Higher Ground

However, I remain concerned about the procedures that resulted in the formation of the GE Task Force, procedures about which I issued a warning in my 11 November 2005 resignation speech before the Faculty Senate. At that time, I had just returned from a single semester sabbatical to find the President's Enrollment Management Team dominated by administrative appointments regularly discussing the role of General Education in recruitment and retention. I also found that the Task Force on the First Year experience [TAFFY] had identified General Education as one of the "spheres" over whose mission it had authority. Finally, I found that the Provost's Prioritization of Academic Programs and Services document had declared the GE Program difficult to "manage," "understand," and "navigate." In my absence, no representative of the Office of General Education or the General Education Council had been appointed to any of these bodies. Since my objections were met with the claim that our GE Program was not on the agenda of these Task Forces, and since it seemed clear to me that these task forces would ultimately enact a preconceived agenda resulting in the downgrading of the GE Coordinator's position, an administration driven revision of the GE Program, and the folding of the Office of General Education into the Provost's new "University College," I had no choice but to resign and issue the Senate a warning about the undermining of its primary authority.

It should be clear to faculty that a railroad has been operating here. The Program Prioritization Task Force [PPTF] did in fact address the GE Program as one of its primary emphases, claiming that General Education is "resource intensive," and indicating an administrative desire to substantively revise if not dismantle the GE Program. To determine just how resource intensive the GE Program is, the Task Force calculated empty seats in GE Liberal Studies sections of courses. It did not calculate how much revenue is generated by occupied seats in those sections. On the other hand, major programs were evaluated on the bases of numbers of majors, FTEs, and SCH production. The number of empty seats in classrooms seemed not to be a direct factor in evaluation of those programs. One does not have to be an economist to understand that a more sytematic comparative cost/benefit analysis is warranted here. The PPTF's failure to provide such an analysis lays bare the railroad in action. The desire to significantly revise the General Education program and to do so in particular ways clearly preceded the formation and the work of the task forces named above.

As I stated earlier, I welcome initiatives to improve and strengthen general education as ISU. I began this process as Coordinator of General Education, creating with the General Education Council and CAAC a detailed and comprehensive assessment and review plan that was approved by the Faculty Senate in spring 2003. By fall 2005, syllabi and faculty generated materials including descriptions of assignments designed specifically to deliver the four common goals of our GE Program had been submitted for all courses in all but two of the liberal studies core areas; assessment materials for all basic studies components of the Program had also been submitted. The Council and the Coordinator's Office were on schedule to complete in a timely way the assessment and review in accord with a Faculty Senate approved plan. The Office of General Education and the General Education Council were also working with individual departments to reduce the number of courses in each liberal studies menu, but we were doing so through admittedly slow but careful consultation, asking departments to re-consider and reduce their offerings in ways that would continue to sustain both their needs and the need to develop more coherent course menus. PTTF and TAFFY redirected the emphasis, thereby moving the Office of General Education away from the Senate approved plan and toward the data driven approach mentioned above and derailing the approved assessment and review plan before it could be completed.

A number of things concern me here. The Senate's role in operationalizing its primary authority has been reduced to the nomination of faculty representatives to task forces dominated by administrative appointments and faculty who have not served on the General Education Council or in prior General Education initiatives. The Senate's standing committees then are offered the opportunity to approve curricular changes but have not played a primary role in the design of those changes. In some cases, the railroad to a "more common core" approach to general education has simply bypassed Senate review entirely. For example, the General Education Coordinator's position, debated and re-defined through over a year of Faculty Senate committee debate between spring 2000 and spring 2001, has been downgraded from a fiscal year faculty position to a nine month position with a summer stipend and with significantly reduced responsibilities. To my knowledge, there was no Faculty Senate standing committee debate, no discussion of how this faculty curricular position should be re-configured. The re-defined position was simply presented in Academic Affairs' call for applications for a new Coordinator.

Finally, I would urge the faculty and the Faculty Senate in particular to aggressively pursue their primary authority over curricular matters. Perhaps highlighting some important comments made by the NCA Evaluation Team in their 2000 report will assist this process. In their Report on a Comprehensive Visit to Indiana State University, that team stated that "two notable changes" in the transition from GE 89 to GE 2000 were "the elimination of the partitioning feature of the earlier program and the introduction of the liberal studies capstone requirement" (13). In his 1 March 2001 "NCA Public Exit Comments" to President Moore, Dr. Richard J. Gowen, the Site Team Chair, declared general education "vital to this university" and wrote: "We see the things that you are doing and hope that you continue that" (6). These are Dr. Gowen's comments about a GE 2000 Program that separates major and general education audiences in laboratory science and other foundational courses to enhance the success of both audiences; that includes an additional writing intensive requirement [Literature and Life] to promote writing instruction delivered by those trained to develop students' writing ability, that promotes student engagement in cultural and global diversity through a two course requirement separately emphasizing diversity within the United States and international cultures, and that requires a liberal studies capstone requirement foregrounding the relation of a traditional liberal education to disciplinary expertise and allowing strong opportunities for GE Program and learning outcomes assessment. Dr. Gowen and his site visit team acknowledged the strength of this design and expressed a strong desire to see these requirements implemented by the next NCA visit. Furthermore, when Carol Geary Schneider, President of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) visited our campus for a campus/community dialogue in fall 2005, she commented to me personally and to groups in discussion on the strength of our liberal studies program, identifying in particular the two course multicultural studies requirement and the capstone requirement.

The charges to the GE Task Force include dangerous phrases with the potential to undermine these strong features of our current GE Program. Chief among these phrases is "builds upon the Indiana Core Transfer Library and other state initiatives or requirements." I worked on the State Transfer and Articulation Committee (STAC) for almost two years; The Indiana Core Transfer Library (ITCL) is not about general education requirements. It is simply a database of courses that Indiana universities guarantee will transfer fluidly among all state institutions. By definition, these are primarily basic studies and lower level courses common to most colleges and universities. While aligning our basic studies general education requirements to these courses is a reasonable goal, tying liberal studies requirements to the ITCL would undermine the strengths mentioned above, particularly the strong work that we have done to separate general education and major audiences in foundational courses and to build a distinctive GE Program stressing U.S. diversity and international cultures and providing a sound capstone experience.

While I certainly agree that our GE Program could be refined and strengthened, I urge the faculty and the Senate to aggressively take control of their primary authority, to resist the substitution of quasi-"efficiency" for quality, and to ensure that our university-wide requirements continue to provide a traditional yet distinctive liberal education experience as the foundation of an Indiana State University undergraduate degree.

Jake Jakaitis is Associate Professor of English