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Center for Excellence in Academic Advising

General Education Requirement Related to Physical Activity (GHA)

Penn State's General Education program is founded on a holistic philosophy of how human beings grow and develop. It suggests that individuals utilize and express their intelligence in a variety of different settings—verbal, numerical, logical, musical, artistic, interpersonal, and motor-active—to name a few of the more important ones. Just as composing a well-written paragraph and following a line of logic are brands of effective thinking, so too are composing rhythmic movements to express an idea or solving a spatial-temporal riddle on an athletic field. As the utilization and expression of diverse aspects of human intelligence grow, learners typically experience greater competence, creativity, and freedom to engage the challenges offered by these different domains. General education, in contrast to professional preparation, aims at producing just these kinds of broad competencies, understandings, and freedoms.

This holistic vision of human development is a worthy and ambitious goal for General Education at Penn State. It acknowledges the fact that the habits, skills, and insights that support good living run the gamut from the sedentary to the non-sedentary, the reflective to the tactile—from the human capacity to symbolize ideas through words, to an individual's ability to express him or herself through music and dance. This vision is ambitious in a world of higher education that too often places an emphasis exclusively on sedentary freedoms and competencies, leaving motor-active, musical, and artistic freedoms to chance or extra-curricular choices.

The Question of Waiving GHA Credit

The Department of Kinesiology does not support the waiver of GHA requirements for recreation, intramural sports, or club involvement as currently structured at Penn State; moreover, the Department does not award academic credit for such activities.* The rationale for this policy mimics reasons that might be used by any department at Penn State that delivers a component of the General Education curriculum. When learning occurs in informal settings – whether reading a book by oneself or working out in an aerobic dance class – academic credit cannot be assigned in the absence of the following elements:

Supervision by a qualified instructor
The development of a good learning environment and sound progressions
Feedback to the learner
Assessment of the quality and quantity of learning (both knowledge and skill) that has taken place

R. S. Kretchmar
Interim Head, Department of Kinesiology
October, 2001

* The Department of Kinesiology is in the process of developing new models for its activity curriculum (ESACT) that utilize elements of recreational activity in a context that honors the four points listed above.