Telling Our Story of General Education Reform

Committee Leadership In fall 2013, the faculty senate appointed the Academic Core Curriculum Committee (ACCC), thirteen faculty members from across the three colleges, to lead the reform process. [...]understanding how to design learningcentered courses is a critical component of their role. In anticipation of the potential impact of this campus-wide event and the possible alignment with the new curriculum goals, the directors of General Education and the CAFE developed a grant-funded teaching program encouraging faculty to develop integrative courses focused on presidential elections and/or political debate. TAKEAWAYS Our takeaways and advice to others who are planning general education reform efforts are featured in the bulleted list below. * Be open to a fluid and transparent process that involves a great deal of communication and listening. * Maintain a continued pragmatism with an attitude toward experimentation. * Adopt a stance of confident humility, in which you acknowledge you may not have all the answers or be able to anticipate all the questions, but that you will work together to discover them. * Recognize that large-scale curricular change is a process involving individual faculty, academic programs, and the larger institutional culture. * Convene a diverse committee representing stakeholders with varied experiences with general education, institutional history, and leadership responsibilities. * Understand academic culture, faculty readiness, and external and institutional administration expectations.