Background
The General Education Advisory Committee (GEAC) was appointed by the Associate Dean for Academic Programs and Services, Helena Dettmer, in response to a recommendation made by the Common Academic Experience (CAE) subcommittee charged with the review of the General Education Program.
The Common Academic Experience (CAE) subcommittee was one of six such committees formed under the direction of the Office of the Provost and the Reaccreditation Steering Committee to study the Iowa undergraduate experience as a focus for UI reaccreditation.
The Common Academic Experience subcommittee met during 2006-2007; that report is available at the Office of the Provost Reaccreditation Work Site.
The General Education Advisory Committee (GEAC) has been meeting since September 2007. For a link to GEAC minutes, rough drafts of the restructured GEP, and additional background materials, please scroll down.
Charge to the General Education Advisory Committee
Within the above study, the Common Academic Experience subcommittee notes the overall strength of the General Education Program: “Our study found that we have a strong, well-administered, flexible GEP that is working well. Some students and faculty finds its organization confusing, however, and feel it lacks a sense of cohesiveness. Our study also suggests that the GEP may be achieving some of its desired learning outcomes better than others” (238, Draft 1).
“The committee’s goal is to arrive at a more cohesive and integrated program that focuses if possible on the unique educational and cultural experiences offered by The University of Iowa” (238).
Recommended First Step: 1a. Reorganize the GEP Structure
- The names of the GE area subjects are unclear and inconsistent. The distributed area is especially confusing and not integrated into the program (238). Make revisions to the GE organization (238), creating a more “transparent structure” (237).
- During the revision, attempt to bring more focus to areas underrepresented by the data collected, especially in the area of communication, including writing, a concern of faculty teaching in the program and of students (239).
- Attempt to achieve more balance in fulfillment of all learning outcomes. Those that are currently not achieving their outcomes as well as others include communication (includes writing, visual, oral etc) and social responsibility and life of the mind (239).
- When revising the structure, perhaps consider the role of Rhetoric and Interpretation of Literature as transitional or common experiences for many students (239).
Recommended Future Steps
1b. Refocus the GEP criteria and outcomes to support the revised structure.
1c. Assess selected desired learning outcomes, especially writing skills, a concern of faculty and students
1d. Clarify the review process, making sure academic areas act on the General Education Curriculum Committee’s recommendations.
The General Education Advisory Committee
The General Education Advisory Committee
was formed to suggest possible strategies for pursuing the above recommendations. The committee, meeting every other week during 2007-2008, will work closely with the Educational Policy Committee and the General Education Curriculum Committee.
Members of the Committee
Questions, concerns, or suggestions may be addressed to any member of the General Education Advisory Committee.
Helena Dettmer is Chair of the General Education Advisory Committee. As the Associate Dean for Academic Programs and Services, she oversees the development of educational policy and the administration of the College curriculum, including the General Education Program. She earned a PhD from the University of Michigan and is an expert in the intersection of meaning and structure in Latin poetry, with two books exploring this topic, Horace: A Study in Structure and Love by the Numbers: Form and Meaning in the Poetry of Catullus. She is also the co-author of A Workbook to Ayers' English Words from Latin and Greek Elements, in its second printing and used widely in vocabulary-building courses around the country, as well as A Catullus Workbook, also entering a second printing. Her new book, a manual for teachers of AP Catullus, is forthcoming. Her current project is a book-length study examining the poetic structure Ovid’s Amores.
Jim Cremer is Chair of the Department of Computer Science. His research interests include computer graphics, virtual environments, simulation, integration of numeric and symbolic computing, geometric modeling, and problem solving environments. He is part of a UI research team who recently won a $1.5 Million NIH Grant to study child bicycle safety, otherwise known as the Hank Project, aimed at advancing virtual environments as a medium for the study of human behavior. He is the Associate Editor of ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation. He has just ended a three year term on the Educational Policy Committee and a one year term as the EPC liaison to the General Education Curriculum Committee.
Pat Folsom, Assistant Provost of Enrollment Services, is the Director of Academic Advising, which provides professional academic advising to almost all entering College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) first-year students, some entering CLAS transfers, open majors, pre-professional students, non-degree/special status students, and entering students in the IowaLink Program. She is currently chair of the Task Force on Learning and Living Communities and serves on the Executive Steering Committee of Project MAUI and on the Higher Learning Committee Re accreditation Steering Committee. She also serves as a liaison to the General Education Curriculum Committee.
David Gier, from the School of Music, is a graduate of Yale University, where he completed the Doctor of Musical Arts degree. An active soloist, clinician and adjudicator, Gier has performed and presented at many colleges, universities, and professional conferences, including the International Trombone Festival, the Eastern Trombone Workshop, and the Texas Trombone Symposium. Gier began his professional career as a trombonist in New England as a member of the Springfield (MA) Symphony Orchestra and Orchestra New England. Gier is currently principal trombonist of the Quad City Symphony and the Cedar Rapids Opera Theater. He recently completed his twelfth season as principal trombone of the Breckenridge Festival Orchestra, under the direction of Gerhardt Zimmermann. For the last three years, he has served on the General Education Curriculum Committee, two years as Chair. He is also serving on the UI Task Force on Learning and Living Communities.
