Report to the Faculty:

MTU'S General Education Curriculum

for the Year 2000

SUMMARY AND CURRICULUM CHART

BACKGROUND

What is General Education?

General Education Reform - A National Agenda

The Growing Importance of General Education

What Makes an Effective General Education Curriculum?

The Need to Reform MTU's General Education Curriculum

The Process Leading to a New General Education Curriculum

Competing Values

Unanswered Questions

SUMMARY

A University task force including faculty, students, and others has been working since January 1998 to develop a new General Education curriculum for implementation as MTU changes its academic calendar to semesters in the fall of 2000. Through a planning process based on open meetings, and agendas and minutes accessible to anyone through its web site, the Task Force developed first a Statement of Philosophy, then a list of Goals consistent with the Philosophy, and finally a new Curriculum designed to achieve those Goals. This report presents the proposed new General Education Curriculum in the contexts of both national and local issues in higher education, and provides the rationale and logistical considerations that lead to its development.

The new General Education Curriculum consists of three parts: (1) a set of four core courses taken by every baccalaureate student at MTU (13 semester credits), (2) a five course distribution requirement (15 semester credits), and (3) a requirement for up to six units of co-curricular activities or programs. The core is designed to promote active engagement in learning, curricular coherence for cumulative learning, integration within and across disciplines, and development of university level habits of mind. Core courses are Perspectives on Inquiry, an interdisciplinary seminar in the first semester of the first year; World Cultures, an interdisciplinary lecture and recitation course in the second semester of the first year; Re-Visions, a course in oral and written communications based in part on students' first year writing; and Institutions, an interdisciplinary course on human political and economic organization. Re-visions and Institutions will be taken during the second year. World Cultures and Institutions serve as foundations for the distribution requirement. Students choose two courses each from two of five distribution lists, and a fifth course from any list. The list titles are List 1- Language, Thought, and Value, List 2 - Aesthetics and Creativity, List 3 - Histories and Cultures, List 4 - Science, Technology, and Society and List 5 - Politics, Economics, and Social Institutions. In the co-curricular requirement, three semester units will be Physical Education activities. Up to three additional units may be in other activity or program areas.

Implementation, administration and assessment of the proposed General Education curriculum will be lead by a General Education Council comprised of faculty, students, and professional staff. Faculty teaching in the interdisciplinary core courses will be supported for some portion of the summers of 1999 and 2000 to plan and prepare those courses.

MTU's General Education Curriculum for the Year 2000

See text for details

BACKGROUND

What is General Education?

General Education is part of the curriculum required by MTU's accrediting body, the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (NCA). In its Handbook on Accreditation, NCA lists General Institutional Requirement #16 as .....

It goes on to explain what it means by General Education.

At least as early at the 1920's, MTU required courses intended to support General Education goals, but it was not until 1985 that a formal General Education curriculum was endorsed by the faculty and established as a university-wide baccalaureate degree requirement. Our current General Education curriculum is essentially unchanged from the 1985 plan.

Early in the twentieth century, faculty began to turn their attention to disciplinary curricula and away from the goals of General Education. Rapid expansion of knowledge especially in the sciences and technology challenged faculty to keep their disciplinary curricula up to date. Although disciplines became more narrowly focused, an ever larger share of the curriculum was given over to learning the particular knowledge and skills of the student's major discipline. Eventually, General Education became the "spare room" of the baccalaureate curriculum: the place faculty put courses they feel they can not throw away, but they do not really care too much about either. Graduates became so deficient in general knowledge and skills that in 1977 the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching declared in a major report that General Education had become a "disaster area". General Education had atrophied to the point at which small adjustments were insufficient. It was going to take fundamental reform.

Reform of General Education has now been a dominant theme in American higher education for nearly two decades. Government and non-government agencies, employers, and alumni have all called for stronger, more effective programs for General Education. Ambitious experimental curricula have been supported by prestigious foundations. Studies of student learning in General Education using diverse pedagogical approaches have been published and discussed at national meetings. National surveys and assessments of best practices have been the bases of workshops and symposia, and appear as books, book chapters and journal articles. All this has contributed to the consensus that General Education is of paramount importance to today's students, and that an effective General Education curriculum defined by a small set of specific characteristics.

