Changes made to general education core

Students enrolling this fall will be under a new general education course catalogue of 42 credit hours rather than the former 51 hours. 

An increase in hours of the Bible core initiated a domino effect to change the entire core, more information about the Bible changes can be found here. The new core seeks to remedy inconsistencies in the prior core curriculum which in some situations hindered students.

Provost Brian Starr explained issues with the former core. 

“Our general education core was not a true core. It varied by major, and that’s not what a core curriculum is supposed to be. Core curriculum is supposed to be at the bachelor’s level, a set of fields that all students, regardless of major, have to study,” Starr said. “But we didn’t have a true core. We had what we call tier one and tier two, or core, and flux core and flex core is where it varied by majors. So some majors would have psychology in the core, and some majors wouldn’t, well, that’s confusing… We wanted a common core so that regardless of what your major is, you’ve got the same basic set of general disciplines that you have studied.”

David North, the chair of engineering and computer science, was appointed as chair of the committee dedicated to compiling a new core. He explained the four step process the committee utilized.

“We wanted to first understand the problem well. It turns out it’s a fairly complicated problem… And then once we had understood the problem really well, then we could maybe devise a solution. And then once we devised the solution, well, we need to implement it because you can’t just say, ‘We have a new core.’ There’s lots of work to make that happen at the university,” North said. “We had that kind of four step plan in mind to understand the problem, devise the solution, implement the solution and then evaluate the solution.”

North talked about the collaborative effort put into this project. 

“We sought out input from all of the faculty, and we did that in a number of ways, and from all the department chairs who had to do the advising and plan the rest of the curriculum, and from all the deans and from our board of trustees who ostensibly supervised the whole university in some way. And from the provost and from the president and so everybody got to tell us what was important to them,” North said. “We interviewed a lot of people and we surveyed the faculty about what they liked and what they didn’t like about our current core and what suggestions they had. We got over 400 different kinds of comments and many of them multiple times. We took all that data and tried to analyze it and categorize it so we could kind of see what were the most important things that people said.”

The finalized plan passed a faculty vote by 83 percent. 

North echoed an emphasis of liberal arts in a university core. 

“Our core is what we call a liberal arts core, so most of the courses in it are liberal arts courses because we think liberal arts is about learning about being human. The human activities that we do whether that’s speaking or talking or writing or thinking or living together or understanding people. Those kinds of courses we think are important to make a well educated person.” 

Starr offered insight to the value of a general core for students.

“The whole goal is to serve students well and to provide you with a really good, well rounded education. We know certain students will very much like this. Certain students will say, ‘Why can’t I just study accounting all the time?’ But my defense of a core where you have to study different topics is that life is very dynamic,” Starr said. “It’s going to change, and you never know what you’re going to need later in life. So we want to educate you so that when life changes and technology changes and industries change, that you’re very well prepared and well educated and ready to pivot to the new realities that confront you. That’s our goal, and we hope we can achieve it with this new core curriculum.”

North said the new core will be evaluated after its first year in use with the hope of making improvements as needed. While this new core will not impact current students, they are allowed to switch catalogs with approval from their advisors if it would be a beneficial choice. However, if this change is made, a student cannot switch back to a former core.