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2008

EGC IMPROVEMENT PROPOSAL A

Revised after discussion Feb. 15, 2008 by General Education Council

TASK

To analyze faculty frustrations with the course proposal/review process used for the courses submitted for the 2007-08 and 2008-09 catalogs and propose improvements.

ANALYSIS OF FACULTY FRUSTRATIONS

The EGC Working Group solicited input from faculty who had been involved in the course proposal and/or review process, summarized the frustrations, and analyzed the elements of the proposal/review situation that led to these frustrations.

  1. EGC courses for 2007-08 were proposed and reviewed under tremendous time constraints and “off cycle” from the regular curriculum process because…
  2. EGC had to be implemented in 2007-08 along with gtPathways because of the larger number of credits now required in lower-division general education.
  3. Faculty could not realistically find time to address basic program design issues until May 2006.
  4. The program proposal was not approved until September 2006 by Senate.
  5. Course proposals were due one month later.
  6. GEC approvals for the 2007-08 catalog had to be sent along shortly thereafter so they could be considered by the Curriculum Committee, Senate, and Provost.
  7. EGC did not benefit, as had the TS2 program, from an established cross-campus faculty group. In other words, we had no established EGC discourse community before course proposals were developed and reviewed.
  8. Due to the time constraints and lack of EGC discourse community, very skimpy instructions were given to faculty developing courses:
  9. May 10, 2006 learning outcomes
  10. “One-line” instructions to prepare a “Super Syllabus” with enough detail to show how their courses would be meeting those learning outcomes and to develop a “plan” about how they would know if students are learning what the faculty member wanted them to learn in this course.
  11. No forums were held for course proposers.
  12. Faculty wrote proposals, taking a stab in the dark. There was a lot of time-consuming guessing. Because there was no established EGC discourse community, faculty didn’t have anyone with whom to work through their ideas. This made the process a bit risky, even intimidating, for faculty for whom EGC was outside their area of disciplinary expertise.
  13. Due to the time constraints, faculty review and administrative review were collapsed.
  14. The EGC reviewers were members of the EGC and assessment subcommittees of the GEC. Because of busy faculty calendars, some members didn’t attend at all, some did sporadically, but a core group did eventually emerge. This core group had to build the EGC discourse community on the fly and under the gun. The review group was opaque to themselves and obviously not transparent to others. In the beginning there was a feeling of overwhelmedness that sort of paralyzed the process. The reviewers struggled to develop principles to apply to the review process. Although some faculty did not have issues with the review process, others had these concerns:
  15. Communication was inadequate.
  16. Principles developed by the review committee felt like unwritten rules to the faculty proposers who, as previously stated, had little to go on and had to propose their courses as stabs in the dark.

IMPROVEMENT PROPOSAL A-1

Organize the EGC faculty.

  1. Organize the instructors who have a demonstrated stake in the EGC program so they can begin to function as a faculty similar to the interdisciplinary program faculty in Gender and Women’s Studies, Human Heritage, Environmental Studies, etc.
  2. Purpose
  3. Provide recognition for faculty.
  4. Create sustained discourse about the EGC program.
  5. Identify professional development needs.
  6. Provide resources to faculty colleagues who are developing courses.
  7. Review EGC course proposals.
  8. Mentor faculty who are scheduled to teach in the program
  9. Under a 2007 GEC policy, a faculty member teaching an EGC course for the first time is required to meet and share syllabi with other EGC faculty members.
  10. Implementation of this purpose
  11. Notify eligible faculty that the EGC faculty is being organized and that they are part of it.
  12. Invite faculty to a paid professional development opportunity each summer, subject to funding availability.
  13. Create communication network among the faculty through emails, newsletters, a web page, or meetings. We will probably need to experiment to find out what works best.
  14. Criteria for membership in the EGC faculty:
  15. Tenure-track or tenured faculty who have proposed and/or taught an EGC course in the last three years.
  16. Visiting instructors currently teaching at the institution who have been part of a course proposal team (with tenure-track or tenured faculty) or taught an EGC course in the last three years.
  17. Management of the faculty listings
  18. Individuals will be added/deleted each Fall and Winter to appropriate sub-groups and mailing lists.
  19. Individuals eligible to be listed in the catalog will be listed based on membership at the beginning of each Winter semester.

IMPROVEMENT PROPOSAL A-2

Create an EGC governance structure.

  1. Create a Vice Chair of the General Education Council. This person must be a member of the General Education Council and a member of the EGC faculty. Term of service should be two years.
  2. Create an EGC Subcommittee of the General Education Council from the current membership of the General Education Council.
  3. The EGC Subcommittee will be chaired by the Vice Chair.
  4. Membership will be a minimum of three additional members from the General Education Council.
  5. The purpose of the EGC Subcommittee will be:
  6. Review EGCcurriculum proposals recommended by the EGC faculty. Proposals also recommended by the EGC Subcommittee will go to the General Education Council.
  7. Review of new EGC policy proposals.
  8. Other EGC program oversight activities as charged by the General Education Council.

IMPROVEMENT PROPOSAL A-3

Give better written instructions to faculty developing EGC course proposals (see attachment on pp. 5-10).

