Questions about the new General Education Program at UC Merced, which was implemented in the fall of 2018, are addressed in the sections that follow. These Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) may be revised as time permits and new questions arise about the operations of the new General Education Program.
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To propose a Spark seminar, a faculty member will need to have a seminar title and description. Also required are course learning outcomes, activities, and assessments. Syllabi are not required. More information can be found here: http://ue.ucmerced.edu/ge/spark-seminars.
There are multiple ways to meet the Leadership, Community, and Engaging the World requirement, such as study abroad or at UCDC or UC Sacramento. It can also be met by leadership in campus organizations, community service, community engaged research, undergraduate research, or internships. The leadership, service and internship experiences will be reviewed to assure the quality of the student’s engagement and to require student reflection. When possible, students will enroll in credit-bearing units.
Several requirements can be met by co-curricular experiences, including Intellectual Experiences (e.g., Practical and Applied Knowledge; Leadership, Community, and Engaging the World; Global Awareness). Co-curricular experiences that might meet some of these requirements include undergraduate research, community-engaged research, leadership, internships, community service, study abroad, UCDC, and UC in Sacramento.
This component of the curriculum was designed so that this requirement can be met by studio art experiences and practicum/practical experiences, as well as labs.
The language requirement can be met both by courses in foreign languages and by those in computer programming languages. Students can test out of the requirement, or they can take relevant courses.
Yes, though some may be offered on a regular basis.
Crossroads courses have a shared focus on the different ways disciplines approach the same subject. They are particularly related to the faculty’s belief that it is important for students to understand disciplinary assumptions and epistemologies. This is exemplified in Hallmark 1 g, wherein students are asked to “Describe the origins of knowledge, informed by cultural and disciplinary epistemological and ontological assumptions.”
A clear recommendation arising from the review of General Education was that UC Merced should have a General Education Program that extends over four years of a student’s experience. In this way, General Education would be integrated into all aspects of a student’s academic career at UC Merced, not a group of separate courses to be “gotten through” or “gotten done” before getting on to coursework in the major. In addition, the new General Education Program and curriculum were designed to ensure that all students meet the expectations of the Hallmarks of the Baccalaureate degree, something that requires thinking about General Education as an essential element throughout the college career.
The General Education Subcommittee also was aware of the need for students to make timely progress to completion of degrees. By embedding General Education requirements in major courses, the General Education Subcommittee sought to ensure that the General Education Program did not impede progress to the degree.
Some courses may already exist that have the necessary components to be Crossroads. Some Crossroads courses may be developed by the faculty based on their interests. The following are possible areas:
Ecology and Economics of Resource Management
Philosophy, Politics and Economics
Historical and literary approaches to understanding race
History and Literature of the 1960s.
Water from the perspectives of environmental engineering and earth systems science
Sustainable farming from the perspectives of history and earth systems science
Music and Mathematics
Computer Science and Visual Art
Politics and Science Policy
Biomedicine and Ethics
The General Education Subcommittee has been working with the Center for Engaged Teaching and Learning (CETL) to develop resources for faculty who are teaching Spark Seminars.
By having a wide range of topics, we expect that students will find many different Spark Seminars interesting. More important, the approach to learning is more significant than topical coverage. Some Spark Seminars may be based on courses that are taught at a different level elsewhere in the curriculum.
Much like topics courses, students will chose which Spark seminar topic sparks their interest. Students are not required to enroll in a Spark seminar that aligns to their major, but they can if they chose. The General Education Subcommittee and School Curriculum Managers will work with the Registrar to ensure the proper number of sections are offered in Fall 2018 and Spring 2019 that provides all students access.
Spark seminars are not writing courses. However, students will be expected to demonstrate some level of proficiency with two different types of communication, one of which is written. The focus will be on writing as communication rather than writing as process.
The Spark Seminar is topical, and therefore not explicitly interdisciplinary, though we expect multiple perspectives to be brought to bear on the subject. The goal of the Spark Seminar is to spark curiosity and to help students think of themselves as part of a research university.
The Spark Seminars are freshman seminars on topics of interest to the faculty members who teach them. The Seminars will be shaped by faculty disciplinary expertise and are intended to provide an engaging introduction to intellectual life at a research university. Foci will include building skills in multiple modes of communication, identifying campus resources for student success, and engaging in a research project. The Spark Seminars were designed consistent with research about high-impact educational practices, which demonstrates that small academically rigorous classes grounded in faculty interests can play a critical role in the success of students in the first semester of college. This is particularly true for low-income and first-generation students.
Yes, the General Education Subcommittee has designed the curriculum so that it is possible. Examples of sample student schedules can be found at the following hyperlink: Sample Course Sequencing in Proposed GE Program.
There will be an FAO for the GE program, as there is for all academic programs at UC Merced.
