June 2005
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. This process has had a number of steps.
First, to begin the re-engagement, the Provost's Office and the Faculty Senate formed the Objectives Steering Committee to review SIUE's Statement of Objectives for General Education and the Baccalaureate Degree. The Objectives Steering Committee was charged with engaging the faculty in a review of both the current Statement of Objectives for General Education and the Baccalaureate Degree and the Goals of the SIUE General Education Program, completing the review by the end of 2003. While the committee was still early in the review, it became clear that there was significant interest and concern among the SIUE faculty about the objectives, structure, content, and pedagogical methods of the General Education Program. In light of the grassroots demand for a discussion forum, the committee hosted three open meetings that provided faculty the opportunity to discuss their views on the current general education objectives and other areas with which they were concerned. The faculty raised and discussed a number of important issues: the current use and practices of particular general education courses; the disjointed relationship between general education courses and the courses comprising a student's major or minor concentration; and the frequent and pervasive lack of communication between the providers of foundation-level general education instruction and their colleagues teaching upper-division courses. These concerns were incorporated into the Objectives Steering Committee's final report, which concluded that it was both necessary and fruitful to move forward in the process of reforming General Education
In a second stage, SIUE sent a team, in 2004, to the General Education Institute to develop a draft plan for the Faculty Senate and Academic Affairs to reconsider and redesign the General Education Program. The plan proposed a structure and time table for meaningful curricular and pedagogical reforms. The plan proposed the formation of a BRIDGE Committee (Baccalaureate Reform through Integrated Design of General Education) that supplements the existing governance infrastructure (committees, offices, funds, personnel) to support General Education reform.
The BRIDGE Committee is the third step in this process. Its 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. The membership of the BRIDGE committee was just finalized at the end of Spring Semester 2005 and the committee is just now beginning to coalesce.
While a number of SIUE faculty have participated in some or all of this process, several of the members of the BRIDGE Committee are new to the project. The SIUE team that attended the 2004 AAC&U General Education Institute wrote into its plan that the representatives from the BRIDGE Committee needed to develop the expertise necessary to lead the university in reforming our General Education program and create a process by which the effectiveness of the reform can be assessed. The BRIDGE Committee will begin to develop this expertise and a framework of assessment in July of 2005: a one-week colloquium on assessment and general education to be held at SIUE's teaching and research site in Costa Rica . National experts in the assessment of general education will be involved with the colloquium, along with undergraduate students and their mentors who are there participating in a service learning experience. The colloquium has the following goals:
1) The BRIDGE members will form a team committed to the development of the best possible program of general education. Getting the team away from SIUE, but in a location with institutional ties to SIUE, is an ideal way to foster this commitment.
2) External, nationally recognized experts in liberal education and assessment will facilitate the BRIDGE group's development of the skills necessary to develop plans for General Education reform.
3) BRIDGE members will observe and investigate a model program that pulls together pedagogical innovations that could be central to SIUE's future general education program: service learning, international experience, interdisciplinary studies, integrative learning, and learning communities. The Costa Rican site is the most accessible SIUE-affiliated location where these innovations are all in place.
4) The BRIDGE committee will generate ideas for how to probe the effectiveness of such programs as are in place in Costa Rica , in particular, how to assess the extent to which they can lead students toward achieving SIUE's goals for the Baccalaureate degree.
These and other exercises will help the BRIDGE committee to develop the skills and expertise necessary to oversee meaningful General Education reform at SIUE over the next semesters.
Joel Hardman
President, Faculty Senate
Eric Ruckh
Chair, BRIDGE Committee
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20 August 2005
Dear Colleagues,
This note is the first of many reports on the work of the BRIDGE (Baccalaureate Reform through Integrate Design of General Education) Committee.
You will recall that the BRIDGE Committee is itself the result of a series of Faculty Senate initiatives to examine the state of general education at SIUE. Those examinations revealed a keen interest and concern about general education throughout the SIUE community. This concern and interest is a product of two structural determinants. First, the general education program at SIUE has drifted over the last two decades from its original design; this drift has resulted in needless complexity and, at some points, incoherence. Second, recent large turnover in the faculty has resulted in faculty delivering a model of general education that often they did not design. This situation is ripe with both peril and promise.
The peril is that the lack of ‘ownership' of the general education program and the program's internal complexity and incoherence contributes to a sense of alienation amongst faculty and students; as long as the general education program drifts, we can expect that alienation to grow. Ultimately it will adversely affect our students and our potential students. On the other hand, the arrival of dozens of new faculty members each year for the past several years has contributed to new and seasoned faculty offering a wide variety of innovating, rigorous programs and courses throughout the university. The community members offering these programs and courses can become the driving force for a revision of the general education program as a whole. The BRIDGE committee was established to nurture and enable this revision in light of the values of the University and existing strengths of the institution. Our work this summer in Costa Rica prepared us for the multiple roles we will perform in the process of overseeing general education reform.
