costs have led to student loan debt that reportedly
now outpaces credit card debt in the United States. What part does general
education play? Do obese menus of general education requirements and curricular
choices strain the ability of
universities to offer affordable education taught by permanent faculty? To paraphrase Ronald Dworkin’s concern for the
sustainability of democracy, We cheat our
children inexcusably if we allow general education to continue only to
masquerade as successful.
Taken
as a whole, national discussions of general education have found it useful to
identify and distinguish among four curricular types with attention to purpose,
and often, as to what makes for an appropriate pedagogy.
·
Fundamentals
are tools necessary to scholarship and to successful university engagement.
Fundamentals include the ability to communicate orally and in writing, to
search out accurate information in a context that gives it meaning, and the capacity
to apply basic numeracy principles.
Fundamentals are not, per se, necessarily
elements of general education. The question is nowhere whether or not
students need to develop fundamental competencies. It is whether those competencies
should be required of all students, but distinguished from the outcomes goals
of a general education curriculum.
·
Majors
are concentrations of courses and sometimes additional requirements that enable
in-depth saturation and focused entry into disciplines, fields and
professions.
·
Electives
are opportunities to explore wherever the intellectual and creative spirits
beckon. Electives are not limited by discipline and can be found throughout the
arts and sciences and in many professional schools. Electives are often
available as specialized disciplinary or field courses. Increasingly, electives are being seen in
thematic contexts such as health policy, global studies, civic engagement,
sustainability, and entrepreneurship, to name just a few.
·
General
education can be viewed as an
explicit curriculum that integrates the whole – that is, a purposeful
collection of courses and experiences that help to generate an understanding of
the arts and sciences and the relations they engender among a variety of human
arenas, including: individual character, democratic and civic engagement,
global understanding, informed analysis, ethical decision-making, and a
meaningful ability to adapt to the 21st century’s rapid pace of
social, political, cultural, economic, technological, workplace, and
environmental change. “By integration,”
Boyer wrote, “we mean making connections across disciplines, placing the
specialties in larger context, illuminating data in a revealing way, often
educating nonspecialists, too. In
calling for a scholarship of integration, we do not suggest returning to the
‘gentleman scholar’ of an earlier time, nor do we have in mind the dilettante. Rather, what we mean is serious, disciplined
work that seeks to interpret, draw together, and bring new insight to bear on
original research.”
A
review of the literature identifies four general education models:
·
The Cafeteria Style Breadth model practiced by
Penn State and most other institutions;
·
The Open Curriculum model in play at a few
schools, such as Amherst College and Evergreen College, in which students have
nearly unlimited authority to select courses outside of their major
concentrations. In effect, students
create their own general education.
·
The nearly extinct Fully Prescribed Curriculum model
for which the St. Johns (Annapolis and Santa Fe) classical curriculum is known;
and
·
The Core Curriculum approach at Columbia (and a modified hybrid
at Stanford) in which students must enroll
in common themes (Stanford) or courses (Columbia) during their first year and
then engage in a distributed menu system thereafter.
Detailed
descriptions of the general education
landscape could run on for many pages.
The paragraphs and bullets above do not do the topic justice. They are
intended, perhaps ironically, to offer an introduction to the breadth of the
general education discussion currently taking place and to encourage thinking
about alternative paths and expectations.
Toward this end it is useful to include within an appendix two relatively
short chapters. The first, authored by Michael
Schudson, the co-chair of the “General Education in the 21st
Century” report noted above, is titled, “The Problem of General Education in
the Research University” (2011). Next, is a chapter titled, “New Dimensions for
General Education” written by the late
Virginia Smith, former of president Vassar College. Together, they provide a valuable examination of general education’s
potential and the barriers that prevent
general education from greater success.
Also included is a bibliography of relevant readings. While not exhaustive of general education
scholarship, the bibliography provides a useful body of literature that should
be of use to scholars interested in the development and implementation of
general education ideals.
Part II A Snapshot of General Education at Penn State
Lack of Familiarity with Learning Goals A recent
survey conducted in both large- and small-enrollment general education courses
found that often, neither the students nor the instructional faculty were
familiar with the learning goals for individual knowledge or skills domains. Students
generally had favorable views of their courses overall, yet they often felt less
favorable about their courses at the end of the semester. First-year students
had more favorable views than students further along in their academic work. Very
few faculty members surveyed were able to recall the domain-specific learning
goals for their courses. Some were unaware that their courses were part of the
General Education curriculum.
