Connecticut College’s General Education requirements can be difficult to complete, decide upon, sit through, talk about and change. Possible changes in the Gen Ed system, upon implementation, will affect the majority of the current student body. This makes us consider the purpose of a liberal arts school – most people come to a liberal arts school such as Conn because we’re not a charter school, a huge university or a science and technology college. But what does that really mean? How do Gen Ed requirements, which are typically unique to liberal arts schools, fit into this picture?
During the past few months, students and faculty have attempted to find answers to what constitutes a liberal arts education. Not many have been fully happy with the Gen Ed system we currently have in place, but it was not until recently that goals and outcomes were more formally established for the policy.
This lengthy process began earlier in the school year when students, faculty, staff and administration were grouped together on discussion panels to debate about what changes were needed for the College to better serve the student body. The Gen Ed Committee conducted surveys, held a Gen Ed awareness week and invented the “Sticky Project,” in which members of the Conn community were invited to share words that they believed described a liberal arts education. These efforts culminated in a final town hall meeting in the Harkness Chapel. Such discussions sparked interest in students and led to conversations within the confines of individual classrooms. It seemed as if the entire campus was buzzing with curiosity about the prospect of change.
Haichuan Luo ’15, one of the few students on the committee, explained that they have now produced a proposal for the Gen Ed system that includes the areas of knowledge, skills, ethics and diversity. Within these areas, there will hopefully be research, writing and community service opportunities for all students. When asked what his idea of a liberal arts education was, Luo replied that it should both expose students to a wide variety of subjects and at the same time “allow them the freedom to think and choose for themselves.”
There have been attempts in the past to modify the General Education system, but thus far they have all failed. Professors worried that without students trying to fulfill a Gen Ed requirement through their introductory level classes, their department would crash; this is still a concern, but surely filling the intro classes with uninterested students is not the right way to sustain a department. There should be a more creative way to maintain the integrity of liberal arts, which is interdisciplinary by nature, while also allowing students the liberty to choose for themselves.
The idea of “high impact learning” has been a hot topic among recent conversations, as it stresses an active approach to quality – rather than quantity – learning. Rather than taking uninteresting and impersonalized intro classes, high impact learning would use seminars and discussions to get students fully engaged in the classroom. The aim isn’t to cram excessive amounts of material down students’ throats, knowing that they’ll never think twice about it again, but rather, to expose them to many different ideas so that maybe one of them will stick. “Our approach needs to be creative,” says Luo, and if that incorporates writing, research and community service, so be it.
With so much fervor, change is hopefully in the future. It seems as if the project has enveloped and excited the community. This summer, a group of faculty will work together to assess the working model that the committee has put together. Next year, a new group will convene to finalize the project and put it into action for the Class of 2018.
Although the project is near the finish line, Luo stresses that it remains an ongoing process. Faculty have even suggested that it would be wise to have meetings to reconvene and discuss these topics again – it’s important to keep the issues fresh so that we won’t have to develop an entirely new system again. If we modify it little by little, then people will think of it as a fluid structure, which it should be, rather than something sour and rigid.
Always open for discussion and controversy, Gen Eds are not meant to be a single, final solution, but rather a slow and steady development of ideas and goals. In closing, Luo stated: “The process will not end – it’s something that we should look forward to evaluating as we move forward into the coming years.”
