Academic Senate: Changes to General Education program, new available certificates
CMU holds academic senate meetings at 3:30 p.m every other Tuesday, in the French Auditorium of the EHC building.
A remodeling of Central Michigan University’s General Education program, as well as several new undergraduate and graduate certificates and the deletion of a program were announced by the university faculty and administration in the third Academic Senate meeting of the year.
The meeting was held on Tuesday, Oct. 10 at the Education and Human Services building.
General Education program to be reshaped
The general education program, which encompasses two areas of study required for all undergraduate students -- the competencies and the university program -- is receiving a remodeling.
This change is meant to make the program easier to evaluate, according to Joshua Smith, a professor currently serving as interim Director of General Education.
“At the moment, what we have is a giant sprawling program, which is very difficult to assess," Smith said. "We have in the neighborhood of 70 student learning outcomes associated with that, which is part of what makes assessing the program difficult."
The program’s temporary committee does not currently have an outline of these changes, however they intend on gathering feedback from across the university, as this revision will affect students and staff alike.
“What is vital is that we're going to have a lot of opportunities for community feedback," said Smith. "And when I say community feedback, I mean the entire community… I mean, this is the sort of thing that affects everybody."
A website displaying possible models for these changes, where community members can leave feedback, is being developed by the General Education leadership, according to Smith, and students will be provided more information in their emails about this proposal.
Certificates and programs to be added and dropped
A new graduate certificate in Venture Financing, as well as undergraduate certificates in Applied Ethics and LGBTQ+ Studies, were announced by Tracy Davis, chair of the Academic Senate. CMU will implement them in the fall of 2024, she said. Certificates are open to all students, regardless of their majors or minors.
Slated for deletion is CMU’s Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) Master’s degree program. This graduate level program, which has been on hiatus and not accepting students, will be officially dropped this year, according to Davis.
Future Academic Senate meetings will occur at 3:30 p.m every other Tuesday at the EHS building in the French auditorium. Livestreams of this meeting and all future meetings can be found on CMU’s website.