Confusion Distinguishing Course Types A
recurring problem in the existing general education curriculum is the
structural confusion between lower-division survey courses that provide a
foundational introduction to a major course of study and introductory courses
that provide an overview of disciplinary thinking and knowing. This difficulty
is endemic within the STEM fields, where GN and GQ courses are completed as
part of a student’s major, enroll a fairly homogeneous disciplinary audience,
and are reputed to serve as barriers to student success rather than vehicles
for student learning. Students who take lower division courses to fulfill
requirements within their major are more likely to have favorable views than
students who take the same course to fulfill General Education requirements.
This problem is less pronounced in the humanities and social sciences, where
hierarchical curricula are less common, but across the curriculum students who
take courses only to fulfill General
Education requirements anticipate a lower degree of goal fulfillment than those
for whom the course is a curricular requirement.
Heavy Reliance on Non-Standing Faculty Another
significant concern is that general education courses are not consistently
taught by the permanent faculty. Outside
of University Park, roughly one-third of the large-enrollment courses are
taught by FT2 employees. At University Park FT2 instructors teach about 15% of those
same courses. Policy makers should be wary of giving kudos to University Park
based on these findings. Only about 10% of University Park large-enrollment
courses are taught by standing faculty members. Roughly one-quarter of such
courses are taught by standing faculty at non-University Park locations. These
figures are not intended to cast aspersion on any group of instructors or
students, but only to highlight the inconsistencies in general education
instruction and to make clear that the “Penn State experience” differs widely
across the institution.
Questions About General Education Course Rigor We have
looked beyond the abundant anecdotal evidence that students and advisers
approach general education course selections as opportunities for low-challenge
options that simply fulfill university requirements. Grade distributions in
large-enrollment general education courses are heavily skewed toward high
values, with over 70% of all enrolled students receiving grades of A or B
(e.g., AM ST 105, CAS 100, ENGL 015, GEOSC 010, HDFS 129, PHOTO 100, WMNST
103). This trend is not observed in GN and GQ courses that fulfill major
requirements (e.g., MATH 140), where pass rates around 60% are more common, and
less than 40% of students receive A or B grades.
Preliminary Conclusions The
current general education requirements are vested principally in a small suite
of courses that enroll a substantial fraction of undergraduate students across
multiple Penn State campuses. These lower-division courses vary in scope and
approach, but consistently involve no integration across disciplinary
boundaries and scaffold no longitudinal increase in rigor or content depth.
These difficulties result, in part, from a lack of clarity in the vision and
mission of general education for faculty, students and advisers. In sum, Penn State’s current General Education
curriculum fails to deliver on the promise of a coherent intellectual, civic
and scholarly curriculum for all students. While the size and geographic
complexity of the institution present their own suite of difficulties in
implementing any program, the current state of general education appears to suffer
less from institutional size than from challenges
related to structure, delivery and conceptual clarity.
The current
General Education course offerings do not define a curriculum and thus the
question must be raised as to how well this large component of the undergraduate
curriculum serves students, advisers or faculty members.
III.
Principles and Challenges by the Invited Faculty Group
A.
Curricular
·
Require a
greater level of academic rigor Students
have described some general education courses as requirements to get out of the way, as read-and-test, and as grade
boosting. Some students report college meetings in which advisers outlined
the easiest paths through general education and warned against taking difficult
classes that will not directly contribute to the major. Responding to the
issues of salience and rigor, a student said, My gen ed classes could not compare to the 400
level courses in my major that challenged me and that were built on earlier
courses.
·
Generate
a realignment of student expectations by providing an explicit transmission of
clearly defined general education purpose
that faculty view, and that students learn to view, as a central and salient
component of an undergraduate education Despite phrases such as “the development of
critical thinking and lifelong learning skills,” there is little to suggest
that either students or faculty in general have a clear sense of general
education’s purpose or what purpose a broadly distributed cafeteria menu
curriculum serves. Why am I being forced to take a courses in science and math
if I’m majoring in . . .?” is not an
uncommon student sentiment. Many
students appear to have little understanding of the salience of university
general education study. They worry that general education is a detour, rather
than an employment on-ramp. Students find little meaning in the vague reassurance
that they will become “well rounded.”
