Why Gen-Eds?
Gen-eds, at 35-38% of the total curriculum for a 4-year degree at PSU, represent a significant opportunity to impact student engagement, retention, and college success. Become informed of the latest research and work on liberal and general education. It can make a difference!
“In a 2005 project sponsored by AAC&U called Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP), educators, policy-makers, and workforce leaders joined in a “national initiative that champions the importance of a twenty-first-century liberal education—for individual students and for a nation dependent on economic creativity and democratic vitality.” http://www.aacu.org/leap/index.cfm
Employers especially understand the changing skills needed to build an effective workforce and the important role that higher education plays in preparing students. Surveys reveal the importance employers place on the kinds of skills generally acquired through the completion of the Gen–Ed curriculum. These courses have historically played an important role in keeping up with workforce needs and they remain vitally important as a way to help students acquire the skills they will need to be effective in a complex, global, technological, and information-saturated world.
Campuses are uniquely positioned to understand their local missions as well as student and workforce needs. Adding new programs and degrees takes time and requires funding which isn’t always available. Understanding and leveraging the opportunities that exist to meet changing local needs through the flexibility of the Gen-Ed curriculum can provide significant advantage to cash-strapped campuses.” (Shaffer, 2012)
Sub-topics to help you dive more deeply into the issue include:
- AAC & U background and resources about liberal learning and gen-eds
- Gen-Ed at PSU
- Challenges of teaching gen-eds, activities, and design solutions
- Assessing Gen-Ed Outcomes
Definitions
(Retrieved from AAC & U http://aacu.org/leap/What_is_Liberal_Education.cfm, August 16, 2012).
Liberal education
Liberal Education is an approach to learning that empowers individuals and prepares them to deal with complexity, diversity, and change. It provides students with broad knowledge of the wider world (e.g., science, culture, and society) as well as in-depth study in a specific area of interest. A liberal education helps students develop a sense of social responsibility, as well as strong and transferable intellectual and practical skills such as communication, analytical and problem-solving skills, and a demonstrated ability to apply knowledge and skills in real-world settings.
Liberal arts
Specific disciplines (the humanities, social sciences, and sciences).
Liberal arts colleges
A particular institutional type—often small, often residential—that facilitates close interaction between faculty and students, and has a strong focus on liberal arts disciplines.
Artes Liberales
Historically, the basis for the modern liberal arts; the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music) and the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric).
General Education
The part of a liberal education curriculum shared by all students. It provides broad learning in liberal arts and science disciplines, and forms the basis for developing important intellectual, civic, and practical capacities. General education can take many forms, and increasingly includes introductory, advanced, and integrative forms of learning.
Go to this sub-page to find out more about Penn State’s expectations in the gen-ed curriculum
