In 2004, President Schwartz appointed a taskforce to look into developing a General Education program that could be considered a hallmark of a CSU education. He catalyzed the campus discussion on General Education by challenging the faculty to consider what a graduate of CSU "ought to know." General Education requirements should be experienced as a positive, formative experience, rather than as a hurdle over which each student must jump. The work of this taskforce was completed in 2006-07, and in Fall 2007 the implementation of this newly approved General Education program has been launched.

Priorities

Following are the programmatic priorities of the new General Education requirements:

• Clearly articulated objectives for general education
• Ongoing assessment linked to key objectives
• Course clusters offering students a more cohesive general education experience and opportunity to develop learning communities
• Links between general education and major programs, including a capstone experience and collaboration between instructors and departments teaching general education courses and programs whose students take them
• A simple, clear set of general education requirements
• Improved mechanisms for overseeing and reviewing the general education requirements.

Desired Skills

The CSU faculty agreed that we want all our students to achieve the following skills:

• Written communication
• Quantitative literacy
• Critical thinking
• Information literacy
• Working in groups, including those of diverse composition
• Oral communication

These skills will first be introduced to students in ASC101, Introduction to University Life, and then developed further in general education courses as well as the majors.

Further Material

• Read the March 20, 2007 report of the General Education Task Force to the University Curriculum Committee here. (Note: this is a MSWord document.)
• Additional information about the current General Education Program is at http://www.csuohio.edu/academic/gened/