·
Provide
a developmentally appropriate curriculum that spans the first through senior years General education should
engender increasingly integrative and intellectually demanding
challenges that build upon and nurture habits of discovery, analysis,
integration and thoughtful decision-making.
At present, an exclusively lower division course model severely limits
the potential for intellectual growth
and rigor, particularly as students take 100 and 200 level courses in their
senior year.
·
General
education in its current form often strips the sciences, humanities, social
sciences and professions of meaningful context Whether the discipline involved is biology, psychology,
math or art history, a general education course should be more than an
introductory survey of a discipline. The rudiments of a disciplinary body of
knowledge and methodology are, when standing alone, often insufficient to
generate an understanding of the interactions among the humanities, sciences
and social sciences, particularly as they involve the complex 21st
century problems we face as individuals, citizens, and family members.
·
Utilize
timely interdisciplinary thematic clusters as one of what can be multiple ways
of meeting requirements Thematic approaches can help students to
discover the relevance of a multiplicity of scholarly approaches. Clusters can
enable students to select themes with compelling personal salience such as the
environment, civil rights, health, poverty, or other topic or area studies that
are of personal interest as well as timely.
·
Help
students to discover who they are as individuals and as members of communities, which are global as well
as local, and heterogeneous as well as homogeneous, through informed
consideration of what it means to live in a world in which there are others Such an approach stresses the value and the
pedagogy of considering Big Questions
of purpose and policy rather than focusing alone on introductory course matter
better suited for those who need the elementary knowledge and skills necessary
for engagement in a particular major.
·
Discontinue
as appropriate the use of traditional general education program
terms such as critical
thinking and lifelong learning
and replace such otherwise positive visions with more clearly defined and
attainable outcomes priorities As outcomes-goals, global citizenship, critical thinking
and lifelong learning are difficult to describe, appear to defy assessment, and
lack meaning or salience to those who most need to embrace them -- students.
B. Faculty and Program Administration
·
Distinguish
Penn State through its general education program as a first tier public university with academically superior learning
pathways Many, perhaps most
institutions offer general education menus cut from a single cookie cutter
mold. Penn State’s undergraduate experience should distinguish it from other
schools and should provide a compelling reason for students, parents, faculty
and others to make this university their university of choice.
·
Align
general education curriculum development authority and responsibility with the
Senate and Administrative curricular policies that apply to all other academic
programs The general education curricular process
should mirror the programmatic expertise utilized in physics, history,
business, and all other academic units.
A general education program faculty, rather than broadly representative
ad hoc committees, should develop the
next general education curriculum and submit it for program approval to the
University Faculty Senate and the Vice President and Dean for Undergraduate
Education for approval in line with existing Senate Curricular Policies and
Academic and Administrative Policy and Procedure implementations. Only with a dedicated faculty can a program
be developed under first principles of general education scholarship and
without being fettered to traditional department and college desires for a
share of FTE budgeting that enables the
offering of otherwise undersubscribed electives.
·
Identify
and nurture a university-wide general education faculty with the authority to act as a recognized
academic program community Faculty
selected should have particular expertise in the theory and practice of general
education programs and goals. They should hold academic homes in tenure and
disciplinary colleges as well as membership in a recognized General Education faculty cohort. Lacking the nurturing, voice, and on-going
opportunities for professional deliberation that exist within such a community,
a cohesive or integrated curriculum is unlikely to thrive.
·
Create
academic administrative leadership Every other academic
program has an academic administrative officer with authority and
responsibility. A program that provides 25 percent of each student’s
undergraduate academic experience should have a dedicated academic officer,
such as a university associate dean for general education. This individual should
have membership on ACUE, the Administrative Council for Undergraduate Education
and other relevant bodies. As with all other academic programs, general
education requires expert academic administrative leadership and a place at the table with the disciplinary
and professional deans and other senior level administrators. It is not practical to produce and maintain
strategic academic program planning based on the formulation of ad hoc
committees once every 15 years, or with the ad hoc approval of a transient
senate subcommittee.
·
Operate
under a budgetary model that
does not confound the separate roles and pedagogical necessities of service,
required disciplinary, and general education courses The lure of FTE should not influence
general education decision making.
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