The growth of knowledge and our burgeoning access to it through computer technology have not only made university level teaching more challenging, they have transformed society in virtually every aspect and define the world in which our graduates will live. If there is a common denominator to the experiences we can anticipate for our graduates, it is an increasing rate of change. We must prepare our students to live in a less predictable, more dynamic world. This applies to their personal relationships, their roles in the community, their relationships to their immediate physical environment, and their careers. Accelerating change alone provides compelling reason for giving renewed emphasis to the breadth of students' educations. A narrowly educated graduate is ill prepared to respond to opportunities that change brings.

Different constituencies have specific interests in students' acquisition of breadth of knowledge and skills. Smaller employers like new employees who are adaptable and flexible. Larger employers like employees who can grow through different assignments to become leaders. Neighbors like graduates who have an understanding of diversity and community. Parents like graduates who have a sense of well being and their place in the world, whose lives are rich in a variety of ways. Over reliance on the major has tended to "paint students into an educational corner", and many constituents expect universities to provide their graduates with the benefits of a broader education as well.

Renewed interest in General Education is also an statement of the university's commitment to undergraduate education. It is a demonstration that undergraduate education in its entirety is important, especially those parts of the curriculum which unite all degree programs. Many universities now present their ambitious General Education programs to prospective students and their parents, to alumni, foundations and legislatures as evidence of their ongoing commitment to high quality undergraduate education.

During the last two decades of reform, a number of panels, surveys and individual authors have attempted to answer this question. Their findings have much in common, with broad consensus on the following points.

• Integration of knowledge - Students have come to view knowledge as fragmented into disciplinary units, and have difficulty transferring their knowledge, skills and understanding from one discipline to another. An effective General Education curriculum stresses the integration and linkages of the disciplines.
• Coherence - The elements of a General Education must fit together in meaningful ways if its goals are to be achieved. The possibility of coherence must be designed into the curriculum, but ultimately it is created by each student as an essential part of her/his learning experience. Coherence leads to cumulative learning which is more enduring, sophisticated and transferable than the fragmented learning typical of unstructured curricula. (Coherence is different from consistency with dogma, which implies rejection of contradictory information and is the antithesis of education).
• Shared learning and learning experiences - All students share in a learning experience and in specific knowledge and vocabulary that fosters a sense of academic community.
• Integrity - An effective General Education curriculum provides clear public statements of its goals and structure, and students' experiences are largely congruent with those statements. This provides the essential message that the university is serious about the importance of General Education, and is willing to be publicly accountable for it.

NCA reviewed MTU for re-accreditation in 1988. Among the few aspects of which they were critical, they made their strongest criticism of our new General Education curriculum. They wrote ....

To be fair, this same language was being used to indict General Education programs at most universities in the 1980's, and ours was not noticeably worse than most. It was, in fact, a significant improvement over the loose set of distribution requirements that preceded it. But when NCA returned for a re-accreditation visit in 1998, nothing had changed. We did have a plan for change. As part of our change to semesters, the university made a commitment to reform of General Education. In view of this, NCA evaluators decided to reserve judgement but stipulated that we must file a progress report on our General Education program by the end of academic year 1999-2000.

Forces internal to MTU provided impetus for reform of General Education as well. Faculty are generally unhappy with the program as insufficiently ambitious and/or ineffective. There is also a problem with curricular integrity. The program as originally conceived and described in the catalog is different from the program actually implemented and experienced by students. Each of these concerns contributed to the pressure for change.

In November, 1997, the Calendar Issues Clarification Committee completed its report recommending the administration proceed with implementation of a semester-based academic calendar. The Committee's findings were endorsed by the Board of Control later that month. Beginning in December, 1997, the Provost held a series of meetings with the Vice Provost for Instruction, the college Deans, and the Senate President to outline a process that would allow us to reform General Education so the new curriculum could be implemented at the same time as our change to semesters. From those meetings the following process emerged.

