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Taking a break from the confines of the indoor classroom,
instructor Beth Thompson takes her students outside for a change of scenery
at University Park. The general education requirements of the University
will also be changing in the near future.
Photo: Greg Grieco
By Alan Janesch
Public Information
If the University Faculty Senate's Special Committee on General Education has its way, future undergraduates at Penn State will take essentially the same number of credits in general education courses. But their general education experience will be upgraded and improved -- not by shuffling the list of courses, but by focusing on active learning, new approaches to teaching, and the idea of continuously improving both.
They'll also:
* enjoy greater flexibility in choosing those courses and in testing out of courses if they already have the necessary skills and knowledge;
* experience a greater emphasis on writing, speaking, and the effective use of information technology and knowledge-seeking skills; and
* be enriched by the international and multicultural perspectives imbued in most if not all general education courses.
Also, undergraduates will probably notice greater efforts to use active and collaborative teaching and learning techniques. They'll take three credits in health sciences rather than four credits in health science and physical education. And first-year students will take a special first-year seminar that acquaints them with key concepts in their prospective majors, introduces them to regular faculty in their colleges, and helps them build the skills needed at a major research university.
Since February 1996, the committee has been taking a hard look at undergraduate education at Penn State, seeking input from the University community, and thinking about ways to ensure that the general education program gives students both the skills they'll need and a broad understanding of scientific, cultural and artistic events and accomplishments that will help them make sense of the world and enrich their lives.
The committee's 10 recommendations for accomplishing those goals are included in a 32-page report drafted this summer. The report has circulated throughout the University community (via written copies and the Web, at http://www.psu.edu/president/cqi/gen_ed/cover.htm). The recommendations will be up for consideration at the Faculty Senate's Oct. 21 meeting.
"The recommendations are oriented mostly around the idea of increasing the expectations of learning," Robert N. Pangborn, chair of the committee and associate dean for undergraduate studies in the College of Engineering, said. "From the students' perspective, the report addresses what the students are supposed to achieve as part of their general education, in terms of the skills and the knowledge base they develop. From the teaching perspective, it addresses how Penn State can best deliver something that meets those needs."
Pangborn said the larger, post-graduation context of the recommendations is to make sure that general education at Penn State "contributes to enjoyment of life, to the level of intellectual stimulation throughout life, and to career success. I think the emphasis of virtually every one of the recommendations is to enhance learning, to create a learning environment where students are actively involved, and to continually assess and make adjustments in the curriculum where necessary to continue improving the quality of learning."
University President Graham B. Spanier, who attended the committee's first meeting in February 1996 and has stayed involved with its efforts ever since, says the recommendations are "workable, affordable and, most importantly, will enhance the quality of undergraduate education at Penn State."
"What is most exciting to me is that every course in the general education curriculum is proposed to include at least three cross-cutting areas of emphasis," Spanier said. "This will guarantee that all of our students will have considerable exposure to course work that more nearly reflects the multidisciplinary and complex reality of society and the workplace."
John Cahir, vice provost and dean for undergraduate education, praised the committee's emphasis on moving away from courses that have been seen by some as bureaucratic requirements "toward interesting, active learning experiences, assessed regularly and continuously improving."
Following the discussion and vote at the Senate's Oct. 21 meeting, Senate members will take the report to the wider University community for additional feedback and bring it back for a final vote on Dec. 2, when the Senate's University Planning Committee will present a costing report on the special committee's recommendations. Committee members describing the report focus on its internal coherence, its flexibility, and its recognition of best practices already being carried out across the University system.
Cheryl Achterberg, a committee member and the newly named acting dean of the Schreyer Honors College, said the report is a complete package, "a template to design a set of courses that will challenge students to grow in ways that they wouldn't have otherwise."
Tramble Turner, a committee member and associate professor of English at Penn State Abington, said the report reflects aspects of academic life at non-University Park locations, such as "a sense of community-building among first-year students."
Under provisions that would give all students greater flexibility to waive or substitute among general education courses, "there may be more than one way to meet a requirement," said Sue Bracken, a committee member, undergraduate adviser in the Women's Studies Program, and a graduate student in the counselor education program.
The report has received praise from many quarters, but its recommendation to drop the existing four-credit health science and physical education requirement and substitute a new three-credit health sciences requirement may generate some discussion among the faculty.
The committee's thinking on this issue is to downplay the pure physical activities required by the current program and emphasize an academic approach to health issues that allows but does not require physical activities. According to the committee's recommendation, the optional activities should focus on lifelong wellness and fitness. Courses currently bearing the Exercise and Sports Activities (ESACT) label would not satisfy the new requirement unless they are changed to meet the new criteria.
