Gen-ed deadline is too soon
Goodman tells FSEC that UB needs more time to draft plan

By MARA McGINNIS
Reporter Assistant Editor

The timeline for implementation of the general-education curriculum adopted last year by the SUNY Board of Trustees does not give UB much time to develop its own program proposal, Nicolas Goodman, vice provost for undergraduate education, told the Faculty Senate Executive Committee at its Sept. 29 meeting.

Goodman, who provided FSEC members with implementation guidelines for the new program that were developed by the SUNY Provost's Advisory Task Force on General Education, pointed out that the Board of Trustees wants each campus to prepare and submit its individual general-education program proposals by Dec. 31 so that the new curricula can be implemented by Fall 2000.

However, he said that it is "not likely we can do anything in that amount of time."

The SUNY trustees last Dec. 15 adopted a general-education curriculum for the system's four university centers and 13 four-year colleges that requires candidates for bachelor's degrees to complete at least 30 credit hours of coursework in mathematics, natural science, social science, American history, western civilization, other world civilizations, humanities and the arts, foreign languages, basic communication and reasoning, and information management.

While trustees left the responsibility for establishing specific course requirements and program content to the faculty of each institution, faculty members at UB and other institutions had chided the board for not making the curriculum available for comment by faculty in advance of the trustees' adoption.

Goodman also told executive committee members that he was concerned about a particular clause in the trustees' guidelines relating to transfer students that says "courses certified as fulfilling particular general-education requirements by any institution in the system will fulfill those requirements at any other institution in the system, without the necessity of individual articulation agreements."

He referred to this part of the implementation guidelines as "problematic," since it means "if a student has completed a general-education program somewhere else, they are exempt from UB's" program. The transfer clause, he said, focuses on "courses," while "we should be focusing on learning outcomes."

Although Provost David Triggle will have "oversight responsibilities" for UB's program, Goodman said that Kerry Grant, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, has agreed to "be responsible for working out the details of the program."

President William R. Greiner noted that although the Board of Trustees may have rushed into the issue, the SUNY-wide, general-education curriculum is something that "ought to be taken seriously" by UB. "There is always room for improvement," Greiner said about UB's general-education program. "I like to look for the positive."

Some senators noted that the SUNY curriculum differs from UB's in that it requires American history and a separate Western civilization course, as well as only basic proficiency in a foreign language while UB's program requires at least intermediate proficiency. The SUNY curriculum also calls for two separate courses, one each in the humanities and the arts, while UB's program combines the two into one.

Senate Chair Peter Nickerson asked the Educational Programs and Policies Committee to review the implementation guidelines for the SUNY general-education requirement.

In other business, Goodman updated FSEC members on the university's fall enrollment, and pointed out with "great satisfaction" that the percentage of continuing/returning students had increased to 84.2 percent this fall from 81.7 percent last year.

He noted that the retention success is due to several factors, among them block scheduling, UB 101 and the aggressive recruitment of merit-based scholarship recipients.

Based on an enrollment "snapshot" taken Sept. 17, the actual headcount at UB for Fall 1999 totals 24,257 students, 637 students over the 23,620 student target set by SUNY and 887 more students than Fall 1998.