  1. Better articulate the “big idea” of the EGC program.
  2. Revise the learning outcomes to make them more concrete and clear.
  3. Change the materials required from course developers from “Super Syllabus” and assessment plan to:
  4. Course questionnaire.
  5. Student syllabus (checklist will help faculty ensure that the student syllabus contains all of the required elements)
  6. “190/390 Special Topics” form (for “pilot” courses) or new course proposal form on the Curriculum Committee database (for permanent courses).

IMPROVEMENT PROPOSAL A-4

Offer more assistance to faculty developing EGC course proposals.

  1. A faculty member from any location on campus who has decided to develop a course will be requested to contact the EGC Vice Chair.
  2. The faculty member and the Vice Chair (or a designated liaison) will meet/talk on the phone/email back and forth about the faculty member’s course idea. If appropriate, the liaison will arrange for the proposing faculty member to meet with EGC faculty members who have courses in the same area of the EGC curriculum for further discussion about the course idea.
  3. If there is no course in the existing EGC curriculum that might be a vehicle for the faculty member’s idea, the proposing faculty member may apply at this point for a stipend from the ESGE Dean to develop a new EGC course, subject to funding availability.

IMPROVEMENT PROPOSAL A-5

Deal with permanent EGC course proposals “on cycle” with the college curriculum process.

  1. Proposals for a permanent EGC course must meet the same deadline as all other courses – March 31. This is the deadline to send all required EGC paperwork electronically to and to file the proposal on the Curriculum Committee database.
  2. The EGC Vice Chair is responsible for organizing EGC faculty members into first-level review teams and organizing the EGC Subcommittee as a second-level review team. Proposals that do not require revision must clear the GEC (third-level review) by Oct. 15.
  3. The EGC Vice Chair is responsible for keeping faculty with course proposals updated on the status of their proposals.
  4. An EGC course approved by the GEC can be scheduled while the course is wending its way through the Curriculum Committee/Senate/Provost permanent course approval as a temporary, “391” course.

IMPROVEMENT PROPOSAL A-6

Deal with “pilot” EGC course proposals “on cycle” with the college scheduling process.

  1. Proposals for pilot EGC courses will be due:
  2. Nov. 15 for Fall scheduling, which begins first week of December
  3. Aug. 15 for Winter scheduling, which begins last week of August
  4. Aug. 15 for Summer scheduling, which begins last week of August
  5. By those deadlines, the faculty member must send all required EGC paperwork to .
  1. The EGC Vice Chair is responsible for organizing EGC faculty members into first-level review teams, and organizing the EGC Subcommittee as a second-level review team. Proposals that do not require revision must clear the GEC (third-level review) by the scheduling deadline.
  1. The EGC Vice Chair is responsible for keeping faculty with course proposals updated on the status of their proposals.
  2. An EGC course approved by the GEC can be scheduled twice through the pilot/temporary process before it must begin the permanent curriculum process.

Because the purpose of pilot/temporary courses is to pilot and tweak, faculty bringing a course approved on a pilot/temporary basis forward for permanent curriculum approval must send a revised set of the required EGC paperwork. Follow the process and deadlines set out above for permanent EGC courses.

IMPROVEMENT PROPOSAL A-7

Improve the course proposal review process to avoid the application of “unwritten rules” through a standardized course review rubric (see attachment on pp. 10-11).

Attachment related to Improvement Proposal A-3

Guidelines for EGC Course Developers

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the Education for Global Citizenship (EGC) course development process!

Instructors who develop and/or teach an EGC course become, by those actions, members of the EGC faculty. Although individual faculty members will participate in the program at different levels and in different ways, the EGC faculty, as a whole, has a collective responsibility to ensure this is a quality program.

Each EGC course must contribute to the “big idea” of the program and be designed to achieve its learning outcomes within the current structure of the program (see Appendix A, pp. 8-9). But the topic of your course, its scope, the perspectives explored, and its pedagogy are yours to propose. Because of these larger programmatic goals, and the rapidly evolving nature of EGC, course developers should expect to enter intellectual dialogue about their course with EGC faculty at the development stage and after the course has been taught for assessment purposes – the same kind of dialogue that takes place in departments around major field courses.

The intellectual ground of EGC is exciting. This program will be as rich and rewarding, for students and faculty, as our collective efforts make it! We offer you sincere thanks for joining that effort by developing an EGC course.

STEPS TO FOLLOW

Here is the process to follow in the development of an EGC course proposal:

  1. Inform the EGC Vice Chair that you want to develop an EGC course.
  2. Expect a call/email from the Vice Chair (or a designated liaison) to discuss your course idea. If appropriate, the liaison will arrange for you to meet with EGC faculty members who have courses in the same area of the EGC curriculum for additional discussion.
  3. Apply for a course development stipend. Email the ESGE dean with your request for stipend support, including the name of the liaison with whom you have been working.
  4. Do the required paperwork for permanent or pilot approval by the published deadlines.

REQUIRED PAPERWORK

The following paperwork is required for the course review process:

  • Completed “Course Questionnaire,” pp. 7-8;
  • Email to
  • Student syllabus (required elements specified on “Syllabus Checklist,” p. 8)
  • Email to
  • “Pilot” and/or “Permanent” forms (details below)
  • Faculty members seeking “pilot” course approval must complete the “190/390 Special Topics” form available at the Registrar’s Office website ( ) and send the signed form to the ESGE dean.
  • Faculty members seeking permanent course approval must complete the standard Curriculum Committee paperwork at Note: If a faculty member wants to schedule a course before it becomes official in the next catalog, s/he must also complete the “190/390” Special Topics” form available at the Registrar’s Office website ( ) and send the signed form to the ESGE dean.

DEADLINES

  • March 31st– applies to all courses being proposed for the next catalog – this is the deadline to send the Course Questionnaire and Student Syllabus to and the deadline to file a course proposal form on the Curriculum Committee database at
  • Aug. 15 – applies to “pilot” courses for the next Winter or Summer semester – this is the deadline to send require GEC paperwork to and “190/390 Special Topics” form to the dean of ESGE.
  • Nov. 15 – applies to “pilot” courses for the next Fall semester – this is the deadline to send the Course Questionnaire and Student Syllabus to and “190/390 Special Topics” form to the dean of ESGE.

Course Questionnaire

The following questionnaire is adapted from Laurie Richlin (2006), Blueprint for Learning: Constructing College Courses to Facilitate, Assess, and Document Learning, pp.18-19.

Please respond to the following questions in a word document to help your EGC faculty colleagues better understand your course.

  1. Please define the global phenomena, problems, issues, or topics that will be the specific focus of your course.
  2. Regarding the topic defined in question #1 above, what do you want to convey, explore, or teach about?
  3. How will you incorporate diverse cultural perspectives in your course?
  4. How will you incorporate multiple disciplines in your course?
  5. What are your specific learning outcomes for the course? What will students know and be able to do at the end of your course?
  6. Discuss how your course design supports the achievement of those learning outcomes.
  7. Discuss your assessment plan. At various points during the course or at the end of the course, how will you ascertainif students know and are able to do what you wanted them to do? Please discuss how you will gather your data and how you will evaluate that data.

Syllabus Checklist

The syllabus sent as part of the course approval process should have the following elements:

  • Course title and “catalog-length” description (no more than 60 words)
  • Reading list
  • Learning outcomes
  • See #5 on Course Questionnaire
  • Course schedule
  • Day-by-day or week-by-week breakdown of course
  • Course activities that will drive grade/ be vehicles for assessing achievement of learning outcomes
  • Exams
  • Written assignments
  • Presentations
  • Other Activities

APPENDIX A

The ‘Big Idea’ of the Education for Global Citizenship Program

The Education for Global Citizenship Program is an upper-division liberal arts experience required of allstudents that is informed by historical and contemporary dialogues about globalization and civic engagement.

As Kevin Hovland writes in Shared Futures: Global Learning and Liberal Education (AAC&U, 2006), “global knowledge, global engagement, intercultural knowledge, and intercultural competence” are essential to ahigh-quality liberal arts education it the 21st century.

Toward the goal of achieving Fort Lewis College’s liberal arts outcomes, the EGC Program leads students to develop an awareness of how their lives intersect with globalization and to reflect on how the actions (or inactions) of individuals and organizations can shape our collective futures.

Requirements of the EGC Program

To fulfill the EGC requirement, students must successfully complete two EGC courses. These courses are not tracked, grouped or sequenced. For this reason, each EGC course taken or each experience that counts toward the EGC requirement must address all of the EGC learning outcomes.

Prerequisites for EGC Courses

Completion of the Intermediate Composition (CO-2) requirement and junior standing.

Learning Outcomes

The learning outcomes for the EGC program are organized into two categories: college-wide liberal arts outcomes and global citizenship outcomes.

  • College-wide Liberal Education Outcomes. After a student has completed a course or an experience that counts for the EGC requirement, s/he will have demonstrated at an upper-division level:
  • Learning as inquiry – The ability to use modern methods to access, analyze, interpret, and apply a wide range of information, data, and appropriate sources.
  • Critical thinking as problem solving – The ability to analyze, synthesize, evaluate, and apply information in order to solve complex problems.
  • Communication as intellectual contribution – The ability to contribute to scholarly understanding of a subject by balancing complexity and clarity of argument, clear conceptual organization of evidence, and adaptation to context and audience.
  • Action as responsible application of academic learning – The ability to use all of the above to make positive contributions to one’s community and the larger society.
  • EGC Program Outcomes. After a student has completed a course or an experience that counts for the EGC requirement, they will have:
  • Demonstrated an awareness of the global dimensions of social, ecological, political, economic, or cultural systems.
  • Critically analyzed the global phenomena, problems, issues, or topics that are the specific focus of the course using diverse cultural perspectives and multiple disciplinary perspectives.
  • Identified possible responses to the global phenomena, problems, issues or topics that are the specific focus of the course. These responses may be enacted by individuals, social networks, movements, organizations, governments or other entities.

Attachment related to Improvement Proposal A-7