Responses to the WASC 1990 Report

Three Models for General Education

Implementation of Track A

Current Status of GE at Cal Poly Pomona

Reccomendations

The WASC visiting team in its report of Spring 1990 "paid special attention" to general education as an "important WASC standard" and an "increasingly important national issue." WASC advised the university of the continuing need to "incorporate general education into its academic mission," and expressed concern that general education in a polytechnic university not be considered merely an "adjunct to the main educational enterprise" (pp. 14-15). It urged the university to move toward "creative resolution" of the struggles and "considerable controversy" it had endured for "nearly a decade," and recommended that faculty and administration work together to produce "a more integrated [general education] program specifically designed for a polytechnic university" (pp.15, 17, 49).

The WASC team noted problems of fragmentation and lack of structure and guiding themes in the university’s distributional general education curriculum, related to the use of student resource formulas to drive the allocation of budgets to departments and colleges. These formulas played "too large a role in the design and designation of general education requirements," with the result that "unnecessary turf battles" became the "focus of curricular decisions." In particular WASC urged the university’s "central academic administration" to "play a more active role in reducing this dysfunction" (p.17):

IGE

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WASC lauded the university’s Interdisciplinary General Education (IGE) program, a nationally recognized pioneer in interdisciplinary general education offering undergraduates in engineering and other disciplines an integrated approach to general education in the humanities and social sciences through a team-taught 32-unit interdisciplinary course sequence (see above). The university at one time discussed the possibility of expanding IGE to serve as an integrated general education program for the entire university, but this was not feasible due to resource constraints and the multiplicity of student demands and schedules. Many tenured faculty value the opportunity of team teaching both with lecturers and other regular faculty in such a context, but their departments sometimes cannot spare them and the reward system is ambiguous in regard to inter-disciplinary work. The lecturers who form the core of IGE are highly qualified, talented, and dedicated, but cannot be expected to manage the program on the same terms as a regular academic department staffed by regular faculty.

WASC urged the university to develop a curricular response to the "laudable goal" of a common core of interdisciplinary general education that would serve a significant number of students at the university (pp.15-16).

In response to the recommendations of the WASC team, the Academic Senate and its Educational Policies Committee (EPC) assumed responsibility for reviewing general education programs in the Fall 1990. The primary goal of the Senate’s review was "to produce a more integrated program specifically addressing the needs of a polytechnic university" (CSPUP WASC Interim Report 1994: p.11). The EPC established a subcommittee to deal exclusively with issues related to general education, which became a permanent standing subcommittee of the Senate in 1992-93 because of the ongoing importance of general education.

After a two-year process of campus-wide deliberation and debate on general education, the General Education Committee of the Academic Senate proposed in the Winter 1992 three general education models designed for the university and its programs: the common core, discipline-based, and thematic. The committee unanimously concluded that major changes were needed in general education at Cal Poly Pomona, and recommended greater integration, more cohesion, inclusion of cultural diversity, and an increased polytechnic emphasis.

The high proportion of transfer students and diversity of educational backgrounds and previous college-level coursework among Cal Poly Pomona students suggested the need to retain a discipline-based distributional general education curriculum as an alternative to a common core providing an integrative educational experience (CSPUP General Education, 1998b: 4). A proposal for a two-track general education program was advanced by the Academic Senate and approved by President Suzuki in 1993, with a commitment of university resources to support implementation.

Track A

Track A featured a new 12-course integrated core curriculum, satisfying areas 1, 3, and 5 of the general education curriculum, designed to promote greater coherence, relevance, and depth of study, and to provide a common learning experience fostering intellectual exchange among faculty and students. Track A was intended to serve most of the university’s incoming freshmen. The new courses would be developed by twelve course development committees consisting of faculty volunteers from different departments and disciplines, preparing extended course outlines for review and approval by the Academic Senate. Assessment was a major emphasis of the new Track A curriculum, with methods of assessment built into each course. (See Appendix C1.)

Track B

Track B retained the discipline-based distributional curriculum taken by most of the university’s students, and criticized by WASC, with two changes: the inclusion of an American multicultural perspectives requirement previously approved by the Academic Senate, and the dissolution of the upper-division thematic "packages" of the existing curriculum into a roster of over 240 individual courses, to be reviewed for appropriateness and feasibility in the new upper division curriculum. Track B was meant to serve as an alternative general education curriculum primarily for transfer students, offering a variety of courses in different disciplines and subject matters providing students greater flexibility in scheduling and selection.

WASC Interim Report 1994

The university’s interim report of 1994 (see Chapter II and Appendix A6) credited WASC’s earlier "critique of the state of general education at Cal Poly Pomona" for serving as "a stimulus for the entire university" in designing the two tracks of general education. The report noted the "enormous challenge" in revising general education at a time of "significant budgetary constraints," praised campus discussions of GE as "spirited and valuable," and prophesied that "the same commitment to dialogue, consultation, and collaboration" would be necessary as the university moved toward implementation of the new general education tracks (p.37). WASC, in turn, praised the university’s efforts to revise its general education programs, and the integrative design of the new Track A curriculum.

Implementation of Track A

The subsequent implementation of Track A was marred by myriad delays and problems, poor planning and strategic mistakes, resurgent turf wars and emerging resistance, and a certain amount of disinterest and lack of commitment, combining to seal the fate of the fledgling program fewer than three years after it was born. The first courses in Track A were taught in the Fall Quarter 1996 and the last in the 1998-99 school year. The implementation and termination of Track A offer important lessons from which the university has profited in its subsequent efforts to revise the general education program. Among them, it dramatizes the difficulty of constructing successful inter-disciplinary courses and curricula at a comprehensive, commuter-dominated university such as Cal Poly Pomona, for the following reasons:

• Institutional expense, at a time of downsized budgets and resources;
• Course scheduling, ensuring access to required courses and sequences for students with diverse schedules and needs;
• Course articulation, when over half of the university’s students at that time were transfers from local and mainly community colleges;
• Student preparation, when around 65% of incoming freshmen require remediation before enrolling in general education courses and foundational sequences.

