Senate Standing Committee on General Education and Seamless Transfer
Progress Over View Spring 2016
This is only a report and will be brought as a formal proposal with an additional
proposal for a second level writing experience in the fall.
Our current focus as a committee:
To revitalize our General Education Program to ensure the best possible quality
general education for our students.
Why:
Mandated by SUNY
Middle States assessment report stated that our distribution model is clear but the
program does not act as an integrative whole. They recommended, among other
things, that we use the American Association of Colleges & Universities value rubrics
or another national standard as a starting point for addressing this. The college is a
member of AAC&U and these value rubrics are reflective of national practices in the
development of core curricula in higher education.
Linda Susky, an assessment consultant with an international reputation very clearly
stated that we don’t have a general education program but only a list of
requirements. A distribution model does not a general education program make.
Low first-year student engagement as reported in the most recent NSSE data is
understood as being related to our Gen Ed program lacking intentionality and that
to our students it does not serve a clear purpose.
The committee sees this as an opportunity to establish a common purpose in the
courses that are our Gen Ed program and also help to establish a unique identity
among the SUNY colleges.
Process:
Committee convened in the fall of 2014 and immediately we as a campus adopted
the 7/10/30 distribution model in response to the Education Department’s needs
this changed the landscape within which we were working right away.
We looked at the AACU 16 Essential Learning Outcomes of a 4-year LA Education as
recommended by Middle States.
We looked at outcomes emphasized in both the SP and the AMP
We reviewed models from numerous sister institutions
Beginning with faculty surveys and small group meetings we worked with 8
possible Gen Ed outcomes
Reviewed the 4-year developmental arc of a traditional collage age student from
freshman to senior year
Considered which outcomes were most appropriate for underclassmen and most
essentially foundation for all other later studies
A working group arrived at 4 outcomes which they workshopped with Tina McNair
and Tom Laird experts from the AACU at the LA Institute in November 2015.
This expert advice was to:
Limit the focus of the program to only one or possibly two outcomes at the most.
Because it increases clarity in both coherence and intentionality
Allows us to focus our efforts behind doing one or two things well rather than many
things poorly
Reduces complexity for both students and faculty
This is also a key difference between successful programs and others that were
more ambitious but rarely successful
We honed in on outcomes that would be most appropriate to underclassmen and
also essential as foundations upon which other outcomes could build.
THIS TOOK A FAIR BIT OF VERY THOROUGH DISCUSSION involving all
representatives from all the attributes as elected by the senate. This was not arrived
at quickly.
The two General Education Programmatic Frameworks we decided to focus on are:
Problem Solving and Making Connections
We describe the Problem Solving Programmatic Framework as the use of both
critical and creative thinking to grapple with complex, open-ended questions,
overcome obstacles, or achieve desired goals.
We describe the Making Connections Programmatic Framework as building the
skills needed to navigate a complex world, including the ability to make connections
between diverse modes of thought and experiences, contextualize experiences and
ideas, and transfer learning to new situations.
This is not a distribution requirement or a mandate for students.
This is about how we as a faculty think about and deliver Gen Ed courses.
NOW what does this mean to me as a gen ed professor?
Most of us are probably trying to do both these anyway:
Teach our students how to think creatively and critically,
tackle challenging problems and questions,
make connections and thereby deepen their understanding of the course content and
how it relates to their lives, their other classes, the world we live in…
Ask yourself which is the most central to what you want your students to be doing in this
course, problem solving or the making connections?
Or you might consider that problem solving is already so central to the course that what
you might like to emphasize more is the process of making connections or vise versa.
Its up to you, the person teaching the course.
Once decided begin by going over the syllabus looking for places where you are already
asking students to either problem solve or make connections and make that essential
activity more transparent. Or make it more challenging or more engaging. Make some
tweaks, a few changes, add a reading or activity that emphasizes using these
approaches.
This is a process. It will take a few semesters of adapting and tweaking but doing new
worthwhile things takes time. We need to think creatively and critically about this openended problem and start making a few connections 
Our Present Discussion of Implementation:
These Programmatic Frameworks should be implemented with maximum flexibility
and support for faculty during the transition.
1. Allowing professors teaching the same course to adopt different
frameworks as appropriate to the way they teach the course
2. Allowing professors to shift from one framework to the other if they wish
to refocus the course
3. The Gen Ed committee is committed to supporting faculty in transition in
whatever ways possible, including
A. Creating shared databases of faculty ideas and strategies
B. Fostering development workshops through the new Faculty Center
The Committee sees this as an amazing opportunity to:
Establish a unique identity among our sister institutions
Reclaim our own identity as a college of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Be successful in giving our students a
strong coherent intentional general education
A personal Thank you to the committee:
Collaborative, hard working, thoughtful and dedicated people who are a real treat to
work with.
A special thank you to Chuck Maples who teaches by example what critical and
creative thinking, focused listening and clear communication really are.
Questions?
The committee consists of:
Chuck Maples, Roger Hecht, Gwen Crane, Bianca Tredennick, Alejandra Escudero,
Akira Yatsuhashi, William Ashbaugh, Yuri Makikov, Thomas, Beal, Matthew Hendley,
James, Ruffo, Hugh Gallagher, Zanna McKay, Sallie Han, Rhea Nowak , Elizabeth Seal,
Andrew Kahl. Renee Walker, Mary Lyn Bensen, Eileen Morgan-Zayachek, Suzanne
Black