Planning of a reformed General Education curriculum was to be done by a General Education Development Task Force, consisting of faculty from every teaching department, representatives from key Senate committees and the Senate President, a student affairs professional and one undergraduate and one graduate student. Several faculty with special responsibility for curriculum planning were added: Associate Deans from Engineering, and Sciences and Arts, The Director of the General Engineering program, and the Director of the Writing program. The Vice Provost for Instruction served ex officio, and chaired the Task Force. In the Task Force charge, the Provost asked the group to prepare a new General Education curriculum for a faculty referendum to be conducted by the Senate in September, 1998.

The Task Force has worked hard. Members began by reviewing recent publications and bench marking programs at other universities. Seven members of the Task Force attended an American Association of Colleges and Universities workshop on General Education and met with national leaders in the General Education reform movement. Through a process of proposal and discussion, the Task Force worked toward consensus first on a Statement of Philosophy and later on a List of Goals for General Education. At the beginning of the summer, they formed working groups to concentrate on specific parts of the curriculum, and then met as a whole to share and debate proposals. Those Task Force members who stuck with the process are likely to have spent an average of four hours per week in scheduled meetings, and many more in preparation and discussion with colleagues.

Key decisions were made by ballot once it was clear that the members were close to consensus. Although few votes were unanimous, most decisions were supported by >90% of the members.

Faculty are ambitious for their students' learning, and would like to accomplish much more than is possible in a four year degree program. Inevitably, some faculty will value one part of the curriculum more than another. Within an institution like Michigan Tech where we draw from several distinctive academic traditions, there will be a wide range of opinion about which parts of the curriculum deserve the most emphasis. This is an issue on which reasonable and fair-minded persons can disagree. So that the Task Force's time not be squandered in unproductive debate, the Provost in consultation with college Deans and the Vice Provost for Instruction stipulated that the new General Education program should consist of 32 semester credits, or 25% of the credits for a baccalaureate degree. Following a series of discussions and compromises, the Task Force proposal presented here is for a General Education program of 28 semester credits. We argue that the new program is sufficiently well planned with such meaningful integration and coherence, that we will accomplish more in 28 credits of the new program than we would have with 32 credits of General Education in the fashion of our current program. At 28 semester credits, the new General Education program will take precisely the same proportion of credits required for a baccalaureate degree as does the current program (21.9%). Based on the Task Force's bench mark studies of other technological universities, this is one of the smallest general education programs. We think it is more important that the curriculum be effective than large.

The curriculum description that follows leaves many questions unanswered. Who exactly will teach the core courses? How will they be block scheduled to minimize conflicts? How will faculty that support the university curriculum be sure of recognition and reward? What will be the content of each of the core courses? Which courses will be on the distribution lists? Each of these questions and more must be answered before we can implement a new General Education curriculum.

This proposal provides the framework for a new General Education curriculum. It addresses philosophy, goals, and degree requirements. The purposes, formats and broadly defined contents of core courses are specified, but these will have to be fleshed out by the faculty who teach them as described below. Faculty and/or departments will propose new, semester length courses to be added to the distribution lists. Department chairs, deans, the Provost and Vice-Provost will have to work out staffing, recognition and reward issues. As one Task Force member put it, "There are a lot of problems with this new curriculum, but every one of them can be worked out." That is sure to be true of any new curriculum.

THE NEW GENERAL EDUCATION PROGRAM

The Task Force began with a commitment to improving the coherence, integration, and integrity of MTU's General Education curriculum. We also wanted to increase student engagement in active learning, and to help build a sense among students and faculty across campus of a shared educational experience leading to shared knowledge and understanding.

At the same time, we recognized that General Education is one of several competing priorities within any complex university like ours. Others are disciplinary curricula, graduate education and faculty scholarship. Thus, the General Education curriculum presented here represents a host of compromises.

