Report of the General Education Committee
for 2000 - 2001

October 18, 2001

The Committee met five times during the academic year. Several items that were dealt with deserve attention.

1) The Committee continued to develop (and analyze the results of) an instructor survey designed to determine the ways in which the general education objectives are addressed in the distribution courses. Survey results for Fall 2000 and Spring 2001 are attached.

• More than 90 percent of the instructors seek to develop critical thinking skills in their students; almost two-thirds seek to do so in four/more ways.
• More than 80 percent of the instructors require some form of writing; more than a third require two/more forms of writing.
• More than 60 percent of the instructors require oral communication; about a third require two/more forms of oral communication.
• More than 40 percent of the instructors require some form of teamwork; more than a quarter expect two/more forms of teamwork.

2) The Committee continued to monitor the frequency with which all general education distribution courses are offered. Day and evening offerings are ample and varied in Humanities and the Arts and in Social and Behavioral Sciences. Offerings are rather limited in the Natural Sciences in the evening.

3) The Committee continued to monitor student/instructor evaluations of the University Seminar program. The evaluations continue to be very positive. Students who earn a passing grade in the Fall University Seminar are much more likely to be enrolled one year later. Moreover, these students earn Fall-semester GPAs that are well above those of students who avoid the Fall Seminar, and do so with no advantage in ACT scores. Students who receive a grade of F in the Seminar perform very poorly in their other courses as well, earning an average semester GPA of 0.89.

Despite the introduction of the Seminar program in 1994, the retention rate for new freshmen at UW-P has remained the lowest or second-lowest among the UW comprehensive institutions throughout the 1990s.

4) At the end of the year, the Committee met jointly with the Ethnic Studies Steering Committee (ESSC) to discuss the possibility of creating a new graduation requirement in cross-cultural (i.e., international) studies that would complement the current (domestic) diversity requirement. There was a good deal of support for the concept and the ESSC agreed to work with the International Studies Steering Committee to develop a more specific proposal for discussion in the coming year.

Larry Duetsch, Chair