GE Minutes 11-11-2011

Snow College Ad Hoc General Education Assessment Committee
November 11, 2011
In attendance: Tracie Bradley, Patty Meredith, Mel Jacobsen,
LaFaun Barnhurst, Clinton King, Joseph Papenfuss, Melanie
Jenkins, Jeff Carney (chair), Rick White (ex officio)

MINUTES

Minutes from October 28 were unavailable.

NEW GE OUTCOMES

The committee continued discussions of the draft version of new
GE Outcomes. A working draft is attached to minutes of 10.14.
A few minutes were spent discussing rumors that the Fine Arts
Division was concerned that a previous outcome, "respond[ing]
with informed sensitivity," does not exist in the current
proposal. It was Jeff's opinion, with the committee agreeing,
that reasoning "analytically, critically, and creatively
about . . . culture [and] values" was the functional equivalent
and would be easier to assess. Patty indicated that she would
discuss the matter with the Fine Arts Division at their next
meeting.

CHANGES

The committee was satisfied with changes Jeff made to Outcomes
#2 and #3 pusuant to last week's discussion.

OUTCOME #6

Most of the day's discussion focused on Outcome #6. So much time
was required because, as an explicit outcome, integrated
learning is new to Snow College. Anecdotal reports suggest that
integrated learning occurs at the college, but not in a
systematic way. Most of the discussion was centered on ways to
implement and assess the outcome.
A suggestion was raised that adding an interdisciplinary
capstone course to the GE Distribution Requirements would be an
ideal way to implement the outcome. It would also create an
opportunity near the end of the 2-year experience to assess a
variety of other GE outcomes. A number of committee members
recalled that capstone courses are considered high-impact
learning experiences by education specialists. Joseph suggested,
to general agreement, that programs with very tight schedules
could adapt existing courses into capstone courses. This would
minimize disruptions to those programs.
ommittee members agreed to report back next week with
suggestions about the exact nature of a capstone course.