"General Education is a part of our curriculum that challenges students to develop the intellectual habits, skills, values, and breadth of knowledge characteristic of all university-educated persons. This breadth complements and balances the more specialized focus of the major and is especially important in a technological university. Breadth and balance require recognition that each student is a whole person whose success in education, career, and life depends on the exercise of imagination and creativity, overall wellness, and an ability to balance the demands of increasingly complex lives. In General Education we work toward education of "intellectually vital graduates who are creative, effective leaders and communicators ......aware of the changing social, economic and cultural values of the world" (MTU Vision Statement).

In our General Education program, faculty and students cultivate intellectual values essential to the practice of democracy: respect for others, desire to engage in constructive discourse, clear reasoning and communication, and careful and balanced analysis. Students learn to understand, value, and negotiate individual, intellectual, and cultural difference, and to recognize and understand the significance of historical, social, and environmental context. Every graduate should understand the diverse modes of inquiry that distinguish the sciences, humanities, social sciences and professions, and should acquire a broad knowledge of the world's intellectual, spiritual, and artistic traditions. Together, these elements prepare graduates who can work with others to improve their communities, their societies, and their world."

Curriculum

Two features of the new General Education curriculum give clearer evidence of our commitment to undergraduate education. One is the special emphasis on the first year. The national experience has shown the value of engaging students early, and helping them establish good learning habits. Our own experience leads us to believe this is no less important for MTU students. The other is the emphasis on interdisciplinary approaches. We are sufficiently committed to our students' learning and understanding how knowledge can be integrated and combined to produce richer and more complex insights that we have designed three of the four core courses as interdisciplinary.

In our new General Education curriculum, every student takes the same four foundation courses during their first two years. Five additional courses are chosen by the student from diverse lists and may be taken as soon as the prerequisites are met. The four foundation courses provide each MTU student, whatever her major or career interest, with a core education that she shares with every other student at MTU. This provides both students and faculty with a shared vocabulary, knowledge and understanding they can draw from throughout their tenure at Michigan Tech, and an educational identity they will share after they graduate. We expect this shared experience to foster a significantly stronger sense of community among our students and faculty.

Description The First Year curriculum consists of two courses taken by every first year student at MTU. In the fall semester, all students take Perspectives on Inquiry; in the spring all take World Cultures.

Perspectives on Inquiry is a three credit course that compares the assumptions, methodologies and goals of contrasting intellectual disciplines as they apply to a model issue or problem. Each section will be subtitled, to indicate the issue or problem addressed. For example "Perspectives on Inquiry: Failure" might discuss what failure means to psychologists, artists, theologians, scientists and engineers, and how they respond to failure. Other subtitles that have been suggested include "Sound", "Human Intelligence", "Hunger", "War", "Climate and Weather", and "Survival".

In small sections (target of twenty), students and their instructor discuss selected readings to better understand how knowledge is created and applied. Perspectives on Inquiry serves as an introduction to learning in a university environment. Fundamental intellectual skills (critical reading and reasoning, clear and precise expression, evaluation of evidence, balanced argument) and values (respect for individuals and difference, accuracy, thoroughness) are to be emphasized. The content will provide MTU students with a context for understanding how science and engineering are similar to yet different from other intellectual disciplines. This will be a writing-intensive course, meaning that students will be challenged to develop their ideas through writing, and written work will provide a basis for evaluating students' accomplishments in the course.

World Cultures is a four credit, interdisciplinary, team-taught course. Drawing from successful models at other campuses, we will develop a course that examines both Western and Non-western civilizations through time from the perspectives of fine arts, literature, philosophy and religion, history, anthropology and technology. Lectures for large enrollments will be supported with recitation sections for smaller group discussion. World Cultures will provide a significant part of the content listed under General Education goals. World Cultures is the prerequisite for distribution requirement lists 1, 2 and 3 (see below).

Logistical Considerations In the Perspectives on Inquiry seminars, Faculty and students will be supported with a set of authoritative, seminal readings that characterize specific disciplines. The extent to which the students will work with the seminal readings or other readings selected by the instructor will vary at the instructor's discretion.