Scott Kretchmar, a former Faculty Senate chair and kinesiology professor, said the report is "dramatic and potentially very significant" and praises its emphasis on quality. But he questions the move to restructure the health sciences requirement.
"I am less concerned about the decrease from four to three credits than I am about the apparent narrowing and intellectualization of the requirement," he said. "I read the proposal as saying it's OK to think about health and movement but less acceptable to gain the attitudes and skills that are required for good health and skillful movement. I think this is a handicap for our field, as it would be for music, if students were allowed to only theorize about music but not also learn the skills to produce it."
But Pangborn counters that the flexible approach recommended by the committee echoes broad sentiment that this should be an academically rigorous requirement, consistent with the rest of the general education curriculum.
"The committee has worked hard to restructure the requirement so that it meets this test, while at the same time reflecting the active learning theme of the whole concept," Pangborn said.
The committee's recommendation on first-year seminars says that such programs, in each college and at each campus, should be taken by all incoming first-year students and should count for one to three credits.
According to the committee report, the seminars would be academic in content (and among other things) give students a taste of the majors they'll likely choose, develop relationships with full-time faculty, and acquaint students with the learning tools and resources available at Penn State.
As the committee notes in its report, five Penn State academic colleges currently offer first-year seminars of different kinds: Agricultural Sciences, Earth and Mineral Sciences, Engineering, Health and Human Development and the Liberal Arts.
The committee's 10 recommendations are included in a 32-page report available on the Web at: http://www.psu.edu/president/cqi/gen_ed/cover.htm).
John M. Kenney, assistant research engineer with the Research
Centers and Multidisciplinary Programs Division at the Applied Research
Laboratory and a doctoral candidate in workforce 
education and
development, was recently selected by the chief of Naval Research as the
Secretary of the Navy Research Fellow for Naval Readiness. This fellowship
is awarded competitively to social science doctoral candidates whose dissertations
will contribute to the improved understanding of determinants of the readiness
of U.S. naval forces.
A panel of experts determined that Kenney's "credentials and achievements to date, as well as the potential of his research to make important contributions to understanding the readiness of our naval forces, were recognized as outstanding."
The objective of Kenny's research will be to determine the relationship between a measure of readiness and specific enlisted personnel variables. In particular, he will examine the relationship between personnel variables (crew stability, gapped billets and completion of formal training) and a ship's readiness as measured by the results of the Operational Plant Propulsion Examination. Guided missile destroyers in the Pacific Fleet's Arleigh Burke class will be used in this study. The study will take place over a two-year period, which ends in September 1999.
Student affairs honored 44 members of the faculty with the first Faculty Associates Award, which recognizes faculty members for their outstanding involvement in programs and services for students.
Faculty members honored include Collins Airhihenbuwa, associate professor of health education; Daniel Armstrong, professor of music; Deborah Atwater, head of African and African American studies and associate professor of speech communications; Kathleen Barry, professor of human development; Kathleen Bieschke, assistant professor/counselor of psychology; George Bugyi, executive secretary of the University Faculty Senate; Jane Charlton, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics; Jeremy Cohen, professor of communications; Sherry Corneal, assistant professor of human development and family studies; and Lourdes Diaz Soto, associate professor of education.
In addition, Roger Downs, professor of geography; Nancy Evans, associate professor of education; Charles Fisher, associate professor of biology; Gary Fosmire, associate professor of nutrition science; Marvin Goldberg, Irving and Irene Bard professor of business administration; Arthur Goldschmidt, professor of Middle East history; Lynne Goodstein, associate dean and professor of administrative justice and women's studies; Jeffrey Hayes, assistant professor of counseling psychology; S. Blair Hedges, associate professor of biology; Shirley Hendrick, assistant professor of business administration; Michael Johnson, associate professor of sociology, women's studies and African and African American studies; William Kelly, associate professor of theatre and integrative arts; Patricia Koch, associate professor of biobehavioral/health education; Robert Koehler, associate professor of accounting; and Manfred Kroger, professor of food science.
Also, Barry Kur, associate professor of theatre; Tony Lentz, assistant professor of speech communications; Donald Leslie, associate dean of undergraduate studies; John Lowe, professor of chemistry; Felix Lukezic, professor of plant pathology; Stephen Mackwell, associate professor of geosciences; James Marden, assistant professor of biology; Ronald Maxwell, assistant professor of English; Robert Minard, senior lecturer in chemistry; Linda Morrow, instructor in nutrition; Samuel Richards, senior lecturer in sociology; Joseph Schall, senior lecturer in writing and faculty associate for Irvin Hall; Fred Schied, assistant professor of adult education; David Shapiro, associate professor of economics and women's studies; Andrew Stephenson, professor of biology; James Stewart, vice provost for educational equity; Christopher Uhl, professor of biology; Beverly Vandiver, assistant professor of counseling psychology; and E.W. Wickersham, associate professor of zoology.
