The New General Education Curriculum - Questions and Answers
- Current B.A. Degree Requirements
- Old B.A. Degree Requirements
- Current B.S. Degree Requirements
- Old B.S. Degree Requirements
The revised requirements apply to students beginning their careers as regularly enrolled college students in Summer Quarter or Autumn Quarter 2007 (some of these students may have earned more than 45 hours of transfer credit completed while they were enrolled in high school); and to transfer students admitted to the university for Summer Quarter or Autumn Quarter, 2007, who have earned fewer than 45 hours of transfer credit. If four or more years have elapsed between any two successive quarters of enrollment at the University, the student must fulfill the requirements for the degree in effect at the time of reenrollment.
- Complete list of current requirements
- List of current courses only
- Old list of complete requirements
- Old list of courses only
The revised requirements apply to students beginning their careers as regularly enrolled college students in Summer Quarter or Autumn Quarter 2007 (some of these students may have earned more than 45 hours of transfer credit completed while they were enrolled in high school); and to transfer students admitted to the university for Summer Quarter or Autumn Quarter, 2007, who have earned fewer than 45 hours of transfer credit. If four or more years have elapsed between any two successive quarters of enrollment at the University, the student must fulfill the requirements for the degree in effect at the time of reenrollment.
- Complete list of current requirements
- List of current courses only
- Old list of complete requirements
- Old list of courses only
Why do we have a new GEC?
Following the report, in autumn 2004, by the Committee for the University-wide Review of Undergraduate Education (the McHale Report), the Arts and Sciences Committee on Curriculum and Instruction began to consider how to re-arrange requirements in a curriculum that the McHale Report substantially endorsed, to improve the coherence, flexibility, and transparency of the curriculum for students and faculty, all improvements the report recommended.
How is the new curriculum more transparent?
Broadly, the GEC requirements have been rearranged under overarching categories—“Skills Areas” (“Writing and Related Skills,” “Quantitative and Logical Skills,” and “Foreign Language”); “Breadth Areas,” (“Natural Science,” “Social Science,” and “Arts and Humanities”); “Historical Study”; and “Diversity Experiences.” The Bachelor of Arts degree requires, additionally, that students complete an integrating course that deals considers “Issues of the Contemporary World.” Transparency will also depend on communicating the goals of these requirements more effectively to students and faculty.
How is the new curriculum more flexible than the old one?
Although rearranged, many of the GEC requirements are essentially unchanged. The most noticeable changes are in the requirements now listed under “Breadth Areas,” where the new GEC allows students more room for choice. Under the previous requirements, students pursuing the Bachelor of Arts degree needed to complete a total of ten courses in these areas: four in the natural sciences, three in the social sciences, and three in the arts and humanities. Under the new requirements, students must complete at least nine courses in these areas: a minimum of three in the natural sciences, two in the social sciences, and two in the arts and humanities (while also satisfying the same distribution requirements they needed to complete under the previous curriculum). Additionally, students must complete two courses of their own choice from any of the three breadth areas, options that should allow each student to explore areas of particular interest, appropriate to his or her academic goals.
The breadth requirements for the Bachelor of Science degree follow a similar pattern. The previous curriculum required eleven courses—five in the natural sciences, three in the social sciences, and three in the arts and humanities. Students must now complete ten courses—a minimum of four in the natural sciences, two in the social sciences, and two in the arts and humanities, as well as two courses the student will select. Bachelor of Science students can choose these courses not only from the list of approved GEC courses under the “Breadth Areas,” but also from Mathematics courses above the level of 152, from Statistics courses at or above the level of 400, and from the list of courses approved for the “Issues of the Contemporary World” category on the Bachelor of Arts degree (which is not required for the Bachelor of Science.
How have requirements been altered to accommodate the reduction of the minimum hours required for the degree from 191 to 181?
Five hours have been eliminated by dropping one course from the breadth requirements (students will take one course fewer in each of the three breadth areas, replacing two of them with courses the student will select). On the BA and on some BS programs, students will take five fewer hours of electives. In many BS programs in the natural sciences, the real saving will occur in the two student-selected course choices, because students in many of these programs are already required to over satisfy GEC math and science requirements, in fulfilling the extensive prerequisites to the major.
How do I know what students will be under the old curriculum and what students will be under the new curriculum?
The current GEC requirements apply to all undergraduate students in the Arts and Sciences admitted to the university and enrolled for any quarter prior to Summer Quarter, 2007; and to transfer students admitted to the university for Summer Quarter or Autumn Quarter, 2007, who have earned 45 or more hours of transfer credit. The new GEC requirements apply to students beginning their careers as regularly enrolled college students in Summer Quarter or Autumn Quarter, 2007 (some of these students may have earned more than 45 hours of transfer credit completed while they were enrolled in high school); and to transfer students admitted to the university for Summer Quarter or Autumn Quarter, 2007, who have earned fewer than 45 hours of transfer credit.
How will petitions be reviewed for students who are under the provisions of the earlier curricular requirements, but request to be allowed to finish a degree under the newer requirements?
Students will have access to a petition process (as they always do) through which they can ask for exceptions, but students should be aware that they are indeed asking for exceptions and that approvals will not be routine. Petitions will be assessed by two criteria, both of which must be convincingly demonstrated: 1) the student would suffer hardship by having to take the additional required hours (we'd expect, to take one example, documentation of a job offer contingent on receiving the degree, for students making a request based on reasons of that sort); and 2) the academic rigor of the student's program. It won't suffice for the student to claim that his remaining course work would consist only of elective hours that could be completed by taking "meaningless" courses, especially if that is essentially what the student has already been doing with elective course work. The university is counting on advising, wherever it occurs, to raise the level of the conversations we have with students about the coursework they are taking, and in some ways, conversing with students about these issues will afford occasions to do that.
Students may also seek access to some of the other provisions of the new curriculum (not just the reduction in hours). These petitions will be evaluated on the basis of compensatory curricular strength and good academic reasons for wanting, for example, to take only three science courses for the BA degree. In a petition like that one, we'd look for balancing strength in the science courses (and math courses) the student has taken and the strength of the course the student was asking to select and its value to the coherence of the student's program. We've actually been considering petitions that seemed to be making requests in the spirit of "McHale" since the McHale Report came out (and, in fact, long before that)—and have been considering them on these same criteria—so this amounts to business as usual, though perhaps more of it.
