Baccalaureate Reform through Integrated Design of General Education

      As SIUE is about to begin its first top-to-bottom review of our General Education program in over twenty years, we felt it was a good time to update the faculty as to why this is happening now, and how the process will work. We want to assure the faculty that the process of General Education reform will proceed transparently. We will actively solicit broad input from the faculty and be open to suggestions from all quarters. We hope to develop, nurture and guide a dialogue on General Education that will result in meaningful reforms that improve the quality of undergraduate education at SIUE.

      There are two principal reasons that General Education reform is being undertaken at this time. First, while the original 1982 design of SIUE's General Education Program is still in place, the program has drifted over time. With modifications in 1993 and 1999 adding requirements, the program has become complex and confusing. There is general agreement among the faculty that there is need for streamlining and simplifying the structure of General Education. A secondary motivation for reform relates to faculty ownership. While there is ownership for individual parts of general education, because of recent turnover in the faculty (over 60% of SIUE's full-time instructional faculty has been on campus for less than a decade), there is very little ownership for the conceptualization, design, and implementation of the program as a whole . Most of those who created the General Education Program are no longer on the faculty. Because of this changeover in the faculty, the Provost's Office and the Faculty Senate initiated a process in 2003 for re-engaging the faculty in the design of General Education. The BRIDGE Committee (Baccalaureate Reform through Integrated Design of General Education) was created out of that process. The BRIDGE Committee's function will be to oversee the process of General Education reform. It will not cook up a single General Education plan and seek to impose it on the faculty. Rather it will oversee the development (and solicitation) of a number of plans and will help guide a broad conversation that will lead to the adoption of one of (or some hybrid of) the plans.

-Eric Ruckh, Chair        

Important Documents & Links

AAC&U LEAP PowerPoint Presentation 

The Revised General Education Proposal (June 11, 1984)

Consultant's Report on the General Education Program at SIUE (June 24, 1987)

Review of the General Education Program (May 2, 1994)

Ten Responses to the General Education Review (June-September 1994) 

Draft Plan to Reconsider and Redesign the General Education Program (August 15, 2004)

Current General Education Requirements

Illinois Articulation Initiative (IAI)

New Freshman Seminar Recommendations

Resources for General Education Reform available at Lovejoy Library

SIUE Values

Statement of Objectives for the Baccalaureate Degree 

Summary of the Report of the General Objectives Steering Committee

Syllabus for Honors 120: Freedom or Work? The Value of Education, Dr. Michael Moore

Undergraduate Assessment & Program Review Undergraduate Research Academy 

Please visit other BRIDGE links...

This page was last updated May 15, 2007