Documentation of the Process for General Education Reform to Integrative Studies
Process for AY 2005-2006
Details on the work of the Committee and the timeline for campus and departmental discussions of the proposal.
Conceptual Framework for the Program
The conceptual framework is grounded in the AAC&U Greater Expectations report which emphasizes purposeful, intentional
and transparent teaching and learning.
General Outline for the First Year Course
The primary objective of this first-year course is to introduce students to some of the skills and ways of thinking that are essential for all students as they move through the academic curriculum. The course is designed with a consistent set of outcomes that are appropriate for a wide variety of topics across disciplines.
The objective of the General Education Program at Keene State College is to develop individuals who can effectively engage in serious academic inquiry and in difficult dialogues that contribute to society. That objective would be served if program goals could be devised that help students identify skills that they should develop over the course of their participation in the program, and that help faculty identify skills that they may emphasize when they offer courses that contribute to the program.
In the spring of 2005, the College Senate approved nine broad skill sets that the General Education Program Committee has subsequently disaggregated into component skills. The skill sets should not be viewed in isolation from one another. There are numerous interrelationships among them and we anticipate that courses in the program will create opportunities for students to draw simultaneously upon skills in several sets or areas. Our enumeration of skills is not intended to suggest that there is a hierarchy of skills. Nor is it intended to suggest that individual courses should address a particular set of skills. Instead, we intend to show that skills can serve as indicators of student learning across the program. We expect that the college will use some enumeration of skills when the program's effectiveness (and not the effectiveness of individual faculty or courses) is assessed. Finally, we expect that any enumeration of skills will be revised as the goals and accomplishments of general education are reconsidered.