November 19, 2002

To: General Education Task Force

From: Teresa Marcy

Re: Current General Education Requirements

This is a summary of my 1996 research into how current requirements got there:

In 1971-72 a student earning a BA needed to complete the following:

6 sh Theology 6 sh Philosophy

6 sh English 8 sh Laboratory Science

6 sh History 6 sh Social Science

6 sh Fine Arts 6 sh Mathematics

6 sh Foreign Language (more, if the student did not enter at the intermediate level)

In addition, students did not have many choices about which courses to take to satisfy requirements.

During the 72-73 year, an "Area Committee on Academic Concerns" met to review the requirements, with an eye toward reducing their number and introducing options. A proposal was submitted, and comments received. There was clearly a turf battle–the people making comments invariably found reasons not to reduce the requirements in their field. The proposal was debated at length, one change was made, and the resulting plan was adopted and used for many years.

The 1973 revisions reduced the total number of courses required, by cutting most departmental requirements and adding the catch-all category we now call "additional designated courses." Religious studies, philosophy, English, history, and math each lost one required course, but students could use a second course in these areas to satisfy the extra requirements. They could also use courses in the fine arts (the specific fine arts requirement disappeared), humanistic studies, and "Speech and Drama." The writing proficiency requirement was made separate from the course requirement in English, and could be attached to courses in other departments. Science and social science requirements were unchanged. The language requirement was reduced to one year, and the level would depend on the student’s background in the chosen language.

Departments were encouraged to offer different possible courses to satisfy requirements. In history, for example, all students used to take Western Civ. Starting with this revision they could also take US history, and World Civ was introduced (at the time this meant the history of non-Western parts of the world). Other departments made similar changes.

Much later two additional requirements were added: a second course in religious studies, and a fine arts course.