This chapter describes a collective faculty effort to administer, proctor, score, and interpret student work that created an unexpected opportunity for deep discussions of teaching, learning, and assessment.

There is mounting evidence from faculty and employers that a broad set of skills and abilities are essential for student success as graduates, citizens, and employees. The traditional approach to general education with an emphasis on exposure to a menu of knowledge no longer suffices. Graduates need to be able to integrate their learning, apply it…

By tracing the historical roots of general education, we can make many of our current issues and problems in general education more understandable. This chapter is an overview of historical trends that have taken general education from the concept of a unified curriculum with no distinction between "specialized" and "general" education to the…

To create the symbols of and shelter for human institutions, architects must acquire both professional skills and general knowledge of their culture and the environment. Key institutions in the late twentieth-century society are identified. (Author/MLW)

Principles for the administration and governance of interdisciplinary programs are drawn from several decades of experience in general education and in interdisciplinary centers, colleges, and schools. The principles are discussed in terms of the institutional context and include suggestions for garnering budgetary support, addressing faculty…

Introductory psychology courses are often designed as technical, preprofessional courses for majors, but they should instead offer a view of human nature. A Wesleyan University course was designed on the notion of the psychological human, and covered the functions of perception and memory, cognitive processes, the social dimension of human nature,…

A broad liberal arts curriculum coupled with basic and advanced journalism writing, editing, and theory (including law and ethics) courses is the best insurance for excellence in journalism education. A University of Kentucky plan includes establishing an exchange program with other disciplines, and requiring paired, cross-disciplinary courses.…

The agendas of the social work profession's accrediting group and the society served by the profession call for revitalizing the linkage between social work and the liberal arts. Accreditation requirements and their implementation, social work's mission as control of dependency, and outcomes as an organizing principle are discussed. (Author/MLW)

Winthrop University (South Carolina) has linked classroom research with program accountability in its Learning Research Project, which focuses on general education. The pilot and implementation phases of the project are described, noting problems, frustrations, and rewards in each. The experiment has convinced administration and faculty that…

More important than creating an interdisciplinary major is the need for all teachers to be solidly grounded in liberal learning. Several collaborative programs blending the liberal arts and pedagogical studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, are offered by the College of Liberal Arts. (MLW)

The challenge for engineering education is to capture, from the beginning of the freshman year, the student's interest in liberal learning and then to accomplish four aims of general education. The aims include: language (reading, writing, and speaking skills), ethics, context, and adaptability. (Author/MLW)

When the introductory philosophy course evokes cognitive dissonance over philsophical problems in which students are already interested, it can help develop students' skills in reasoning and assessing arguments. This kind of course should play a key role in the undergraduate curriculum. (MSE)

The integration of liberal and professional education will require pharmacy faculties to redefine the dimensions of their role as educators. An assessment of liberal education in pharmacy, models for integration of liberal education, and prescription for change are discussed. (Author/MLW)

The enthusiasm generated by workshops in writing across the curriculum can be translated into lasting curricular change, particularly in freshman composition, general education courses, and upper-division writing emphasis courses. Committees, central to any change effort, can take any of a variety of forms. (MSE)

Use of problem-based learning in a large upper-division general education class at McMaster University (Canada) provides opportunities for students to identify and practice skills for inquiry into societal problems and solutions. Classroom techniques and processes preserve the essence of problem-based learning despite the fact that the class is…