Neutral GE Task Force Report Comments:

Posted 4/11/07 by Quenby Lum: The Global Cultures requirement is an important addition to the curriculum. However, allowing one introductory foreign language course to fulfill that requirement falls short of the goal. Language does not equal culture. Language is just one small part of a culture and how that culture operates. Therefore, learning a language does not equal cultural knowledge and global citizenship.

Of course traveling abroad is the best way for students to attain "Global Citizenship" and UC Davis should encourage and support this endeavor as much as possible. Offering students the option to study abroad, and encouraging them to do so, may give some people the opportunity for a cross-cultural experience, where no opportunity existed before.

Posted 3/28/07 by Anne Britt: I fully support this effort to improve our GE requirement, but I do have two suggestions:

1) An introductory course in a foreign language clearly does almost nothing to promote global understanding, any more than mastering scales on a tuba would promote musical appreciation (quite the contrary…). And the last thing these courses need are students who have no intention of going on in the language- such students would suck the oxygen right out of the room.

2) On a related note, musical appreciation is at least as important as an appreciation for the visual arts. I’d suggest that it is more important- people are more likely to be manipulated by musical themes than by static visual images. I would remove the term “visual” from the “literacy” requirement, and include music appreciation and music history in this category.

Posted 3/12/07 by Jerold Last: I earlier raised the issue of the rationale for the proposal's prohibition of the substitution of successful completion of AP courses for GE requirements. My colleague, Norm Matloff, criticized my suggestion in this forum. And I, in turn, must respectfully disagree with Professor Matloff's generalizations about AP courses "NOT [being] equivalent to our courses". This topic has been studied in a great deal of detail by several groups

See http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/public/exam/about_exams/11592.html
all of which seem to conclude that passage of an AP exam with a grade of 4 or 5 predicts a higher success rate in the subsequent college career overall, and in the field of the AP exam, than taking the equivalent course as an undergraduate student. Note that UCD (or at least UCD data) participated in at least one of these studies, and that UCOP has endorsed these conclusions. And, we should also note, that allowing substitution of successful AP credits for GE requirements also directly addresses the time to degree concerns that attach naturally to additional course requirements layered on top of already intense course requirements such as those in engineering.

Posted 3/08/07 by Gautam Jagannath: It is particularly difficult to train a person in “General Education” -- for it is just that, “General,” and much of this kind of learning must come from own experience and a thirst for self-education. In order to provide students with some foundational understanding of the knowledge and the theoretical framework of various fields of study, the GE program can only seek to do so much in the limited time it imposes on the student body.

In the area of writing, it is very difficult to change how another person writes after a certain age. After speaking to professors in the English department and in others, I have received some confirmation of this. The Writing component of the GE goals are overestimated. Perhaps the most disconcerting aspect here is that many fellow students choose so-called “triple and double-dip courses” (advertised by peer-advisors as such) in order to fulfill multiple areas of the GE requirements. A student may take a course in African American studies, for example, not because of personal interest, but the sheer need to finish the GE demands in a timely manner. In order to reduce this kind of tactical course selection, courses may need more rigorous oversight as to their stated GE role intentions.

I think that maybe “moral reasoning” could be altered to “ethical reasoning” which is more in line with something a bit less socioculturally dependent. Reasoning itself is an interesting idea for GE, and sometimes not enough emphasis is placed on understanding scientific reasoning. Social sciences and sciences make up a large portion of the majors offered at Davis, and yet many courses are lacking in teaching empiricism and the methodology of science in general. It is hard to make arguments in many fields without an understanding of how science works for scientists.

I agree with Professor Graham's note on the Fine Arts in Performance section.

Posted 2/21/07 by Lorraine Bowlin: You’ve asked for the impact on advising. The impact will be great on advisors time, as any newly implemented rule or regulation demands explanations to students on a one-on-one basis.

