The Fourth Unit: Not Necessarily Another Hour in the Classroom
Faculty are creating a variety of ways to expand courses to fit USF’s new four-unit model, which was passed by the faculty association as part of an overhaul of the general education curriculum (GEC). All GEC courses will be four units, requiring students to take fewer classes but giving them a deeper treatment of each topic.
In economics, some faculty are scheduling an extra hour of practice time for problem sets. In communication studies, a new course integrating speaking and writing will consolidate three courses into one. In Spanish, an extra hour of conversation practice or tutoring will fill in the fourth hour.
“The idea is to have my class like a regular three-unit class but I’m adding some extra components so students can be exposed to different interpretations of the same topics,” said Julio Moreno, assistant professor of history. For his Modern Latin America class, Moreno is assigning an extra hour in the campus’ new video conferencing room where his class will hold discussions with students at Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico. For his class, Latinos in the U.S., students will visit community centers serving the Latino community and write analyses of what they saw and how it relates to class readings.
The creative use of class time represents a pedagogical change from a classroom- and lecture-centered education to one that also values learning outside the classroom. Such an approach, said Jennifer Turpin, associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, makes USF unique among universities that use the four-unit model.
“We want faculty to think critically about what is the best use of the fourth hour as long as they can justify it to the (curriculum) committee,” Turpin said. “More work should be done, more breadth and depth achieved.”
Some faculty say the time is best spent in the classroom. Hartmut Fischer, professor of economics, said he will add class time because that’s what his students need most. “They need us to work with them,” he said.
John Nelson, assistant professor of theology, interpreted the option to mean requiring students to compile an annotated bibliography of all their readings and research, including an analysis of each, for his Religion in Contemporary Japan class. For his Sacred Quest class, students will attend a worship service, interview members of that faith, and participate in a community outreach program sponsored by the religion they’re studying.
Faculty who teach in the honors program in the humanities say they will introduce student- and faculty-led colloquia in addition to trips to museums or films that parallel seminar topics.
“We wanted to assign these extracurricular activities for a long time. Now with four units we can,” said David Stump, associate professor of philosophy and acting head of the honors program. “This also give us an opportunity to create more cohesion between faculty and students and have more coordination in the program.” 
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