The meeting began with a summary of the committee's work so far, and with a description of our specific charge to design a program of university requirements that all students would be required to fulfill. We then summarized a range of options, from no requirements beyond the major to various distribution requirements to a core curriculum. Below is a summary of questions and ideas raised during the subsequent discussion.

Questions posed to the group:

Should we have a general education program?

What should this program be?

What specifically would you like your students to learn about or be exposed to beyond the major?

Do you have suggestions for how we as a committee should proceed?

Initial questions were raised both about the impact on students of a Brown model (are there studies of the students that would help us to evaluate the effect of that model?) and about the number of courses that were likely to be involved in general education. Committee members stated that they knew of no studies that would evaluate the effectiveness of the Brown model, and that the committee did not anticipate significantly increasing the number of "general education" courses that students would have to take. Efficiency, we suggested, was especially important at Rice, given the number of hours required for some majors.

Other general questions raised:

1. What about the double major phenomenon?

The committee members indicated that we had discussed this, but that we were unlikely to speak to this directly. The important question, it seems to us, is what are the goals of general education? If we figure this out, then we can decide if double-majoring satisfies them.

2. What is the relation between general educational goals and the goals of the major? Some goals overlap, like writing. Do all divisions share the same general education goals? Can we have parallel requirements but different goals? How can we assess the ways in which the goals of various majors intersect with the goals of general education?

3. Writing is a big concern. Some students, even good students, do not learn how to write.

Suggestions: year-long expository writing requirement;

4. What about resources? Is the administration willing to support this new program?

The committee suggested that the administration had expressed commitment to this program.

5. What are the deficiencies in the curriculum as it stands?

• Do they develop a commitment to learning for its own sake, or lifelong learning that makes for the most effective people?
• Do we encourage their creativity, their flexibility of mind, etc.?
• Do we make critical thinking a part of their daily lives?
• Collaborative learning, extracurricular intellectual life, leadership

6. Do students stick to the majors they imagined they would pursue as first-year students?

7. How does the fact that students take so many courses a semester influence our thinking about gen. ed.?

8. How can gen. ed. address our specific version of the two culture issue?

9. What about faculty time? What about the conflict between departmental needs and gen. ed. needs?

Ideas Expressed:

1. Suggestions for gen. ed. criteria:

• quantitative reasoning
• verbal communication and writing
• historical depth: sense of where they stand in history
• critical reading

Is establishing or thinking about these goals the best way to go? How will your committee generate consensus? Given how hard this is, maybe the committee should be as specific as possible, and should try to address Rice specific problems. What are these problems? We need to know how many SEs and ACADEMS actually take courses across divisions, and then we need to evaluate whether this cross-divisional course-taking satisfies the gen. ed. requirement. This raises the question: is breadth the goal of gen. ed.?

2. Some support was expressed for current restricted distribution, even though the problems of the foundations courses, especially outside of the humanities were acknowledged.

3. Some support was expressed for a system that did not track the first year students according to their majors, so that as first year students they would have some courses with people from the other side of campus. Breadth, in other words, is not the only goal of gen. ed. Gen. ed. must also ask. what makes a field or area of study distinct? What are its theoretical presuppositions and its methodological approaches? What should the content of these courses be? Should they balance theory/method and substantive material in a discipline? First-year seminars were discussed in this context, and there was some enthusiasm for this idea. Staffing seems to be the big issue here.

4. What about requiring fewer courses for a bachelor's degree? What about a five-year program for engineers?

5. What can the new Language Center offer to engineers in terms of en ed.?