The Pennsylvania Technical Assistance Program at Penn State recently recognized more than 300 faculty and staff members for helping to solve problems for PENNTAP clients. PENNTAP helps Pennsylvania small businesses improve their competitiveness by providing free scientific and technological assistance and information.
"Penn State faculty and staff help in a variety of ways; it can be a 20-minute phone consultation, spending a couple of hours meeting with a client, supervising a student project to address a client's technical problem, or conducting an applied research project for a client. Faculty often use these cases to enhance classroom discussions of applying theory to real world applications," said Jack Gido, PENNTAP director.
At a recent recognition reception, Gido indicated that more than 100 of the faculty and staff being recognized were from locations other than University Park.
Penn State leaders recognized PENNTAP as an effective technology transfer and outreach program that uses the resources of the University to support economic development.
PENNTAP is a partnership among Penn State and the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development and the U. S. Economic Development Administration. Established in 1965 by Penn State President Eric Walker and Pennsylvania Gov. Bill Scranton, PENNTAP provided in excess of 800 cases of assistance to clients in all 67 counties last year. Clients reported $6.1 million in economic benefits as the result of PENNTAP assistance, and 97 percent satisfaction with the assistance provided. More than 80 percent of PENNTAP clients were from businesses with less than 100 employees.
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Abby Sheskey, left, an employee of the Penn State Cedar
Child Care program, and Heather Simpson, a sophomore liberal arts major,
play ring-around-the-rosie on Old Main lawn with children from the program
during the recent spell of
unseasonably warm (but welcome) October weather.
Photo: Greg Grieco
The University Faculty Senate will meet on Tuesday, Oct. 21, at 1:30 p.m. in Room 112 Kern Graduate Building on the University Park campus.
Items to be addressed include:
* Final report and recommendations of the Special Committee on General Education (legislative); see story on page 1.
* Faculty tenure issues (informational)
* Faculty salary report by gender (informational)
* Joint Committee on Insurance and Benefits, Annual Report 1996-97 (informational)
* Update on University Planning Council activities (informational)
* Budget planning for 1997-98
* Status of construction projects (informational)
Members of the University community are invited to attend. Anyone who is not a member of the Senate may request the privilege of the floor on any item of business already before the Senate. Such a request must be made to the chair, through the executive secretary, at least four days before the meeting.
Listening to Their Voices, The Rhetorical Activities of Historical Women, edited by Molly Meijer Wertheimer, associate professor of speech communication and women's studies at Penn State Hazleton, is a fresh interpretation of women's speaking and writing throughout Western history.
To be published in November by the University of South Carolina Press, the book looks at an area of traditional rhetorical history that has been excluded. The 18 essays in the book retrieve the voices of women who contributed to the rhetorical realm. Covering a diverse range of rhetorical pursuits and historical eras, the selection looks closely at such topics as the bold speech of ancient Egyptian women, the rhetorical genres of mother's manuals and women's commercial writings in the Middle Ages, exhortations for racial uplift by 19th-century African American women, and more. Wertheimer also contributed an essay to the text.
Daniel W. Conway, associate professor of philosophy, is the author of Nietzsche and the Political, published by Routledge. The book comprises a study of the political thinking of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), a German-born philosopher whose ideas have significantly influenced the course of 20th-century philosophy. Nietzsche and the Political appears in the Routledge series Thinking the Political, which is intended to provide non-specialists and advanced graduate students with a comprehensive survey of the development of 20th-century political theory.
Vanpoolers wanted from Philipsburg to University Park campus Monday through Friday. Arrive on campus 7:30 a.m. and depart at 4:30 p.m. Interested riders can phone Doris at 865-0560 or send e-mail to dgh@psulias.psu.edu.
* Due to a source error, the name of retiring Penn College President Robert L. Breuder was incorrect in a story on page 10 of the Oct. 9 Intercom. In the same story, the retirement date for Robert E. Dunham, senior vice president and dean of the Commonwealth College, also was incorrect. Dunham will retire Jan. 16, 1998.
* The "Christmas at Penn State" collector's ornament featuring the Palmer Museum of Art is available for $14.95 at the museum on the University Park campus. That information was omitted from a story on page 11 of the Oct. 2 Intercom, due to a source error.
