Year: 2017

What knowledge and skills should an educated person have, regardless of major?

The above is the major question that we – the Clemson faculty and staff – need to address at the onset of our discussions on general education revision. The General Education Task Force has scheduled a set of open discussions on Nov 6 (8:30-10 am) or Nov 9 (12-1:30 pm) in The Great Hall at the Honors Center of Core Campus. All faculty, instructors, student support services coordinators, GTAs, library faculty, and anyone else interested in productive and collaborative discussions on this topic are invited. RSVPs are requested (link expired), as food will be served.

As the discussions commence, the General Education Task Force will provide some summaries and additional questions to this blog.

All interested parties are welcome to provide comments and discussion points below throughout the entire process, including one’s own thoughts on the key question above.

Further comments or concerns can be addressed to Dr. Bridget Trogden, Associate Dean in Division of Undergraduate Studies – trogden@clemson.edu

Recent blog posts from Derek Bok  and Loni Bordoloi Pazich, via Inside Higher Ed, bring to mind many issues related to the quality and coherence of undergraduate education. Some questions for thought:

• Do we explicitly tell our students the larger aims of our courses and why they should matter?
• If it is the responsibility of the faculty to create and sustain a cohesive curriculum, how are we doing? What can we do to have a better sense of a unified curriculum – both in theory and in practice?
• Do the formative and summative assessments in our classes test students on what we most want them to know and do?
• Does the feedback we provide our students give them a sense of their progress and how to continue to improve?

Welcome to the updates page for the general education task force!

During this 2017-2018 academic year, the members of the task force will be working to guide broad conversations to elicit input on general education and learning outcomes. We will be soliciting perspectives from a range of stakeholders while also helping make our campus more conversant with the ways that general education contributes to student growth and success.

Information coming from these conversations will be used to shape any future plans. Transparency is important, and this page will be used for sharing information and soliciting feedback.

Stay tuned!