University pushes for unique core curriculum

Georgia College & State University may be changing its core curriculum soon. Discussion began last year among members of the faculty about making the curriculum more in line with the mission of GC&SU.
“Right now it’s really up in the air, but a committee was formed last year to look at different models for the curriculum because there are many different ways a curriculum can be structured,” Dr. Beth Rushing, dean of Arts and Sciences at GC&SU said. “The main idea is for there to be a desire among students to look at the core curriculum as not just a bunch of classes you finish after two years, but to think of these classes as new skills and information learned on the way to the major.”
According to Rushing, there is nothing wrong with the current core, but some feel that the curriculum is not consistent with the mission of the university.
“I think that the current curriculum is not distinctive to this university,” Dr. David Evans, chair of the English, Speech, and Journalism Department said. “We have a challenge because the university system requires transferability among all the different universities. We have a mission that says that we will create educational experiences that are similar to those at private liberal arts institutions, and no private college has a curriculum quite like ours, which is a very basic state university core curriculum.” Transferability, however, is a big key to the changing of the curriculum.
“While we hope for people to not be transferring out, whatever new core we develop will have to be transferable,” Rushing said. “We do have to think about this, no matter what, but we will also focus on not affecting existing students. There would have to be a commitment to continue with some of the core classes now as a gradual transition into the new curriculum. We will work to make sure the transition is as smooth as possible.”
One such model of curriculum, which is very similar to that of Duke University’s “Writing across the Curriculum,” would spread out the core classes over all four years of a student’s education. For example, one of the English classes might be divided into the student’s chosen major where they satisfy the writing requirement within the major, and not necessarily in the first two years.

This would reduce class sizes, and strengthen the teacher-student bond that is part of the liberal arts mission.
“By only having one core curriculum English class, we can reduce the size of the classes to maybe 15 or 16 students, which would be much better,” Evans said. “If we hook some of the writing classes into their majors, I think we will be doing students a lot of good.”
This is not a done deal, though. According to Rushing, a committee has been formed already to research more about this possible change, but it is not yet known who is on the committee. When it is announced who is on the committee, there will be public discussions with students, faculty and staff about the core and what it might look like.
“I think we’re about to have a very interesting, intellectual debate before we ask the Board of Regents if it is alright to pursue and figure out what it would look like,” Rushing said.
The change has to begin here, however, according to Rushing. Rushing said it will probably be a year or two before anything is changed for sure.
“If we are going to achieve true distinctiveness in the university system, we need to find ways to negotiate that gap between the transferability issue and the mission that says we are different from other schools,” Evans said. “If we can figure out a way to do that, it will definitely help us to stand out as a special and interesting place to go among all the other schools in the system.”

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Oct 31 2003. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry