By Sarah Carlson, Arts Editor
Tentative target dates have been set by the General Education Review steering committee for when curriculum proposals will be written and discussed.
The committee is looking to have a rewritten proposal based on faculty discussions by mid-September, followed by six weeks of discussion and possibly ending with a final gathering of feedback in a proposal at the end of October, said Dr. Jeff Arrington, associate dean of Campus Life and co-chair of the General Education Review Committee.
Faculty discussions have continued throughout the semester, and the amount of feedback pushed tentative dates for a rewritten proposal from April to the fall.
“We’ve had a lot of participation and a lot of input, and that’s as it should be,” said Pat Simpson, professor of education and co-chair of the committee along with Arrington. “General Education belongs to the faculty and university.”
The committee first is looking at broader themes of education and what the university wants students to have learned and virtues they should have by the time they graduate. Writing and communication skills, working with groups of people with different backgrounds, awareness of social injustice, healthy lifestyles and how the Christian faith influences choices are some of the areas being reviewed by the committee.
“We have come up with a lot of new ideas,” Arrington said. “We asked, ‘How should an ACU education compare to another institution’s?’ We feel we have to address more in an ACU education than other schools have to.”
Arrington said faculty members have come to a general consensus in several areas pertaining to curriculum. The areas of quantitative reasoning, writing, communication and critical thinking will be implemented in the core course curriculum and are all agreed upon.
Arrington said the committee felt these issues were more important to focus on initially than smaller factors such as how many exercise science or history classes will be required. Those issues will be discussed, though, once the greater theme of what type of education should be offered is agreed upon.
Because of the time crunch most faculty members face at the end of the year, all other committee and faculty meetings for the semester have been canceled, Arrington said, but the committee will continue to communicate with faculty via e-mail throughout the summer with meetings resuming in the fall.
“The idea is that we come out of this with a product worth all the time that was put in,” Arrington said.