My hope is that when the change is implemented, that the computers are set up ahead of time to handle the new information. Can Banner handle the change in a timely manner? I also hope that www.assist.org will be updated and that there will be plenty of advertising time beforehand so that transfer students will not be disadvantaged.

Posted 2/16/07 by Sandra Graham: I appreciate the time and thinking that the committee members committed to this daunting project. Although I am in basic agreement, I have some concerns:

1. I am not in favor of 1-unit courses that give students credit for going to a museum or performance. They have no motivation to absorb anything other than the most cursory impression, and in my experience, this is exactly what happens. This "buffet" approach to the arts is, to me (and I am a musician), offensive, particularly since it is not coupled with critical thinking. In addition, the section on "Fine Arts in Performance" notes that many students "have
never attended a live performance of ... high art music." Please change this term! It privileges classical  (or art) music over many other potentially enlightening musical experiences, such as the Hungarian State Folklore Ensemble and the Spanish Harlem Orchestra - to name two recent Mondavi offerings. An intimate understanding of either of these two (low?) artistic offerings would profitably expand any student's horizons. Even popular music, when appropriate scrutiny and analysis are applied, is educational! You also might add live poetry to the list. If you are immovable on this point, then please consider taking "high" away from "art music," since to my knowledge there is no "low" art music.

2. I am troubled by the addition of visual culture. Do we need to separate this out? It seems to me that in history, languages, music, women's studies, English (and the list goes on) we already incorporate analysis of images. Does the committee find that such analysis is really lacking at UCD? In music classes we analyze album covers, Mondavi brochures, ads, ethnographic films, concert films, and documentaries, in addition to the use of iconography in scholarly research. We even create some of these ourselves. I can't imagine it is very different in other departments.

3. Related to the previous point: The addition of visual culture seems to privilege it over aural culture, which does not have its own category. Indeed, in contemporary terms the two are most often combined. Again, I do not see the need for this extra category.

The Task Force goals are severely hampered by the quarter system. It is probably useless to note this but I'm going to anyway. Those of us who teach survey courses have two choices: breadth at the expense of depth, or depth at the expense of breadth. Either choice means
compromising the goals of the diversity requirement, to some extent.

Posted 2/15/07 by Jerold Last: It is not clear to me from the document how transfer students (and transfer credits) will be handled towards this set of GE requirements. Perhaps I missed the relevant section pertaining to this? However, if we assume that GE courses (or their equivalents) can be transferred from other colleges and universities, I think our prohibition of the use of appropriate AR and/or IB credits towards meeting these GE requirements is illogical and inconsistent. Both AP credits (we could specify scores of 4 or 5 if we chose to do so) and IB courses are, after all, fully equivalent to college level courses.

Posted 2/14/07 by Jeff Sherman: I would characterize my position on the report as neutral, leaning a bit toward negative.

Here are my specific comments:

1. In my opinion, the Core Literacy requirements are weighted far too heavily toward the arts and humanities, with not enough emphasis on science. Literacy with words and images accounts for 20 units, literacy with culture and civics accounts for 9 units, and scientific literacy accounts for only 3 units. I think that is highly unbalanced in today's world. I would recommend that there be separate scientific literacy requirements for the physical, biological, and social sciences.

2. I find the visual literacy requirement to be odd and very highly specialized. I can imagine many other basic core skills/knowledge that would seem more fundamental (e.g., human physiology, human behavior). That there should be 3 units required for visual literacy and 3 units required for literacy across *all the sciences* strikes me as very strange.

3. The current descriptions of Culture and Civics core literacy focus too heavily on qualitative analyses. More quantitative approaches to understanding human social behavior (such as those found in Psychology and Quantitative approaches to Economics and Political
Science) should be given equal emphasis. This core requirement should be able to be met by understanding not only what different groups of people believe, but also by understanding the mechanisms by which people come to understand themselves, others, and the world around us. If the goal is to teach students to think critically about social relations, surely one way to meet that goal is to understand the science of human behavior and interaction.

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