In preparation for teaching the seminars, instructors will meet to discuss the seminal readings and to learn from their colleagues the assumptions, methodologies and goals of disciplines other than their own. Using the model established successfully at other universities, we expect this preparation will take place during the summer with additional financial support for the faculty who commit to teaching seminars. In the summers of 1999 and 2000, the faculty planning Perspectives on Inquiry, World Cultures and Institutions will be supported and compensated for their work. We expect to teach pilot sections of Perspectives on Inquiry and possibly of the other two courses during the fall quarter of 1999.

Writing in Perspectives on Inquiry will consist of a set of assignments common to all sections. Description of the assignment, including its purpose, format, and length, and the faculty response to students' work will be consistent across sections as worked out by the instructors during the preparation period. A course guide book will contain both the seminal readings and support materials for writing assignments and their evaluation.

Students will be asked to indicate first, second and third choices for sections of Perspectives on Inquiry based on their preference for the topic it will address.

Providing every first year student with a small enrollment seminar will demand a significant proportion of the university's instructional resources. The Task Force discussed this issue at length. As one compromise intended to make this possible, World Cultures will be taught in large lecture sections of several hundred students. Because Perspectives on Inquiry is an interdisciplinary university course rather than a departmental course, it is hoped that faculty from every department will participate in teaching it.

Rationale A goal of the Perspectives on Inquiry seminar is to challenge first semester students to become more personally engaged in and responsible for their educations. Nationally, students seem to be increasingly interested in baccalaureate education as a means to a credential, and less as a means for learning. Many spend their time in the classroom waiting for graduation rather than actively pursuing education. Our faculty cite disengagement as a significant problem at MTU as well. Authorities on student behavior report that students typically establish during their first six weeks on campus the educational habits that will last through their undergraduate careers. Thus, the Perspectives on Inquiry seminar is, in large part, an effort to engage students as active learners and establish beneficial educational habits early in students' MTU careers.

Engagement will be fostered by the course format. Seminars of 20 students lead by a faculty member allow expression of personal interpretations and understandings. Students get to know each other as well as the professor, and develop a sense of community and responsibility within the seminar group. A professor skilled in Socratic method can challenge students to develop skills of critical reasoning, careful and balanced interpretation, and clear and precise description as a foundation to their continued success in university level study. First term students typically come to their university enthusiastic for an educational approach that is different. In high school, they had courses in English, math, science, social studies and maybe foreign language. When they come to MTU, we too often disappoint them with what looks like more of the same. The first term seminar is widely used at universities of all types and sizes, and can help students make a successful transition to engaged and active, university level education. This approach is one of the principal recommendations in the recent Boyer Commission's report.

The personal character of seminar courses also helps students to identify with the institution and its faculty. This has benefits for student persistence and for advising / mentoring.

The content of Perspectives on Inquiry is also very important. Educators and employers alike have long been concerned that students view knowledge as discrete and fragmentary. They lack the ability to connect or apply knowledge in one area with that in another. Students tend to make simplistic interpretations of complex issues, viewing one discipline's perspective as "correct" while others' are somehow flawed. Perspectives on Inquiry will help students understand that different disciplines have different assumptions, methods, and goals, and can be viewed as complementary.

As an interdisciplinary, team-taught course, World Cultures builds directly on multi-disciplinary insights developed in Perspectives on Inquiry, and provides knowledge foundational to many of the courses students will choose to meet their distribution requirements.

Description In their second year, students will take a three credit course, Re-Visions, that provides students in small sections (target of twenty) direct instruction in oral and written communications. Re-Visions will begin by revising writing that students have done in their first year, and will continue students work with themes and issues developed in first year courses.

Rationale In Perspectives on Inquiry, students will use writing as a means to develop their ideas and to present them to the professor. Professors will critique writing inasmuch as this critique challenges students to think and write more appropriately and effectively about the seminar material. Thus, Perspectives on Inquiry will be a course involving significant writing, with writing as a means to the end of developing an understanding of the material at hand.