With the help of national scholars in liberal education, we familiarized ourselves with various models of general education that are in place around the country and that can serve as models for us as we move forward. We explored a variety of imaginative general education reforms that respect our values, culture and the diverse needs of our students. We developed a sense of respect for each other as liberally educated individuals. And, finally, we developed the outlines of a concrete plan for the reform of general education.
Phase One of the plan will formally begin in early October. The BRIDGE committee will issue an open invitation to the community to begin to form design teams that will develop comprehensive and coherent plans for the reform of SIUE's general education program. These design teams will work within a set of guidelines that the BRIDGE Committee is currently finalizing. Through the generous support of the Office of the Provost funding will be provided to all members of design teams that complete fully articulated models for general education at SIUE within the guidelines and time-table established by the BRIDGE Committee.
In preparation for Phase One of the design process, the BRIDGE Committee will sponsor a series of workshop through the next six weeks around the theme of design. The intention of these workshops is two-fold. First, they are intended to help members of the SIUE community begin to think of themselves not just as inheritors of a system of general education but as designers and builders of general education program. Second, we hope that the workshops become ‘seed-beds' for design teams, facilitating their formation by allowing folk from across the university to meet others interested in participating in the reform process. The first workshop will be on Wednesday, 7 September. It will provide an overview of the process that the BRIDGE Committee is initiating and allow the BRIDGE Committee to hear from the community its passions, interests and ideas about the state of general education at SIUE. Subsequent workshops will be focused on aspects of general education design. A more detailed announcement of the first workshop is forthcoming.
The BRIDGE Committee believes passionately that the expertise and experience to undertake this reform already exists in the SIUE community. But we cannot rest on the achievements of our predecessors and senior colleagues. To honor their achievements over the past twenty five years we must build on them. We must rise to the challenges of a new century and, in so doing, both honor our past and stake out our relevance in new and complex times. We look forward to working with all members of the SIUE community in the coming year.
In closing, let me say that the committee is committed to transparency. A website has been established on the Faculty Senate homepage ( http://www.siue.edu/UGOV/FACULTY/ ) and on the homepage for the Office of the Provost (http://www.siue.edu/PROVOST/ ). The BRIDGE website contains contact information for the members of the BRIDGE Committee as well as the agendas and minutes of our meetings. It will also be an electronic archive of sources and documents relevant to the reform process. In addition, if anyone has any questions or concerns they should not hesitate to contact me either in my office (Peck Hall 1207, ext. x2403), via email or on my cell (618.830.8671).
I wish you all the best as the semester begins.
Cheers!
Eric Ruckh
Associate Professor of Historical Studies
Chair, BRIDGE Committee
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27 August 2005
Dear Colleagues,
Through the month of September, the BRIDGE Committee will host a series of workshops organized around the theme of design. The intention of these workshops is twofold: first to provide the community an understanding of the basic conceptual tools and framework with which and in which the redesign of general education will unfold and, second, to provide members of the community an opportunity to meet other individuals interested in participating on design teams.
The BRIDGE Committee is pleased to announce that the first of this series of workshops will be held on Wednesday, 7 September 2005 from 9.30-11.30am in the Abbot Auditorium of Lovejoy Library and from 2-4pm in the Main Dome of the Religious Center . The title of the workshop is “BRIDGE 101: A Foundation for Re-imagining General Education.” We are holding the workshop twice on 7 September to encourage maximal community participation.
At this workshop, we will provide:
a brief history of what has led the Faculty Senate to initiate a review and redesign of general education at this time;
an overview of the process by which the redesign will unfold;
a rough timeline of the process;
a sense of the broad guidelines within which design teams will have to work;
a precise definition of team;
an overview of the existing General Education program;
a survey of diverse and interesting general education programs in place around the country.
Most importantly, the community will have an opportunity to express its questions, concerns, interests, and passions to the committee.
I look forward to seeing you on Wednesday, 7 September.
Cheers!
Eric Ruckh
Chair, BRIDGE
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15 October 2005
Dear Colleagues,
I am pleased to announce that as of Friday, 14 October, the BRIDGE
Committee has received letters of intent from six or seven design teams.
(This discrepancy is a result of one letter being submitted directly to me and
my inability to reach the university governance secretary to see if she had
also received the same letter.) A minimal threshold has been reached and the
redesign of General Education at SIUE can now proceed into Phase One. The
BRIDGE Committee wants to thank all of those on design teams who have stepped
forward and expressed a willingness to commit their time, effort and ideas to
the process of the renewal of General Education at SIUE. We also want to
thank the community at large for their interest in the process; we have
already learned a great deal from listening to the concerns of the community.
As design teams begin to work, the BRIDGE Committee will continue to support that work. We will meet next week to discuss the specifics of that support over the next five months.
Also, the BRIDGE Committee will turn its attention to establishing the specifics of the process by which Phase One will be brought to an end (the review of all design proposals by a Peer-Review Committee) and to establishing the guidlelines for Phase Two. We can assure the community that we are committed to insuring that Phase Two unfolds in a democratic and transparent manner.
