Faculty Start to Comment on Gen Ed Interim Report

UPDATED: April 7, 2015, at 10:52 p.m.

After the committee tasked with reviewing the Program in General Education issued an interim report earlier this semester, faculty members have started to share their ideas about the future structure of the program.

The interim report, which has been released internally to faculty members, is a precursor for a final document that the Gen Ed review committee will put forth later this year.

“In the Gen Ed Review Committee we've been focused on collecting feedback from faculty, and thinking about the details of our final report,” Gen Ed review committee chair Sean D. Kelly wrote in an email to The Crimson.

Earlier this semester, Kelly declined to name specific proposals included in the report, citing a desire to hear feedback from faculty first.

Many faculty members have said that they are unhappy with the current program and that changes need to be made, according to Edward J. Hall, the Committee on Gen Ed’s faculty chair and a Philosophy professor. The interim report, feedback from professors, and subsequently proposed solutions are all efforts to revise the program.

“There’s been feedback from [the interim report], and the review committee is now sort of going through the feedback,” Hall said. “I think we’ve gotten quite a lot of feedback, from fifty...faculty at least.”

According to Hall, some suggestions include reconsidering whether the current eight Gen Ed categories are “the right categories” for the program and reevaluating the possibility of distribution requirements to emphasize a broader liberal arts education.

The challenge is to balance the depth of the Gen Ed program with the breadth of courses offered, and there are “any number of ways to figure it out,” Hall said.

Kelly wrote that the committee is “expecting to present something at the May faculty meeting.”

Dean of Undergraduate Education Jay M. Harris declined to comment on the interim report and faculty response.

—Staff writer Melissa C. Rodman can be reached at melissa.rodman@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @melissa_rodman.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

CORRECTION: April 7, 2015

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated when Sean Kelly declined to name specific propsoals included in the interim General Education review report. In fact, Kelly declined earlier this semester.