GEC Implementation Makes Students Happy
While faculty put the last pieces of the new general education curriculum (GEC) in place, students report they are happier with a new core education that includes longer classes, fewer requirements, and more choices.
“So far students like it because they have fewer classes to take, and they’re happy they have more flexibility to finish off the requirements both in terms of size of the requirements and selection,” said Marvella Luey, assistant to the associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences.
After approval by the USF Board of Trustees on Sept. 24, faculty began proposing the classification of new or slightly remodeled lower-division courses as GEC choices in the spring. Under the new model, students may choose from classes already offered as part of a major curriculum in order to fulfill the required 44 GEC units. A faculty committee is reviewing those proposals and some classes have already been accepted and offered to students. General survey courses offered as part of the old GEC will continue to be offered for one year in order to ensure students may finish requirements on time and with the right amount of units.
Two classes created to fit the GEC model include a literature class taught by Pedro Lange-Churión, associate professor of modern and classical languages, tentatively titled “Danté’s Divine Comedy: A Spiritual Pilgrimage,” and an introductory biology class, offered by Assistant Professor Tim Brady, which promises to show humanities, social science, or business majors looking to fulfill the science requirement “that living things are always interesting, often surprising, sometimes shocking, and occasionally downright weird.”
“Faculty are concentrating on what can be interesting for students,” said Jennifer Turpin, associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences. “These will be classes that faculty are excited to create.”
The new GEC also includes service learning and cultural diversity requirements that can be fulfilled with classes that simultaneously fulfill the major disciplinary requirements in math, science, writing, the humanities, and visual and performing arts.
A new GEC Web site, www.usfca.edu/acadserv/core, gives students up-to-date course curricula and classes still open for registration.
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