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Peer Review, Fall 2004
Designing a Signature
General Education Program
By Stephen L. Trainor, dean of undergraduate
studies, Salve Regina University |
Notoriously contentious and protracted,
efforts to reform general education curricula can prove frustrating
for the participants, and they often end in failure. In particular,
the goal of producing a signature program--a curriculum
that captures the distinctive mission and essence of an institution--often
remains elusive, sacrificed to the exigencies of political
compromise or financial constraints. The source of the problem
usually can be traced to the process involved in a given curricular
reform. In its effort to develop a new signature general education
curriculum, Salve Regina University was able to avoid many
of the usual pitfalls by adopting a formal problem-solving
model that emphasizes creativity and involves the entire faculty
in the process.
How Does the Process Affect the
Outcome?
The problem is not that colleges and
universities do not pay attention to process; rather, difficulties
arise from their failure to anticipate the results a given
process is likely to produce. In designing a signature program,
the typical procedure is to appoint a committee to produce
a curricular model and then present it to the entire faculty
for consideration, debate, and a vote. Great care is taken
to ensure that all viewpoints are represented on this committee,
in the hope that the final model will produce consensus among
the larger faculty. While it seems plausible on the surface,
this process is, for a variety of reasons, unlikely to produce
a distinctive signature program.
Precisely because they were chosen as
representatives, the committee members are concerned to speak
for their constituents' interests--the liberal
arts, the professional programs, the humanities or the social
sciences, the territory of a single department or discipline.
It is the rare faculty member who can transcend his or her
own area and speak for the institution as a whole. Thus, this
typical process practically guarantees that the committee
will be at odds with itself in most of its deliberations.
To produce a model that will achieve
consensus among the faculty is a laudable goal; the core curriculum
should have widespread support. Yet in striving to reach this
elusive goal, the committee may be forced to sacrifice the
more distinctive elements of any signature model in favor
of domestic harmony. Accordingly, the most likely outcome
is a least-common-denominator model designed to offend no
one and to garner the necessary votes from the wider faculty.
Because they are established up front
and the model is developed to satisfy them, the criteria for
the new curriculum actually are design elements in disguise.
As such, these restrictive criteria can undermine the committee's
ability to come up with a distinctive signature program. Finally,
since the committee's task is to produce a single model,
the voting faculty's only comparative frame of reference
is the current core curriculum (aka the devil that you know).
A Creative Problem-Solving Model
At Salve Regina University, we were able
to avoid many of these problems by adopting a problem-solving
model outlined by Vincent Ryan Ruggiero (2003). Ruggiero's
model calls for a progression of four stages: (1) being
aware, which involves gathering information and defining
the problem; (2) being creative, which asks the problem-solvers
to generate as many creative solutions as possible; (3)
being critical, which asks participants to set aside
the proposed solutions while they develop the criteria by
which the solutions will be judged; and (4) communicating
or acting, which calls for the selection of a solution
based on the criteria and implementing that solution.
This model posits a process that is,
in a number of ways, counterintuitive but that nonetheless
effectively addresses the process problems discussed above.
Rather than a representative committee, the process adopted
at Salve Regina calls for multiple design teams brought together
by common interests and vision. Every faculty member, either
individually or in groups, is invited to propose a model curriculum.
Rather than developing a compromise model designed to build
consensus, the process calls for choosing whichever model
receives a majority of the faculty votes; presumably, that
model best represents the university's idea of an integrated
signature curriculum.
In order to foster creativity, Ruggiero's
model reverses the anticipated order of activities by placing
the development of criteria after the brainstorming of solutions.
Faculty are thus free to focus on developing a distinctive
"dream" curriculum without the usual constraints.
The development of a variety of models offers the faculty
a broader range of choices than the "take it or leave
it" approach implied in the single committee, single
curriculum process.
At Salve Regina, we considered a common
understanding of the process to be so important that we asked
the faculty to endorse it in a formal vote, at which point
the stages were linked to a strict timetable designed to get
to a decision by the time of the faculty's annual post-commencement
meeting in May. A steering committee, composed of eight faculty
members and the undergraduate dean, was established to oversee
the process and to ensure adherence to the schedule. The process
itself suggested a variety of questions along the way, questions
worth considering in the development of any signature program.
Stage One: What Is the Problem
You Want to Solve?
The first task of the steering committee
was to define the problem clearly. One aspect of the problem
turned on the question of mission. The university community
recently had completed a two-year process to develop a new
mission statement, and many perceived a cognitive disconnect
between the new mission and the set of distribution requirements
in place at the time. A second aspect of the problem turned
on integrative learning. The distribution requirements had
no internal frame of reference or connection; there was no
philosophy, no theme, no developmental structure, no interdisciplinary
cooperation.
In the end, the steering committee was
able to articulate the general dissatisfaction with the current
core in a way that gave shape and direction to the problem-solving
process. It proposed to the faculty assembly the following
clearly defined task: to create a core curriculum of liberal
arts and sciences that includes explicit goals and measurable
objectives and that is (1) grounded in the university's
mission as a Catholic institution founded by the Sisters of
Mercy, "to work for a world that is harmonious, just,
and merciful," and that is (2) integrated by cooperation.
Stage Two: How Can You Tap into
the Creativity of the Faculty?
