General Education Review Committee

Annual Report 1996-97

Submitted by Colleen Stameshkin, Chairperson

96-97 Members	Department
Colleen Stameshkin Chair	Philosophy
Ana Borger-Reese	Foreign Languages
Bonnie Duncan	English
Fred Foster-Clark	Psychology
Enyang Guo	Business Administration
Joseph McCade	ITEC
(Barbara Montgomery)	Social Sciences and Humanities (Added 4/97)
Tanya Murphy*	Student Senate
Ed Rajaseelan	Chemistry
Judi Roller*	Academic Affairs
Kathleen Schreiber	Geography
Delray Schultz	Mathematics
Marjorie White*	Library

Meetings:
The GERC meets every 2nd and 4th Tuesday when classes are in session, from 4:05 until approximately 5:30 p.m. This semester, we occasionally had to meet at other times when our usual time was preempted by special senate meetings.

Motions forwarded to Senate
The GERC offered numerous motions and suggestions regarding the recommendations of the General Education Task Force.

Actions by the Committee
The General Education Review Committee has spent most of its time and energy this year on three tasks.
First we have continued to learn about outcomes assessment strategies for general education and to work on developing a general education assessment plan for Millersville University. Most members participated in at least one outcomes assessment workshops and symposia during the year, and many participated in several. during the visit to our campus by our consultant, James Nichols, we had a chance to do some hands on work on general education assessment and receive feedback from Nichols. All department chairs will soon receive a short questionnaire from us asking for some specific input regarding our immediate task of redefining the goals and objectives of general education, and we also will be seeking recommendations from them of individuals interested in working with us on this task.

A second task of our committee has been to prepare for our meeting with Deans' Council to discuss the Five-Year Performance Review for the general education program, which our committee wrote last academic year. when the General Education Task Force released its report last November, we had to delay this meeting, but it is being rescheduled to take place as soon as possible.

Finally, we have spent most of our time from November through April discussing the recommendations of the General Education Task Force, formulating our opinions about each part of the recommendations, and presenting our advice to Faculty Senate. this has involved extra committee meetings, occasional attendance at senate meetings by non-senator members, and generally much hard work from all.

Plans for Next Year:
As soon as fall elections supply us with our full complement of members, the GERC will move ahead as quickly as possible with its goal of redefining the goals and objectives of general education in order to make them assessable. Each committee member will be in charge of one set of goals and objectives, and will form a subcommittee of individuals representing various departments that have a particular interest in those goals and objectives. After receiving feedback from department chairs, each subcommittee will formulate assessable goals and objectives, and bring these to the full committee. By the time the full committee brings its suggested revisions to faculty senate, there will have been significant input from all interested departments, so that hopefully we will be able to move toward adoption of the revised goals and objectives as quickly as possible. Once adoption has taken place, each subcommittee will move towards the even ore complicated task of a) suggesting what curricular revisions will be required to implement the new goals and objectives, b) coming up with two reasonable means of assessing each distinct objective, and c) deciding which three to five of the total list of general education objectives we shouls assess over the next several years.

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