Meeting Notes
February 3, 2011
1. Meeting dates/times:
It was decided that the GE Committee would meet from 11-1 on the first Thursday of the month for the Spring 2011 semester.
2. Discussion/Decisions about GE Policy:
It was decided to create a set of Guiding Notes to help clarify terms for our committee and those implementing the GE policy.
We determined that any mathematics course taught in other disciplines that might be applied to GE must be at transfer-level or above.
Courses will be listed individually, not grouped (e.g. “1-299”), as they have been in the past.
Discussion about limiting GE courses to 1-99 level courses. What might this do to completion rates? We decided to look at some 200 level courses and see how they fit—or not.
Should there be a unit amount requirement? For instance, should all courses be at least 3 units? We discussed breadth vs. depth of subjects, which brought us to a discussion of introductory vs. interrogatory. In this discussion, we decided that courses that have a pre-req that satisfies a GE area do not need to be listed. For example, BIOL 1 is a pre-req for BIOL 2 and fulfills the requirement for GE Area B (Natural Sciences). Therefore, including BIOL 2 in the GE pattern is unnecessary. The exceptions to this rule are foreign language courses and some math courses (others? Art?).
What do we mean by “introduction”? Working definition: Familiarity with major concepts of a subject, including historical perspective, cultural perspective….
3. Next meeting: Look at Area A. Check it against what is currently in the catalog. Are there new courses that should be included? What should be deleted?