Ruggiero's model fosters creativity by
reversing the anticipated order of events. Instead of specifying
criteria first and then tailoring the solution to fit them,
the process asks participants to generate solutions before
criteria are established. This is particularly challenging
for academics who, usually more critical than creative by
training, are apt to want to know the criteria first. But
it is Ruggiero's particular insight to see that a priori
criteria can be thought-stoppers. If one begins with
a given set of constraints--e.g., the core will have an upper
limit of thirty-nine credit hours; the core will be delivered
by the current faculty; the core will not touch the current
requirements in English, or history, or modern languages;
the core must be completed by the end of sophomore year; the
core will not cost any more money than the current curriculum--one
can with some accuracy predict the outcome, which is likely
to bear a striking resemblance to the status quo. Ruggiero
avoids this problem by proscribing the creation of criteria
until a number of creative solutions have been generated.
Liberated from considerations of staffing and cost (which
are administrative problems, anyway) and from the need to
achieve consensus on credit allocations (which are turf matters
rather than curricular principles), faculty are free to focus
on their real task: designing a signature curriculum that
reflects the mission and character of the institution.
By the deadline established by Salve
Regina's steering committee, five fully developed models
and some eighteen focused suggestions had emerged. Two of
the models were proposed by individuals, three by teams of
two to seven faculty members. The range of approaches and
educational philosophies put forth is suggested by the titles
of the five models:
- The Seven Frames of Salve Regina University
- The Millennium Core
- Classics Program
- Preparation for Lifelong Learning and World Citizenship
- Searching for a Meaningful Life
The focused suggestions ranged from recommendations
about information literacy to competency in the sciences to
the inclusion of service learning. The models and the suggestions
were collected in a packet and presented, with an opportunity
for questions and discussion, at an open session attended
by the faculty, the academic administration, and the university's
president. The presentation of five fully developed models
created a sense of excitement about the process and confidence
about the future. The general consensus was that any one of
the new models would be much better than the status quo.
Stage Three: How Do You Evaluate
the Proposed Models?
At this stage of the process, participants
set aside the solutions proposed in Stage Two and develop
the criteria by which those solutions will be judged. The
challenge is to create a set of criteria independent of the
existing possible solutions. This is particularly difficult
in smaller problem-solving processes where the participants
involved in developing Stage Three criteria are the same as
those who proposed solutions in Stage Two. At Salve Regina,
these difficulties were addressed by a division of labor between
the steering committee and the self-generated design teams.
Before the solutions were proposed, the steering committee,
whose members were not permitted to participate in model design,
had set about developing criteria but kept them in strict
confidence.
After the five proposed models were presented
to the full faculty and academic administration, the steering
committee publicly presented its criteria to the faculty assembly.
Their original proposal included the following points:
- How is the proposed curriculum based on the concept of
the liberal arts and sciences?
- How will the university be able to measure the extent
to which the explicit goals and outcomes of the proposal
are being achieved?
- How does the proposal implement the university's
mission to encourage students to seek wisdom and to "work
for a world that is harmonious, just, and merciful"?
- How is the proposed curriculum integrated by cooperation?
In the discussions on the floor of the assembly, various
other criteria were proposed and debated; ultimately, two
more were added:
- How does the proposed curriculum present all undergraduates
with expectations and standards that promote the development
of intellect and character?
- How does the proposed curriculum prepare students for
a lifetime of learning, service, and career choices?
The faculty involved in developing the
five models were asked to explain in writing how their proposals
addressed the criteria, and their answers were collected and
published to the faculty at large. These faculty also were
free to amend their original proposals to address the criteria;
however, it was important for the process that they were under
no obligation to do so.
Stage Four: Which Model Do You
Want?
The final stage calls for judging the
proposed solutions against the established criteria and selecting
a model. Rather than merely using the criteria as a checklist,
Stage Four involves choosing the model that is deemed the
most effective and attractive in terms of the criteria. Rather
than compromising the overall integrity of the model to match
the list of criteria perfectly, it may be advisable to overlook
weaknesses in satisfying one criterion in view of strengths
in satisfying others.
At Salve Regina, the final selection
of the model took place over two days at a post-commencement
faculty meeting conducted by the officers of the faculty assembly.
At this stage in the process, all members of the faculty were
vitally engaged in the discussions and debates. For example,
the faculty in the professional departments, who had not been
extensively involved in proposing possible models, now emerged
as important decision makers. They critiqued the various models
and argued for or against them. In a straw poll taken at the
end of the first day, two models clearly were shown to have
widespread support. On the next day, the faculty formally
endorsed the model that had garnered the most votes in the
straw poll. This model still needed much work; indeed, it
required two more years of development before the first courses
were offered. Nonetheless, a distinctive, signature curricular
model had been selected over the course of a single academic
year.
Conclusion
Institutions about to embark on a general
education curricular revision should give careful attention
to process, and particularly to the kind of outcomes a given
process is likely to produce. While consensus is a laudable
goal in the selection of a model, it can be an impediment
at the design level, especially if the goal is to design a
distinctive signature program. The Ruggiero problem-solving
model used at Salve Regina University had the effect of tapping
into faculty creativity by inviting a variety of groups and
individuals to propose curricular models and deferring the
definition of selection criteria until after the models were
published. Thus, faculty members were free to concentrate
on mission, content, skills, and pedagogy without worrying
about pleasing all possible constituencies and interest groups.
When the time came to select a model, the faculty assembly
had five distinctive programs to choose from, and the model
selected clearly reflected the university mission statement
in a high-profile, signature design. n
Reference
Ruggiero, Vincent Ryan. 2003. The
art of thinking: A guide to critical and creative thought.
New York: Longman.
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