More than 100 faculty members worked with a handful of students and staff members at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to produce a proposed new general education curriculum for the university.

Their report, “Making Connections: An Initial Proposal to Revise the General Education Curriculum,” submitted in September, is a significant step toward the first major overhaul of UNC-CH’s general education curriculum since 1980. Its genesis was a 1995 study within the university that called for a re-evaluation of the curriculum in place. The Curriculum Review Steering Committee presenting the report considers its proposal just a “draft,” expecting a vigorous campus discussion over their suggestions.

Among the major changes proposed:

• Reducing the general-education component of an A.B. degree at UNC-CH to 42 hours and the “upper level” arts and sciences general-education requirement to nine hours, from 44 hours and 12 hours, respectively.

• Replacing the English 11/12 requirement with Rhetoric A/B, courses that would teach the arts of written and oral argument, composition, and rhetorical analysis.

• Replacing the mathematical science course requirement with a quantitative reasoning requirement.

• Eliminating the swim-test requirement and the required two physical-activity courses (for no academic credit) with one wellness course for one hour of academic credit. The wellness course would, “in addition to physical activity,… include topics such as nutrition, exercise science, weight control, time management, and stress management.”

• Changing the requirement for two social sciences courses to three courses in social and behavioral sciences, including one that “engage[s] in historical analysis.”

• Changing the philosophy requirement to one of “philosophical and moral reasoning,” stipulating that the philosophical course taken “contains significant content in ethics and moral reasoning.”

• Replacing the Western Historical/Non-Western/Comparative (two courses) and Cultural Diversity requirements (one course that also must meet a different requirement) with Connections requirements.

The first Connections requirement is “Applying Foundations Across the Curriculum,” which involves one “C” course (for communications skills), one “language integration experiences” course (which involves either taking an additional hour of a foreign language, living for at least a semester in a “campus language house,” studying abroad or working at an approved internship where a target language is used predominantly), and one “Q” course (either a course that applies quantitative reasoning to a discipline or a course in mathematical sciences).

Another is “U.S. Diversity,” which is one course (that must also meet a different requirement) that deals with “the interaction between at least TWO of the following groups or subcultures: African Americans, European Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, or Native Americans” and “might also engage other aspects of diversity, such as age, class, disability, gender, region, religion, or sexuality.”

Another is “Global Citizenship,” which involves three courses that also must meet a different requirement: “Global Issues: Transnational Connections,” “Cultural Breadth: Chronological Scope,” and “Cultural Breadth: Spatial Scope,” which are intended to give students an “understanding of at least one major area of the world outside the United States, of at least one non-western [sic] culture, and of global forces, patterns, and trends as well as the historical origins of those trends.”

The last is “Experiential Education,” which includes “service learning, internships, intensive fieldwork or field-based research, study abroad, and practice-centered courses in the creative arts.”

The proposal awaits the approval process, which will take place during the present academic year. The proposed curriculum revision is available online at http://www.unc.edu/curriculumrevision/documents/draftproposal1_2_1.pdf.

Sanders is assistant editor of Carolina Journal.

UNC-CH’s Changing Definition of a General Education, 1934-95

Note: The following is an excerpt from a 1996-97 Pope Center for Higher Education Policy study that examined how the UNC-Chapel Hill curriculum has changed since 1934-35.

The changes in the educational requirements in general… can be explained by — and were possibly driven by — the shifting definition of a general education, contained within the undergraduate bulletins, over the 60-year period of this study… [They] provide insight into how the university’s perception of a general education had changed.

In 1934-35, the undergraduate bulletin stated simply:

The curriculum leading to the degree of Bachelor of the Arts is designed to provide a general, well-rounded, liberal education.

By 1954,… the definition of a general education had shifted… According to the 1954-55 undergraduate bulletin:

The studies in the General College are intended: (1) to offer experience in a sufficient variety of basic and liberal subjects to constitute the foundations of that general education which is regarded as essential to balanced development and intelligent citizenry, (2) to supply opportunities for the discovery of intellectual interests, and (3) to provide preparation for later collegiate or professional training.

In the 1974-75 undergraduate bulletin a definition had become so unfocused that it was buried beneath a definition of the General College itself:

…the General College provides a basic pattern of required courses and electives designed to introduce every student to concepts, modes of thought, and methods of the various academic disciplines, to encourage an intelligent choice of a degree program, and to facilitate changes in the program, usually without loss of time of [sic] credit.

By 1994 the university had restructured its curriculum, dividing it between what it called “perspectives” and “basic skills.” The perspectives were massive clusters of courses designed to teach students “both the content and the methodologies of several disciplines.” There were five clusters of perspectives: aesthetic, natural science, philosophical, social sciences, and Western historical/non-Western/comparative.

The 1994-95 undergraduate bulletin’s definition of general education… has more focus than the two previous definitions, it is the first to provide agency for the definition itself (instead of ascribing it by omission to society as a whole, as in 1954-55’s “which is regarded as essential to balanced development and intelligent citizenry”), and it appears somewhat lightweight as a reflection of collegiate learning. The 1994-95 undergraduate bulletin’s definition is:

The faculty believe that General Education rests upon the knowledge and practice of the Basic Skills. These include the ability to:

• write clearly,

• read critically,

• speak effectively,

• comprehend a foreign language,

• use mathematics,

• reason analytically,

• understand abstract ideas.

Source: Jon Sanders, “Extra Curricular: How general education at UNC-Chapel Hill has changed from 1934 to 1995,” Clarion magazine, December 1996.

The Proposed New Definition of a General Education at UNC-CH

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill strives to cultivate the skills, knowledge, values, and habits that will allow graduates to lead personally enriching and socially responsible lives as effective citizens of rapidly changing, richly diverse, and increasingly interconnected local, national, and worldwide communities. The undergraduate experience aims to foster in Carolina graduates the curiosity, initiative, integrity, and adaptability requisite for success in the complex, demanding environment of the twenty-first century world.

To this end our curriculum seeks to provide for all students: (1) the fundamental skills that will facilitate future learning;1 (2) broad experience with the methods and results of the most widely employed approaches to knowledge; (3) a sense of how one might integrate these approaches to knowledge in a way that can cross traditional disciplinary boundaries; and (4) a thorough grounding in one particular subject. The General Education Curriculum focuses on the first three of these curricular goals; the undergraduate major is dedicated to the fourth.

1 These include the ability to write lucidly, read perceptively, and speak effectively in English, reasonable facility in one foreign language, and a confident competence in the use of quantitative reasoning.