The General Education Subcommittee will use the e-portfolio in CatCourses so that students can archive sample assignments from all courses they take to fulfill General Education requirements. Assignments that are exemplary in relation to General Education Program Learning Outcomes will be identified by the instructor.
Rubrics for assessment will be developed by the General Education Subcommittee. General Education VALUE rubrics in use at many colleges and universities have been developed by the Association of American Colleges and Universities and the General Education Subcommittee will consult and, perhaps, adapt those rubrics for use at UC Merced. A link to the AACU VALUE Rubric Development Project can be found here: https://www.aacu.org/value/rubrics.
The Office of Undergraduate Education will provide administrative support, and the General Education Subcommittee will provide faculty oversight.
The General Education Subcommittee will recommend changes to Undergraduate Council, the Committee on Academic Planning and Resource Allocations, and the Divisional Council.
The General Education Subcommittee will be responsible for approving courses for each of these categories and for assessing them. There will be audits of selected syllabi on an annual basis to ensure that courses which are designated as meeting particular General Education requirements actually do what they said they would.
As much as possible, the new General Education Program and curriculum rely on either existing courses or courses that can count towards the major, so that “teaching GE” and “teaching our courses” are not at odds. In addition, the Provost has made a commitment to fund General Education.
The General Education Subcommittee will regularly evaluate the General Education Program as a whole, as well as each element, for evidence of success in achieving the Program Learning Outcomes. The Program and Program elements will be strengthened, improved, or enhanced based on the results of ongoing evaluation and assessment.
All students, regardless of major, will complete the same range of courses, to ensure that they have been exposed to the ideas, concepts, and modes of analysis that the faculty have deemed important.
Until now, UC Merced has had General Education courses, not a General Education Program. The goal of the new Program is to have clearly articulated learning outcomes that can be used to evaluate courses that are submitted to fulfill General Education requirements, and to assess its success. The new General Education Program ensures that all students are introduced to the major approaches to knowledge; are familiar with a language other than English (including computer languages); and are exposed to modes of analysis and subjects of broad significance for their lives as global citizens.
Research on undergraduate student academic success and on effective General Education curricula points to the importance of a coherent General Education program for creating a foundation for the intellectual knowledge and skills for lifelong learning and for coursework in the major. Shared expectations and experiences for General Education also support students as they change majors and schools; differing General Education requirements can have a negative impact on students’ timely progress to complete degrees.
The draft curriculum was developed over two years, primarily by the General Education Subcommittee (GESC) but in consultation with a large number of faculty and staff members. In June 2014, the first General Education retreat was held; the results of that retreat led to the development of the “Hallmarks of the Baccalaureate Degree at UC Merced”. That document was circulated and reviewed by the Senate in the Spring of 2015. During AY 2015-16, the GESC worked from the “Hallmarks” to define Program Learning Outcomes (PLOs) for General Education, which also were reviewed by faculty and staff members. From those PLOs, the GESC developed a curriculum that would ensure that the learning outcomes were addressed.
"Intellectual Experiences and Activities" designate a broad range of ways to expose students to analytical approaches, subjects, and experiences. Students will collect badges based on taking courses or undertaking activities that address these goals. Students may meet some of these with courses in their major.
Typically, a General Education curriculum is intended to engage all undergraduate students at a college or university with a variety of approaches to forming and addressing questions critical to developing effective habits of lifelong learning.
The following definition of General Education is adapted from the UC Merced Catalog:
What is General Education? . . . General Education provides [undergraduate students] with the practical skills and diverse knowledge to become informed citizens . . . General Education at UC Merced helps [students] grow intellectually by:
A template for the Spark Seminar and Spark model syllabi are posted in Spark Seminar Template & Syllabi. We do not have a template for the Crossroads course, but some sample syllabi for courses that have already been taught at UC Merced and which fit the Crossroad model may be forthcoming.
Yes. Approximately ⅔ of our students take WRI 01, and all take WRI 10. By taking the Spark Seminar at the same time, student learning is reinforced in both courses. More importantly, the Seminar’s focus on communication means that students will have an additional purpose to the writing they are doing in the writing course. Since students will be taking two courses that emphasize communication at once, there will be greater continuity in their first year courses.
A Crossroads course is a junior-year interdisciplinary course that presents two disciplinary perspectives on a problem. The course focues on upper division courses that takes the perspectives of two disciplines on an issue or problem. These will be fairly large courses (c. 120 students or whatever was approved on the CRF) cross-listed in relevant programs. The goal of the course is to illuminate not just multiple perspectives on subjects, but also the ways different disciplines ask questions about similar material. These courses will have course numbers from the relevant programs, and they may contribute to major elective requirements.
Crossroads courses no longer need to be cross listed or team taught. They should, however, continue to focus on interdisciplinary scholarship.
