By MARTY LEVINE
The General Education Task Force has pinpointed three schools that may serve as models to emulate for Pitt’s University-wide general education reform.
Belkys Torres, associate vice provost for inclusive excellence in education, previewed the choices at the most recent meeting of the University Senate’s Educational Policies committee.
“My hopes are to continue the conversation” with other committees and Senate officers, leading toward a white paper this fall that is intended to elicit wider input from the Pitt community.
The three schools, discovered while benchmarking Pitt against almost a dozen peers, are Penn State University, University of Arizona and University at Buffalo–SUNY. Each employs in its Gen Ed course review process a university-wide content review committee of faculty and staff content specialists. Their models also showed that such a committee would require approval of its recommendations from more broadly focused oversight groups looking at academic, financial, faculty services and other concerns. The revamped Gen Ed effort at Pitt would also likely need periodic overall reviews by a dedicated Senate committee.
“Is this the direction we should be headed in, in light of your expertise?” Torres asked. “Can we have a conversation?”
History faculty member John Stoner, committee co-chair, said he liked the Buffalo model that gives sections of Gen Ed to content experts for review, although he added that Pitt’s version should be designed “not to shut out other voices from being heard later on in the process.” He also noted that, should the review of each school or unit’s curricular changes fall to a single group, that task could be “an incredible burden.”
“We’re very sensitive to the workload this entails,” Torres allowed, noting that the Gen Ed revamp will be “leaning into the expertise of the folks who know best.”
“I’m generally encouraged by this kind of path,” said pharmacy faculty member Bonnie Falcione, committee co-chair, but asked for the committee to have more time before commenting further.
Marty Levine is a staff writer for the University Times. Reach him at martyl@pitt.edu or 412-758-4859.
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