Re-Visions is a course specifically intended to teach oral and written communications. Our current approach to direct communications instruction requires that the instructor take considerable time to develop the content about which students will learn to communicate. Although there are benefits to this process, in some ways it is inefficient. The Re-Visions course will take advantage both of the content of Perspectives on Inquiry and World Cultures, and of the specific written work students did in those courses as a starting point for direct communications instruction. This approach will challenge students to retain and further develop their learning in the first year, combating the tendency to "learn it and forget it".

Issues in technical writing specific to disciplines are to be addressed in disciplinary curricula.

Description Institutions (3 semester credits) grounds students in fundamental questions of how humans organize themselves for collective action. This course provides an overview of politics and markets, systems, problems of choice and deliberation, and the on-going processes of globalization. Students will consider five "big questions": What are the functions of government and of markets?, How do politics and markets relate to each other?, How do societies organize work?, What are the sources and consequences of globalization?, and How do systems emerge and change over time?

Logistical Considerations Institutions will be taught in moderate-sized (70-80 student) sections by individual faculty members from the Department of Social Sciences and School of Business and Economics. The faculty teaching the course in a term will write a common final. Each faculty member will evaluate the responses to the final for his or her own class. The core questions, coupled with the common final questions, may help increase the likelihood that students will understand the importance of these questions to the diverse fields covered in distribution lists 4 and 5 (see below).

Rationale As an interdisciplinary treatment of several subjects traditionally taught is separate courses, Institutions continues our emphasis on the unifying characteristics of knowledge and the power of multidisciplinary perspectives. Institutions is the prerequisite for courses in distribution lists 4 and 5.

Description Students choose five, three-credit distribution courses. There are two branches to the distribution system - one built on World Cultures and the other built on Institutions. In turn, there are three lists on the World Cultures branch (List 1 "Language, Thought, and Value", List 2 "Aesthetics and Creativity", List 3 "Histories and Cultures") and two on the Institutions branch (List 4 "Science, Technology, and Society" and "List 5 "Politics, Economics, and Social Institutions". Students take two courses from one list under each branch. Students choose their fifth distribution course from among any of the courses on any list.

Logistical Considerations Faculty and/or departments will be invited to propose courses for inclusion on the lists. Inclusion must be justified by clear relevance to the list's goals as will be articulated by the faculty committee charged with oversight of the General Education distribution requirement (see administration below). We expect that many courses on distribution requirement lists will serve goals of both General Education and major curricula. The fact that over half of the General Education credits (15 / 28) are in distribution requirements will support enrollments in upper division courses important to faculty and students in degree programs that enroll relatively few majors.

Rationale After students have completed the coherent and integrated core of four General Education courses, we consider it acceptable to allow students to pursue the remainder of their General Education with relatively little structure. The requirement for two courses from one list each for both branches in the distribution system will insure a degree of both breadth and depth, but will otherwise offer little constraint to student choice.

The content in Perspectives on Inquiry, World Cultures, and Institutions will provide adequate groundwork for distribution courses at the 200 and 300 level.

Two courses have been added to more than one list so that they will be available to all students without compelling all students to select courses only from that list. These are Revisions II which is on lists 1, 2, and 3, and Economics which is on lists 4 and 5. Only one distribution course may be used to meet degree requirements for both General Education and the major.

The Co-Curriculum

Description All students must complete up to six co-curricular activity units. At least three must be in Physical Education activities. The others will be in co-curricular areas yet to be worked out with faculty, the office of student affairs, the First Year Subcommittee (see below) and others. As required elements of the co-curriculum, titles of activities successfully completed will be listed on the student's transcript. Student participation is graded on a credit / no-credit basis. If minors are developed in Physical Education in the future, students applying such activities toward minor degree requirements would receive a letter grade and the grade would be included in calculation of the student's GPA.

Logistical Considerations Physical Education has a long established role in General Education of students at MTU and elsewhere, and this part of the program was first established to provide for its future. Other activities or programs may also be appropriate for inclusion. Examples under discussion include some of the performance-based programs in Fine Arts, involvement in student government, and "service learning". The extensive discussion required to develop such co-curricular opportunities is continuing and will almost certainly be completed in the coming year. The General Education Council will have the authority to expand this part of the program if appropriate (see below).