Kudos to you all!
Eric Ruckh
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19 November 2005
Dear Colleagues,
Earlier this week, the BRIDGE Committee received eleven preliminary proposals/abstracts from the design teams that are in the early stages of re- imagining SIUE’s general education program. These preliminary proposals have been posted on the BRIDGE website. We encourage the community to examine these abstracts so that the we can begin to get a sense of the visions of general education that the design teams are developing.
The abstracts reveal that the teams are at various stages in the development of their thinking about general education. They all evince a seriousness of purpose even though they display a diversity of ideas about the function and form general education should take at SIUE. Most importantly, as a whole, they display a healthy uncertainty. It is apparent that the majority of design teams are struggling with the magnitude and the complexity of the task before them—a redesign of a university curriculum—a redesign that reflects the culture and the constraints of the institution as well as the demands of the early Twenty-First Century. The BRIDGE Committee is not discouraged by this uncertainty. We would have reason to be more concerned if the design teams were not tentative at this stage. Even at a very early stage of development, it is possible to see a number of themes emerging from the design teams: an interest in integration (in terms of both disciplines and the relation between general education and the disciplinary major), in rigorous standards and in strategies to nurture student-learning.
The BRIDGE Committee thanks the design teams for their early work on
general education reform. The contributions of approximately 75
faculty/staff/students/community members is a testament to SIUE’s commitments
to quality undergraduate education and to an institutional culture that values
shared governance. The work which the design teams are now doing is laying
the foundations for one of the core missions of SIUE—to deliver quality
liberal education to the Southern Illinois and Greater St. Louis Metropolitan
regions. In addition, though, their work is reinvigorating and reanimating
faculty leadership in the educational mission of the University. The design
teams are not merely shaping general education, they are building the
institution’s future (along with many others, who are involved in other
institutional projects). The BRIDGE Committee wants to assure the design
teams specifically and the community more broadly that the work now underway
will be reflected—in one way or another—in the final reform proposal that the
BRIDGE Committee will submit to the Faculty Senate in Spring 2007. It is
important, though, that everyone understand that when human beings build and
create the future, their actions unfold with an unavoidable uncertainty. The
uncertainty that we face as we move forward should encourage the strengthening
of a culture of trust and transparency.
Just as the BRIDGE Committee trusts that the design teams are taking
their charge seriously, so the design teams should trust that we are taking
our charge seriously. Just as the design teams are moving forward with
healthy uncertainty, so we are moving forward with healthy uncertainty. Just
as the design teams’ work is in a variety of stages of development, so our
work in designing the reform process is in a variety of stages of
development. Just as the design teams are tentatively fleshing out their
ideas about the form and function of general education at SIUE, so are we
tentatively fleshing out our ideas about how to create a process that nurtures
and refines the work you are doing on behalf of the wider SIUE community in
such a way that we can carry a proposal forward to the Faculty Senate.
We have been considering a variety of mechanisms to insure that the work
being done now is fully vetted and that the wider SIUE community has multiple
opportunities to comment, criticize, praise and revise the work of both the
design teams and the BRIDGE Committee. We have been considering the
respective strengths and weakness of the following mechanisms that may be
deployed to move forward from Phase I into Phase II: open, public fora at
which the various proposals are commented on by the community; focused round-
table discussions at which community members (faculty, staff and students) use
an evaluative instrument to discuss the respective strengths and weaknesses of
the proposals; widely distributed evaluative instruments; a peer-review
committee; and some form of faculty plebiscite. What we seek is to create an
environment which maximizes community feedback on the general education reform
proposals and helps both the design teams and the BRIDGE Committee move
forward in developing a general education reform plan.
Almost certainly a number of these mechanisms will be deployed in
parallel toward the middle of Spring 2006 as the design teams finalize their
proposals. These parallel processes of review will allow for a full vetting
of the design team proposals, will allow for the wider community to comment on
their work and will allow for the BRIDGE Committee to integrate the comments
of the community with the work of the design teams. The specific
configuration of the process has yet to be determined by the BRDIGE Committee
(here is our uncertainty). We have not fixed this configuration yet because
we believe that it will necessarily be shaped by the direction that the work
of the design teams takes. We all—the BRIDGE Committee, the design teams and
the wider community—are partners in a complex process in which we must each be
responsive to each other. Each successive stage of the general education
reform process will emerge out of the dynamics of the stage that precedes it.
We will have a much better sense in February 2006, as the design teams present
work-in-progress sessions to the community.
Just as the BRIDGE Committee is willing to offer advice to the design teams as they move forward with their work, so the BRIDGE Committee seeks the learned advice of our colleagues and friends as we continue to discuss the variety of mechanisms to deploy to help us move forward, democratically and transparently, from eleven proposals.
We look forward to your suggestions and advice.
Best wishes for a relaxing Thanksgiving vacation!
Cheers!
Eric Ruckh,
Chair, BRIDGE