WILLIAM MARSH RICE UNIVERSITY

Bachelor of Arts

B.S. in Civil Engineering
Bachelor of Arts

ATTACHMENT B

GENERAL EDUCATION CURRICULUM: AFTERMATH AND FUTURE
A Report on Work in Progress
Committee on Undergraduate Curriculum
January, 1999

Background

In November of 1998, the Committee on the Undergraduate Curriculum (CUC) was charged by the Faculty Council to determine what problems characterized the general education curriculum in the aftermath of the faculty's rejection of the proposal brought to the faculty by the Ad Hoc Committee on the Undergraduate Curriculum, chaired by Professor William Martin. Cognizant of its limited mandate, the CUC has identified three problems and, in some cases, arrived at tentative suggestions for resolving those problems. The following is a brief report on our deliberations to date.

Problems and Tentative Solutions

1. The Distribution System

Problem: By rejecting the "Ways of Knowing" motif as well as the idea of a faculty committee to determine which courses would count under the latter while also showing no enthusiasm for elimination of general education requirements distributed over the three areas (humanities, social sciences, engineering/natural sciences), the faculty has signaled its opposition to a major overhaul of the general education curriculum. However, the faculty has also expressed displeasure with the current framework of restricted distribution and distribution courses. The former are widely perceived to lack a pedagogically convincing rationale. While there may be a rationale for the latter, there is a widespread perception that such a rationale has not yet been clearly articulated and that courses have been approved for distribution credit for reasons not connected with any such rationale.

Recommendations:

1. maintain current requirement of 12 hours in each of the three groups

2. eliminate the category of "restricted distribution" (though courses currently designated as such need not be discontinued)

3. either articulate a clear and convincing rationale for determining which courses will count as distribution courses or eliminate the category of distribution.

2. The Language Competency Requirement

Problem: The Ad Hoc Committee envisioned the Language Competency Requirement as distinct from the Ways of Knowing. However, because the competency requirement passed apart from the rest of the proposal, there has been uncertainty about the relation of that requirement to the rest of the general education curriculum and concern about adding what some perceive to be a potentially burdensome requirement to a curriculum that for some students is already restrictive.

Recommendations: The CUC believes that basic language courses should not count as Group I requirements unless they incorporate substantial historical and/or cultural content into the instruction. However, the committee acknowledges in this connection current efforts to incorporate such content into second-year language courses. If successful, such efforts will lessen the impact of the language requirement on the overall number of graduation requirements.

3. Freshman Seminars, Interdisciplinary Courses, Writing Intensive Courses

Problems: All three of these ideas proposed by the Ad Hoc Committee enjoyed widespread support in principle from the faculty, but encountered opposition over matters of implementation. The following recommendations recognize initiatives already underway that will enable the faculty to make an informed judgment on their feasibility in the future.

Recommendations:

1. The administration should encourage development of cross-divisional courses at the junior and senior level. Students should be able to take these courses for distribution credit in any one of the Groups (I,II, and/or III) relevant to the course, but no more than one per course. Finally, one (but no more than one) of these courses may be taken to fulfill a distribution requirement in each Group.

2. The administration should encourage development of freshman seminars. Students should be allowed to take one such seminar for distribution credit in the relevant Group. During the AY 2000-01 the faculty will vote on whether to require such a seminar (with accompanying distribution credit) for all students effective Fall 2001.

3. The administration should encourage development of communication-intensive courses. During the AY 2000-01 the faculty will vote on whether to require such courses for all students effective Fall 2001. The CUC strongly recommends that wherever possible, the freshman seminars be designated as communication-intensive courses.

Implementation - If the above recommendations were to be approved by the faculty, the following timetable for implementation would be in effect.

AY 1999-2000: Language Competency Requirement in effect; no change in distribution/restricted distribution

AY 2000-01: No restricted distribution (status of distribution to be resolved); General education credit for up to one interdivisional course in each Group; Freshman seminars count for one course general education credit.

AY 2001-02: Freshman seminar required, communication-intensive courses required N.B. Freshman seminars and interdivisional courses approved by the provost and appropriate dean(s); approval mechanism for communication-intensive courses now under discussion.