In response to the problems of Track A, the General Education Committee of the Academic Senate initiated a campus-wide process in January 1998 to draft a new referral on general education, based on the review of alternative general education practices and models. In collaboration with the College of Letters, Arts, and Social Sciences General Education Task Force and the Faculty Center for Professional Development, the Committee invited Dr. John Harrington, Director of the General Education Program at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, to Cal Poly Pomona for a day-long colloquium on general education on January 23, 1998. The referral presented in May 1998 recommended that Cal Poly Pomona undertake "a fundamental change of its general education curriculum and governance structure." After extensive study, consultation and debate, the referral proposed organizational changes that caused the Academic Senate to reject it.

The GE Committee developed an alternative revision of general education during the 1998-99 academic year, eliminating the governance structure to which the Senate objected. In a referral to the Academic Senate in May 1999, the Committee proposed a revision of the university’s general education curriculum to provide a "comprehensive and integrated general education program" complementing and enhancing the "extensive technical and professional training" of most Cal Poly Pomona students. The revised curriculum included required capstone courses in the areas of humanities, social sciences, and science and technology, replacing Area 5 requirements, but not necessarily existing courses, providing "the possibility of integration of the upper division capstone courses into thematic groups" (pp.4-5). In proposing the capstones, the Committee "accepted the need, following national trends...to incorporate assessment components into G.E. revision," and argued that no department "would be harmed by FTEs shifts occasioned by GE revision" (pp. 3-5).

The proposal was defeated, after vigorous debate and discussion, in a vote of the full Senate in October 1999. The Academic Senate Steering Committee, in a subsequent memo to the General Education Committee, cited "four distinct issues" that needed to be addressed by the Committee in order to "satisfy concerns" and "move forward a General Education program that more fully, and adequately, meets the spirit of Executive Order 595." In particular they requested to identify:

• The ways in which the areas of humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences were to be "given internal coherence and integration" through capstone courses;
• Clearly defined means, by which the university would move from current requirements to the proposed capstone courses from "a budgetary as well as academic standpoint."

The General Education Committee submitted a revised proposal to the Senate in May 2000 (Appendix C1). In its response, the Committee cited assurances of the Deans that "no department would be allowed to suffer from dropping Category 5 in favor of the capstones." The Committee presented detailed descriptions of the proposed capstone courses "in order to obviate objections about either intent or content," and a timeline for submission of the first capstone proposals in the Fall 2000 and full phase-in of the revised general education program in the Fall Quarter 2001 (p.2).

The university now has three general education programs: IGE, ISGE, and the Track B general education curriculum. The IGE Program, despite its pioneering excellence, remains expensive and labor-intensive, enrolling 200-300 students and engaging relatively few tenure-track and tenured faculty. This enrollment is good considering that only fully prepared freshmen are eligible, but the program has the capacity and would benefit from higher enrollment. ISGE, supported by numerous grants and celebrated for its innovative use of technology and assessment, remains a work in progress with little support on campus in terms of inclusion in the flow charts of various majors.

After a decade of extensive efforts, the Track B curriculum stands to be replaced by a more integrated program, one that develops the intellectual potential of students and reflects the polytechnic mission of the university. Intensive consultations and collaborative efforts with the deans, associate deans, and curriculum chairs over the last year have set the stage for the accomplishment of this goal. The new program addresses the concerns that several departments and senators articulated, meets the requirements of EO 595, includes an assessment component, and introduces capstone courses including an inter-disciplinary capstone. It provides a potential for the IGE and ISGE programs to expand their audiences by adapting some of their courses to become capstone courses. The deans have pledged in writing to work collaboratively with department chairs and central Academic Affairs to facilitate the implementation of the new program as soon as it is approved by the Academic Senate and President Suzuki. They have committed to ensuring a smooth transition to the new program and to addressing department concerns about potential loss of FTES and budgets.

Recommendations

The excellent current general education proposal stands a very good chance of passing at the September or October Academic Senate meetings, and the potential expansion and applicability of the IGE and ISGE programs offer helpful directions for general education on our campus and hope for solving the problems at last. The university should continue noteworthy efforts toward:

1. Supporting the collaborative efforts of the General Education Committee, the Academic Senate, Academic Affairs, and all colleges and schools to complete the approval process of the new general education proposal, as a strategic university initiative;
2. Facilitating the implementation of the new program as soon as it is approved and to ensure a smooth transition for the benefit of our students;
3. Strengthening IGE and ISGE and encouraging cross-fertilization and reciprocal synergistic beneficial relations between those programs and the new general education program.

The Self-Study also finds the collaboration among faculty and the administration with respect to GE to be fruitful. Already, this coalition approach has begun to:

• Find solutions to the problems in general education cited in 1990 by WASC and those we have identified ourselves in the interim;
• Learn from mistakes made by the university and others in general education development and reform made by our campus and others;
• Learn from emerging body of models and best practices for general education reform such as have been published by SLO, Cecilia Lopez, etc;
• Develop a learning-centered general education curriculum with clear goals and adequate assessment for our diverse students and polytechnic mission, building on the tradition of student-centered learn-by-doing.