General Education Committee Minutes
December 3, 2001
325 Graff Main Hall
3:30 p.m.
Members Present:
Sandy Grunwald, Jean Hindson, Jess Hollenbaek, Emily Johnson, Mary Leonard, Tom
Pribek, Gretchen Reabe, Brenda Soto Torres, Mike Winfrey.
Consultants
Present: Bill Cerbin, John E.
Magerus, Diane Schumacher
Guests: Billy Clow,
Beth Cherne
Chair Emily Johnson
called the meeting to order at 3:35 p.m.
Roger Reinsch was
assigned the task of taking minutes for this meeting
The minutes of
November 19, 2001 were approved subject to spelling Gretchen Reabe’s name
correctly in the body of the minutes.
Old Business
Second reading of
the Theatre Arts 351 World Theatre proposal.
Bill Clow and Beth Cherne responded to concerns raised at the first
reading. The Theater Arts department will try to offer the class once per year
and will continue to offer it as a Writing Emphasis course.
The department will seek approval from UCC to add the prerequisite of
Theater Appreciation (THA 110) and change the course offering schedule.
M/S/P Theatre Arts 351 was approved for inclusion in the Global and
Multicultural Studies category (IIB2) of the General Education program.
December 17, 2001
meeting. The committee will meet at
3:30 on this date. There will be
two agenda items: A first reading
of a writing in the major proposal from the Foreign Language (Modern Languages)
department and a first reading of the General Education Goals statement that
Emily Johnson is preparing.
Announcements
and New Business
Chair Emily Johnson informed the committee that as an effort to better
inform students about the General Education program, she is sending out to all
first semester freshmen a copy of the General Education brochure, a letter and
postcard asking the student to answer a question about their first year
experience.
Chair Johnson is
also looking into the possibility of putting together a planning team to work on
providing professional development opportunities for faculty/staff on general
education and the first year experience
Bill Cerbin
indicated that several groups may be engaged in discussing/planning for first
year experience. One purpose of the “first year experience” is retention of
students, which is a UW-System initiative. UW-L will be collecting survey data
from freshmen for the third year this spring. This survey is part of a national study.
There is also a national conference in March or April on the “first year
experience.”
An agenda for the
General Education Committee for the remainder of the academic year was
discussed. The committee agreed
that the first priority was completion of goals for the program that can be
forwarded to Faculty Senate. The goals should then be the catalyst for
prioritizing other agenda items, including issues of assessment.
Chair Johnson asked
for input from the committee on what role, if any, she should play as Director
of General Education regarding student petitions for course substitutions or
waivers of General Education courses. Decisions on this matter right now go to
UCC. The committee agreed that she
should seek Faculty Senate approval to be informed and to make recommendations
about such questions. Final
decisions should still be made by UCC.
A brief video about
UW-L’s General Education Program that is routinely shown to incoming freshmen
was shown and briefly discussed.
The meeting was
adjourned at 5:25 p.m.
Respectfully
submitted
Roger W. Reinsch