Cal Poly
State of California San Luis Obispo CA 93407

M E M O R A N D U M

We are responding to your memo of June 24, 1998, regarding the establishment of the template, principles, and standards for the new General Education Program. We expect that you will transmit this memo to the faculty with other communications you will provide relative to the next steps for achieving GE 2001

We are particularly pleased to note the strong Academic Senate endorsement of the work of your committee. The overwhelming Senate vote (38-2) in support of the document not only underscored the quality of the document but also affirmed the need for a new approach to General Education that it represents. Our comments speak both to the document and the fresh perspective on General Education at Cal Poly that it provides.

We have four specific responses, followed with more general observations, to the Senate review in May and the content of the document.

First, we accept the changes in wording that the Senate endorsed for the section "Cal Poly's Commitment to Gender and Diversity." These changes appropriately underscore the expectation that GE courses will address, where relevant and within the context of subject material, issues of gender and racial/ethnic diversity. We encourage both the GE Committee and academic departments as they develop courses for the new GE Program to pay particular attention to the Resolutions on diversity which the Senate also passed in the spring. These Resolutions speak to the educational value of diversity, and this understanding should clearly be manifest in the curriculum.

Second, we continue to agree with the GE Committee in not supporting so-called "Amendment Alt 13," which would have allowed both Area C and D courses for non-science electives. We support the GE Committee's position that a full review of the GE Program should take place two years after implementation (scheduled for Fall, 2001) and that no changes should be made in the template until then. Essentially, we agree with the GE Committee that the proposed 20 units for Area IV (Society and the Individual) in the new template provides appropriate curricular choice and flexibility.

Third, we believe strongly that a Life Science learning experience should be a part of every Cal Poly student's undergraduate educational program. Such an experience recognizes our society's demand for engaged citizens and effective workers who possess a basic understanding of the life sciences, as well as the physical sciences, mathematics, and technology. That knowledge is valuable in its own right, but engagement with the disciplines that provide it also involve students with the kind of hands-on, inquiry-based learning that is at the heart of scientific methodology. Moreover, this approach echoes the central educational philosophy of Cal Poly -- "learn by doing." It also recognizes that persons who are capable of complex abstractions and disciplined inquiry will always be valuable in the workforce. Accordingly, then, we require that all students (including those pursuing engineering programs) complete 4 units of study, or equivalence, in Life Science to satisfy the educational objectives for this area.

Fourth, we accept the GE Committee's reasoning and recommendation for a modified calendar that will initiate the new GE Program in Fall, 2001. We agree that this should provide needed time to effect transition to the new Program.

Finally, we would like to make a few general observations about the challenge and opportunity that the University has to develop a truly distinctive, integrated and rigorous GE Program. These qualities are essential to a GE Program of high quality and integrity. The GE Committee has clearly recognized this, for it has developed a curricular design that reflects the best thinking about both the forms and purposes of general education and it has considered them within the context of Cal Poly.

Two aspects of the GE Committee's work particularly underscore these points: its focus on educational objectives (that is, learning outcomes) as the critical element of course design; and its attention to overarching characteristics of an educated person that the GE Program should seek to cultivate.

Both of these emphases provide critical guidance and flexibility to academic departments as they design GE courses. The former invites the development of courses that can address and satisfy some Program requirements from a variety of disciplinary bases, not necessarily the domain of a single department. Make no mistake about it, though, we agree that a strong GE Program must introduce students to a variety of disciplines for each has its own set of lenses through which to examine and evaluate evidence and to provide the perspectives needed to reason and arrive at considered judgments.

The latter recognizes that GE is a shared institutional responsibility for its objective is the intellectual formation of graduates who will reflect the values of the entire University. As academic departments develop GE courses in partnership with other departments, they will reinforce the notion of the University as a connected enterprise with this shared central purpose.

We encourage academic departments to recognize the invitation they have from the GE Committee to think creatively about the design of courses to meet the GE standards. We expect that the GE Committee will be responsive to such thinking.

We look forward to the good, hard work that is ahead for the University's faculty as they take up this challenge and opportunity. We are confident that what will emerge is something that will add further distinction to the University and, most important, greater strength to the preparation of our students for a lifetime of learning and achievement.