Status Quo (or Status Quo with Tweaks)
We know it well, or at least we think we do. Please review the catalog description.
One way to think about GenEd is to imagine a continuum, with distribution requirements allowing people to choose cafeteria-style from existing courses at one pole and at the other an integrated curriculum of special classes that only satisfy GenEd requirements. Our current system would fall in the middle of this spectrum, being a blend of both distribution (e.g., SQR A, B, and C; Creative Arts) and GenEd only (CORE).
Examples of tweaks to the Status Quo that have been suggested by faculty members from previous solicitations of feedback on GenEd:
• Reducing CORE to one semester and introducing a distribution humanities requirement in its place.
• Keeping a year-long CORE but redesigning its format.
• Reducing the SQR from three to two courses.
• Adding a Social Science requirement.
No Requirements (or No Requirements with Tweaks)
That’s right, nothing. Students must declare a major, they must complete 128-credits, and a certain number of those credits must be from a department or program different from their major. (Currently that minimum is set at 60.) Otherwise students can navigate their own paths.
Examples of tweaks to the No Requirements model include:
• Keep the current foreign language requirement since Lewis & Clark’s reputation rests so much upon its overseas studies programs and its welcoming of international students. Otherwise, let freedom ring.
• Put some sort of mechanism in place that enforces elective exploration so that students don’t lock their entire degree into three majors.
Threads
This model takes our existing curriculum and draws pathways through it so that students take classes from different departments or programs, allowing them to explore a theme or set of questions from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. No special GenEd-only classes are required, as long as faculty who have elected to have their courses count within a thread make a conscious effort not to teach the material in a way geared solely for their majors.
Possible ways to organize threads:
• Faculty agree upon set themes (cf. the Inquiry sequences of the late 1980s and early 1990s, in which the themes were science, technology, and values; gender relations; cross-cultural and international understanding).
• Students must develop their own themes, working with an advisor; perhaps some sort of independent capstone paper or project develops from the student-selected GenEd sequence.
• Keep the foreign language requirement and encourage students to select their language based upon their chosen thread, if appropriate.
Purely Integrative
Referred to by one proponent as the “wicked problems” curriculum, faculty would select complex issues to be studied from a variety of standpoints (e.g., migration, food security, the good life, the museum). Special classes would be designed on these topics by faculty drawn from each division, and students would be part of a pod taking together the entire sequence of specially designed courses. Classes would refer to each other, so that connections between the sciences, social sciences, humanities, and arts are foregrounded. Completion of this sequence of integrated core courses as well as foreign language would be the only requirements. Possible modifications might be:
• Instead of presenting GenEd as something to be completed in the first year, have integrative classes staggered through the students’ career, so that they reunite with their cohort of problem solvers as they gain expertise in their majors. This might include a capstone course or experience for GenEd similar to that for the major.