Curriculum Committee Issues Report

The primary goal of the proposal is to make the curriculum, implemented in 1980, less fragmented.

"Any curriculum that was geared towards the needs of the students more than 20 years ago is naturally not what we're going to need today," said Laurie McNeil, chairwoman of the curriculum review. "We had a sound ship, but we had to scrape a lot of barnacles off the hull."

The main way the committee plans to integrate the curriculum is by having a connections component, which would apply foundational skills to students' majors or minors and connect students' education outside the classroom.

"One of the things we were aware of is that we live in a more global world than 20 years ago," McNeil said.

The connections courses would include three courses related to global citizenship, a U.S. diversity class to replace the cultural diversity requirement, one communications class, one language integration class, one quantitative class and one experiential education class.

Students could receive credit for the experiential education component through such things as service-learning, fieldwork, an internship or study abroad.

The proposed curriculum would reduce general education requirements from 44 to 42 hours and Arts and Sciences perspectives from 12 to nine hours.

Many courses could count as both a connections course and as an elective or major or minor credit. The courses specifically designated as only connections classes would not count toward required general college hours.

The proposal also tries to get rid of fragmentation in the system by eliminating requirements that the committee thought were unnecessary.

One of the first requirements to go under the recommendation was the swim test. The physical education requirement also would be altered. Instead of requiring two physical education classes, the committee wants to have one lifetime physical education class that would not only teach a sport but also encourage lifetime fitness.

Because these courses would be more academic in nature, they would count for one credit hour instead of zero. But committee members said regular physical education classes still would be available.

The committee also proposed eliminating the Math 10 requirement and cutting back on General College history requirements. Students still will have to take the history classes but instead could complete them as part of the connections requirements.

Another way the committee proposes to connect students' general education is by giving bachelor of arts students the option of taking their arts and sciences perspectives in interdisciplinary clusters.

According to this suggestion, students would take three courses from different departments linked together by a theme, such as a "race" cluster that would combine faculty from anthropology, English and history. Other cluster examples include "landscape," "evolution of the cosmos" and "chaos."

McNeil discussed the proposal in a presentation to the Faculty Council on Friday. McNeil said she hopes to see the revisions put in place by fall 2005.

Students already enrolled by fall 2005 would continue with the former requirements, while incoming freshmen would begin the new set of requirements.

The University Editor can be reached at udesk@unc.edu.