GE Minutes 1-21-2014

General Education Committee
21 January 2014
In Attendance: LaFaun Barnhurst, Susan Larsen, Gregory Wright, Richard Squire,
Melanie Jenkins, Clinton King, Adam Larsen, Joseph Papenfuss, Steve Hood, Beckie
Hermansen
Minutes Approved:
December 6, 2013: Lafaun moved; Clinton seconded. Unanimous vote.
January 11, 2014: Adam moved; Richard seconded. Unanimous vote.

We began the meeting by addressing concerns about the necessity of a new GE director. There was strong feeling that the director must retain connection to the classroom. Some faculty members are concerned that this position not be a top-down administrator. Melanie brought up the strategic prioritization taking place campus wide, and suggested the GE committee participate. All were in agreement, so we spent the rest of the meeting conducting a SWOT analysis for the strategic prioritization tool.

Strengths:

• Majority taught by full time  instructors
• Small class size, generally
• Strong faculty and instruction
• Ability to explore
• Most teachers want to do well
• Value-added very high
• New descriptors define outcomes well

Weaknesses:

• Distribution model
• Hasn’t been managed administratively
• Assessment
• No support to oversee program (workload release, administrator, etc.)
• Little time to communicate and innovate with other faculty
• Turf wars Opportunities:
• Integrated model: acquire funding to enhance it and use as incentive to participate
• Strengthen new model by keeping full professors in the classroom
• Interdisciplinary opportunities
• Theme-based opportunities
• Potential for integration of more high impact practices
• AAC&U’s assessment rubrics
• Hire GE director, who will

Threats:

• Institution has relied too much of GE
• Concurrent enrollment (Ednet, AP)
• Need to move beyond GE if we are going to survive
• Attitude of public: get GE out of the way
• Low enrollment courses, perception that they are risky
• Workload policy unfriendly to oversee implantation and assessment of new model team teaching and interdisciplinary courses