Rationale Activities that support students' health, well-being, and personal and social growth are a vital part of any baccalaureate experience. Not only do we have a responsibility to recognize and support students as whole persons, but students' success in academic studies is directly affected by their physical and social health, and their sense of personal growth as it is supported in part by participation in Physical Education and other co-curricular activities.

Physical Education and similar co-curricular activities generally differ from traditional academic courses in both means and ends. They develop in students skills and sensibilities that cannot be developed by reliance on rational or logical processes alone. Student learning is achieved through practice and participation, rather than by reading, discussion and problem solving. Because students' growth and learning in these activities is more personal and individual, their success is graded on what generally amounts to a credit / no-credit scale. Thus, the Task Force considered that these activities are more appropriately viewed as co-curricular. That is to say they support student learning in ways and toward goals that are different from those of the traditional academic curriculum. Because the Task Force members believe these are extremely important, we have planned this requirement to increase students' involvement in activities that provide a counterbalance to the relentlessly rational curriculum.

In addition to Physical Education, other groups in the MTU community are likely to want to participate in offering co-curricular learning opportunities for our students. Their proposals will be discussed and possibly approved by the General Education Council with up to a total of 6 credits of co-curricular activities required.

Science, Engineering, Computer Science and Mathematics Requirements

Most undergraduate students at MTU are pursuing degrees in science or engineering, and their curricula are typically richer in science and mathematics courses than required for the purposes of General Education. Because the choice of specific mathematics and science courses is important to the sequence of course work in these majors, specific requirements for these subjects are not specified as part of the General Education program. However, it is essential that all MTU baccalaureate graduates have a minimum of 16 credits of science, engineering, mathematics or computer science. At least 12 of those credits must be outside the student's major field. Students must complete at least one course or the equivalent in each of the following areas: computer science, mathematics, and a laboratory science.

Administration of MTU's General Education Curriculum will be supported by the General Education Council. The Council is responsible for implementation, overall integrity and continuous improvement of the General Education Curriculum. Council members will serve on one or more of the Council's four subcommittees. The First Year Subcommittee is responsible for the implementation, effective coordination and continuous improvement of the two General Education courses taken by all first year students at MTU. The Communications Subcommittee is responsible for the implementation, coordination and continuous improvement of instruction and student learning in written and oral communications within the General Education curriculum and as can be effectively linked to other parts of the student's educational experience at MTU. The Distribution Subcommittee is responsible for the implementation, integrity and continuous improvement of the distribution course system within General Education. The chairs of these subcommittees together with the Vice Provost for Instruction serve as the Executive Subcommittee that facilitates the Council's work by organizing meetings and their agendas.

1. The General Education Council

1. Membership The General Education Council has fourteen members. Eleven are faculty: two from Social Sciences, two from Humanities including the Director of Writing Programs, one from either Mathematics or Computer Science, one from either Biology, Chemistry or Physics, two from the College of Engineering, and one each from the Schools of Forestry, Business and Technology. Faculty members of the Council will be chosen from within their units in accordance with the unit's general practice. The other members are one student affairs professional, one undergraduate student appointed by USG, and one graduate student appointed by GSC. Terms of appointment are three years except for students who may serve one or two year appointments. Approximately one third of the membership is to be reappointed or replaced each year. The Vice Provost for Instruction will serve as an ex officio member
2. Chair The Chair of the General Education Council will be chosen by the Vice Provost for Instruction in consultation with the Council members, the Provost and the Chair's immediate supervisor. During the two years that precede implementation, we anticipate that this responsibility will require one half of a faculty member's time. Arrangements for appropriate and fair compensation and/or release from other responsibilities will be negotiated with the Council chair, the Vice Provost for Instruction, and the chair's immediate supervisor.
3. Charge The General Education Council is responsible for the successful implementation, the integrity, and the continuous improvement of MTU's General Education curriculum.