STATEMENT OF THE UNIVERSITY FACULTY SENATE

OF THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK

COMMITTEE ON ACADEMIC POLICY

TOWARDS A DEFINITION OF GENERAL EDUCATION

(Received by University Faculty Senate, April 28, 1999)

Any common general education requirement should embody these goals and guidelines. It should be crafted along the following principles:

1. The program must meet the approval, support, and resources of the constituent colleges. (Approval presumably includes specifically faculty consultation and approval.)

2. The general education requirement should be consistent with the constituent colleges’ individual missions.

3. The general education requirement should be crafted in terms of broad areas of inquiry, not specific courses.

4. Within areas of inquiry, specific courses and course content should be determined by the faculty concerned with the courses, in accordance with the generally stated goals of a liberal arts education.

A. Knowledge and Inquiry Domains:

1. Knowledge of the human condition and human cultures, especially in relation to behavior, ideas, and values expressed in works of art, literature, music and philosophy that engender appreciation of the arts and humanities as fundamental to the cultural health and survival of any society.

2. Understanding of physical and biological principles, methods of scientific inquiry, and problems inherent in the technical application of these principles to the solution of real-world problems.

3. Knowledge of how social and behavioral scientists discover, describe, and explain the behaviors and interactions among individual groups, institutions, events, and ideas.

4. Knowledge of the ways in which individuals and groups are identified in society and how societies and institutions use characteristics such as class, culture, ethnicity, gender, race and other differences to define and separate people.

5. Understanding of the growing interdependence of nations and peoples, and the need to apply a comparative perspective to cross-cultural social, economic, and political issues, ideally informed by the study of a foreign language(s) and critical thinking about environmental issues.

6. Understanding today’s complex environmental challenges and the biophysical and sociocultural systems that are the foundation for integrative and critical thinking about environmental issues.

7. The ability to identify, discuss, and reflect upon ethical dimensions of political, social and personal life so as to exercise responsible and productive citizenship.

B. Skills and Competencies:

1. The development of the ability to write and speak English effectively, as well as to read and listen critically.

2. The development of the ability to unify factual, creative, rational, and value-sensitive modes of thought.

3. The development of knowledge of the basic sources of information and their locations, as well as how to access and manipulate them.

4. The development of basic knowledge about and the ability to use quantitative data and processes to help students with decisions in their lives and careers.

A review of the general education requirements of all the community colleges in the CUNY system (see the Survey of General Education Requirements embodied in the chart crested by Dean Hotzler, January 1999), reveals that for AA. BA (and BBA) degrees these exceed the New York State requirements in the liberal arts and the existing requirement at SUNY. Specific configurations vary from college to college, but all the programs have been carefully thought through and have evolved within each college to serve the needs of diverse populations and various missions. They have been crafted with a view to fulfilling the goals of a liberal education in accordance with the principles and guidelines outlined below.

For the most part, CUNY colleges have a distribution requirement, as does SUNY (i.e., courses are selected individually by students from a menu of approved courses In specific required areas), but Brooklyn College, for example, has a core requirement (i.e., specific courses are required of all students). Nevertheless, certain common goals and principles define a liberal arts education for all of the colleges and provide a framework within which they set their individual requirements.

The overarching goal of the liberal arts is to provide students with an education that will prepare them to live in an increasingly complex society and give them intellectual, social, and technological tools to help them make sense of it, of their place in it, and the choices they must make as human beings and citizens of a body politic. Faced with a vast array of information and contending modes of thought, ethical systems and cultural paradigms, students must learn to gather information, think critically, become self-reflective, make informed choices, and formulate and communicate their own ideas effectively. Recognizing the importance of historical antecedents is also implicit in a liberal education, enabling people to see themselves within a continuum of past and future. Societies are becoming increasingly technological, utilizing complex equipment and systems in almost all of their institutions. Physical, biological, behavioral and social scientists and mathematicians have introduced an array of techniques and devices on which both the private and public sectors, businesses and schools have become more and more dependent. If they learn to understand the technological bases of societal institutions, students will be better able to negotiate such systems and function effectively within them.

A liberal arts education is more than the sum of the courses a student takes. It seeks to elicit a reflective "habit of the mind" and a set of operational guidelines that will lead the student to the formulation of significant questions that will point the way to the answer s/he seeks. A liberal education is not achieved through a single set body of knowledge provided by a specifically selected menu of courses; many different courses may help one achieve these goals. The hallmark of a liberal education is the search for answers to questions whose nature, formulation, urgency, and significance change with the immeasurable and unpredictable changes in our increasingly complex lives.

A liberal arts requirement can thus be established and finally measured only in terms of how closely it approaches the goals outlined above. It must be flexible enough to accommodate the rapid changes in the structure and perceptions of our society and the state of our information and knowledge; it must complement the different purposes of our extraordinarily diverse student population and the missions of individual colleges. But it cannot be haphazard; it must be rigorous enough to produce the intellectual discipline and commitment to the search for knowledge that characterize the educated human being.

The Academic Policy Committee of the Faculty Senate regards the above definitions and goals of a liberal arts education as essential guidelines for the construction of any general education requirement or program. We present below and endorse the excellent work of the faculty of the State University of New York’s Joint Tusk Force on General Education in establishing clear categories of "Skills and Competencies" and "Knowledge and Inquiry Domains" as operational guidelines for the evaluation of liberal arts programs. We find these consistent with the aims of a liberal arts education as outlined above.

Respectfully submitted,

(Prof.) Eva H. Richter, Chair Committee on Academic Policy