The last time Portland State took a comprehensive look at general education (GenEd) and made significant changes, Bill Clinton was starting his first year in office, the original Jurassic Park movie was playing in theaters and PSU was under the leadership of its first woman president.
In other words we are due for an overhaul.
That’s why I was thrilled to attend the fall General Education Symposium where all of us got to take in the thoughtful and considerable work on the part of the General Education Task Force, which has been examining our general education programs and requirements, the changing needs of our students, other successful models for general education and how we can update general education at PSU to best meet the needs of our current and future students.
The symposium attracted a packed house and I was heartened to see so many of our faculty in the room, devoting several hours on a Friday to this important aspect of our collective future. Together in the Smith Ballroom, we spent time thinking deeply about what our students need, the elements that have come together to define what GenEd is at PSU today, and what it could become in the future.
The first presentation, by the subcommittee focused on data and administration, was particularly powerful. It was also helpful to consider the many, sometimes confusing GenEd elements, that students have to navigate — including University Studies/Honors, BS/BA/BM/BFA-specific requirements, the Race and Ethnic Studies Requirement and the Writing Requirement. Each non-major requirement has multiple sub requirements with different rules about whether it can overlap with the major and with other requirements. To add to the complexity for students, each of these buckets of requirements are described on different websites.
As we’ve been hearing from the National Institute for Student Success, students find belonging and a clear pathway when they get into their majors quickly. GenEd can be designed to narrow student focus on what they want to study and how it will support them as they enter their careers.
Our current system doesn’t support the majority of our students — especially the nearly two-thirds who come to us as transfer students, but also first-generation students. I’m optimistic we will be able to address those inequities.
Last week we formalized a partnership with Portland Community College aimed at creating smoother pathways for students and more collaboration between our two schools. For the past year we’ve been collaborating on the Transfer Student Success Intensive put on by the Aspen Institute College Excellence Program and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities and I believe that through that work and with the Memorandum of Understanding that we signed with PCC last week we will start to recover our transfer enrollment rate and help more students graduate with a four-year degree. It’s essential that we welcome and retain those students with a GenEd program that will enrich their lives and their career readiness.
While it’s true that other universities have taken several years to review and reform their general education programs, at Portland State we don’t have the luxury of time. Our students need us to make improvements and our quest for financial sustainability requires that we look holistically across our programs. I know that, building on the great work of the Task Force, we can meet our students’ needs in a timely and efficient way. In fact, history shows that the last time we reinvented our GenEd curriculum we studied and approved it in just over one year, starting in 1992 with the General Education Reform Committee which created an innovative, award-winning GenEd curriculum approved by Faculty Senate in 1993. Implementation began in the 1994-1995 academic year.
I applaud the work of the General Education Task Force. It’s obvious that many hours of hard work has gone into this effort already and I look forward to hearing the recommendations to come and working with the campus community to develop a GenEd program that will serve our students well into the future.
Read more about the work of the task force subcommittees, including all of the symposium presentations.