This upcoming Monday I will be meeting with Gus Colangelo, the Former Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education at the Smeal College of Business along with a few members of my team. A current professor in the Department of Management and Organization, Gus is leading a group of Penn State students on a project addressing/influencing the University’s current General Education reform process. Excited to meet with Gus and his team of students, I decided that I would prepare by researching and seeking to understand the current General Education system (in terms of both theory and requirements) at Penn State. Acquiring knowledge of the current system and related policies is an important first step to instigating changes or reform. To do this, I will proceed to break the Penn State system down into 3 areas: Theory, Structure & Requirements, and Discrepancies.
Theory
According to Penn State’s University Bulletin, “General Education augments and rounds out the specialized training students receive in their majors and aims to cultivate a knowledgeable, informed, literate human being.”3 The need for “a wide range of skills and knowledge” highlight the importance of General Education in degree programs.3 Penn State notes that among these skills are:
- the ability to reason logically and quantitatively and to communicate effectively
- an understanding of the sciences that makes sense of the natural environment
- a familiarity with the cultural movements that have shaped societies and their values
- an appreciation for the enduring arts that express, inspire, and continually change these values. 3
The breadth of these skills emphasizes Penn State’s conviction that General Education courses can be “relevant to a major or to an individual’s interests.” 3 In order to benefit from the complementary knowledge and skills General Education courses are intended to provide, Penn State underscores the role of careful planning with an academic advisor.
Another element the Penn State General Education system seeks to incorporate is a degree of flexibility. As stated on “The Baccalaureate Degree General Education Program” page of the University Bulletin, “Penn State wants students to use General Education to experiment and explore, to take academic risks, to discover things they did not know before, and to learn to do things they have not done before.”4 Flexibility is encouraged under the current system, but ultimately left to the discretion of the student. The Undergraduate Advising Handbook confirms “prior approval is not required” despite the ideal that “students should develop their plans to use flexibility in General Education with an advisor.”1 Means and ways to incorporate such flexibility in the students’ education will be discussed in the ensuing “Structure & Requirements” section.
Structure & Requirements
A Penn State baccalaureate degree program requires 45 credits of General Education. In addition to “knowledge domain” requirements (i.e. art, science, etc.) students enrolled at Penn State complete a First-Year Engagement program, United State Cultures course, International Cultures course, and writing –across-the-curriculum course as part of their General Education curriculum.3
The components of Penn State’s current General Education program are broken into three categories (skills, knowledge domains, additional requirements) with numerous sub-categories stemming from each. The following table depicting these components and required credits comes directly from the University Bulletin: 4
Though the table above depicts the requirements that many students complete, there are 5 means by which substitutions and/or alterations can allow for enhanced student flexibility. These include substitution of a 200- to 499- level course for a comparable lower-level course on the list of General Education courses, substitution of a twelfth-credit foreign language course for any 3 credit General Education course (unless those three credits are required for a degree), take 3, 6, and 9 credits in any arrangement amongst the domains of Natural Science, Arts, and Humanities (as opposed to the preset 6 credits of each), meet the US and IL requirements via an “experiential learning program or practicum approved by the College Dean’s Office,” and “meet First-Year Engagement Program requirements through completion of a First-Year Experience offered by any unit of the University”4. With permission of an adviser and a dean’s representative, these exchanges promote student flexibility to a certain degree.
Discrepancies
Although the General Education requirements are “common to all degree programs and compose about one-third of the course work,” colleges across Penn State University have adopted different policies as to how these credits can be completed, and where they can overlap with other degree requirements.3 To exemplify these differences, one can compare two students – one majoring in Environmental Resource Management (ERM) in the College of Agricultural Sciences and the other majoring in Special Education (SPLED) in the College of Education. According to the University Bulletin, the ERM student can fulfill 27-30 of his or her 45 general education credits via the requirements for the major.6 On the other hand, the SPLED student can fulfill just 12-15 of his or her 45 general education credits via the requirements for the major.2 Both majors require a minimum of 121 credits to obtain the respective B.S. degrees. Discrepancies in the current General Education system surface not only in terms of the percentage of general education classes the can be fulfilled through different majors, but also in what can “count” for a general education class within each college. For example, a level 003 course of a foreign language can substitute for an Arts (GA), Humanities (GH), or Social and Behavioral Sciences course (GS) in the College of Engineering.5 In other colleges such as the Smeal College of Business, however, no such substitution is allowed.
Though I agree with the theory behind Penn State’s General Education system, I do not believe that the execution/structure has garnered the desired outcomes. The emphasis placed on planning alongside an advisor to achieve the aims of General Education stuck out at me as particularly interesting. I’d be curious to see how many advisors actually ensure that students take general education classes that actually “complement” their major or interests. As mentioned in my previous blog post, I think many students are prone to “consuming” their education whereby they “check off” classes versus challenge themselves, step out of their comfort zone and ultimately enroll in classes that will complement their future pursuits.
I’m looking forward to meeting with Gus Colangelo and his students to see how they’ve tackled some of these issues thus far. Next week, I plan on reflecting on the meeting in my blog post and hope to have a greater understanding of the current reform taking shape at Penn State.
1 “General Education.” Undergraduate Advising Handbook. June 2010. Web. 14 Feb. 2014. <http://handbook.psu.edu/content/general-education>.
2 “Undergraduate Degree Programs: Education.” University Bulletin. N.p., 11 Jan. 2011. Web. 14 Feb. 2014. <http://bulletins.psu.edu/undergrad/campuses/details/26/SPLED>.
3 “What Is General Education?” University Bulletin. Web. 14 Feb. 2014. <http://bulletins.psu.edu/undergrad/generaleducation/>.
4 “The Baccalaureate Degree General Education Program.” University Bulletin. Web. 14 Feb. 2014. <http://bulletins.psu.edu/bulletins/bluebook/general_education.cfm?section=generalEd5>.
5 “General Education in the Colleges: Engineering.” 11 June 2012. Web. 14 Feb. 2014. <http://dus.psu.edu/cfe/collen.htm>.
6 “Undergraduate Degree Programs: Agricultural Sciences.” University Bulletin. 09 Nov. 2010. Web. 14 Feb. 2014. <http://bulletins.psu.edu/undergrad/campuses/details/20/E%20R%20M>.