Thomas Gioielli is a student at The University of Iowa earning a BA in psychology. He is from Lakeville, Minnesota and has worked with Orientation services for the past 2 years and will do so again this summer. He is also an admissions representative for the Office of Admissions and has been a UI Presidential Scholar.
Lisa Heineman, Department of History, received her PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research examines gender, war, and memory in Germany; welfare states in comparative perspective (Fascist, Communist, and Democratic); and the significance of marital status for women. She is the author of the book What Difference Does a Husband Make: Women and Marital Status in Nazi and Postwar Germany as well as many articles on the topic. She is also interested in the history of sexuality and her current book traces sexual consumer culture in West Germany from the end of the Second World War to 1975. She teaches courses on the history of Germany in the twentieth century, women's history in modern Europe, Western Civilization, and graduate seminars in modern European History.
Peter Hlebowitsh, from the College of Education, taught in the Princeton, New Jersey elementary school district and received his EdD from Rutgers University before coming to Iowa. He is the author of two books, Foundations of American Education and Radical Curriculum Theory Reconsidered. His research interests include curriculum theory and design, school policy, and school design. He teaches courses in the foundations of American education; research and issues in elementary education; and design & organization of the curriculum. Last year he served on the HLC subcommittee, Common Academic Experiences at Iowa, and was instrumental in collecting data on student insights concerning the General Education Program.
Beth Ingram is Associate Dean of the Henry B. Tippie Undergraduate Program and is the C. Woody Thompson Professor of Economics and has served as chair of the Department of Economics. She has published extensively on topics such as “Population Shocks and the Behavior of Wages" and "Wage Inequality and Vintage Human Capital” and is an expert in the areas of Macroeconomics, Econometrics, Business cycle issues, Estimation and analysis of nonlinear rational expectations models, Bayesian approaches to macroeconomic estimation. She received a grant from the NSF for 1998 – 2002 and is the Associate Editor of the Journal of Macroeconomics. She also has been involved in many campus-wide committees, most recently the Student Success Team Executive Committee.
Brooks Landon of the Department of English is the Director of the General Education Literature Program and has a special interest in undergraduate education. He received his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin and teaches courses in Modern Fiction, Hypertext Fiction and Scholarship, Science Fiction, Science Fiction Film, and Electronic Textuality, among many other subjects. He served as chair of the English Department for six years and is the author of four books, including Science Fiction After 1900: From The Steam Man to the Stars and The Aesthetics of Ambivalence: Rethinking Science Fiction Film in the Age of Electronic (Re) Production. He has a new book under contract on Thomas Berger.
Before coming to the Department of Rhetoric at Iowa, Dennis Moore received a PhD from Princeton and was a postdoctoral intern in linguistics and the teaching of writing at Temple University (Philadelphia) and was a Mellon Fellow in the Department of English and the Literature and History Program at Washington University (St. Louis). He has been a leader in Rhetoric's Professional Development Program (PDP) and has served as Department Chair and Director of the (now defunct) Reading Lab. Dennis has a longstanding interest in educational technology and was on the team that created Library Explorer. His research centers on Renaissance studies, with publications on Elizabethan political poetry and the sixteenth-century controversy over whether a woman could rightfully rule England. Last year he served on two committees involved with UI reaccreditation, including the Common Academic Experience subcommittee studying the GE Program at Iowa.
Alec Scranton is the Associate Dean for Academic Programs of the College of Engineering. He is a leading expert in photopolymerization and his research interests include polymerization kinetics and reaction engineering; spectroscopic methods for characterization of polymers and photopolymerization and he has published extensively in the field. He is a Contributing Editor of Polymer News, is the Director of the Photopolymerization Center (NSF IUCRC), and is a researcher in the Optical Science and Technology Center.
Walter Seaman of the Department of Mathematics received a PhD from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He has research interests in Differential Geometry, Curvature and Topology Relations, Complex and Kaehler Geometry, Hodge Theory and Higgs Bundles. He is also an expert in mathematics and education and is one of the two co-directors on the SMARTS Project (Science and Mathematics Avenues to Renewed Teachers and Students), a long term (3 year, $150,000 per year) professional development (PD) initiative with training for about 50 K-6 teachers in this area of Iowa. The program started in the summer of 2005 and continues for the three subsequent years. He is serving as a mathematics and lesson study consultant on the Iowa Mathematics and Science Partnership grant IMAP2 (Eric Hart and Cos Fi PIs) and is a test consultant for ACT.
Caroline Tolbert, Department of Political Science, received a PhD from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her research interests include American Politics, Voting and Elections/Political Behavior, State Politics and Policy, Direct Democracy, Race/Ethnicity, Information Technology and Politics. She is the coauthor of Educated by Initiative: The Effects of Direct Democracy on Citizens and Political Organizations in the American States and Virtual Inequality: Beyond the Digital Divide. She is also co-editor of Citizens as Legislators: Direct Democracy in the United States. Her forthcoming book is entitled Digital Citizenship: The Internet, Society and Participation. At The University of Iowa, she teaches Introduction to Politics as well as many other courses.