Task Force Mission and Charge

Members

Co-Chairs

  • Hilde Binford,  Associate Professor of Music
  • Alison Holliday, Associate Professor of Chemistry

Task Force Members

  • Crystal Fodrey, Associate Professor of English, Director of Writing at Moravian (WAM)
  • Cecilia M. Fox, Professor and Chair of Biological Sciences and Neuroscience
  • Gary Kaskowitz, Professor of Management
  • Louise C. Keegan, Assistant Professor, Program Director of Master of Science in Speech-Language Pathology
  • Kelly Krieble, Associate Professor and Chair of Physics
  • Jamie Paxton, Associate Professor of History
  • Nate Shank, Professor of Mathematics

To contact the General Education Task Force, please email us at GenEd@moravian.edu

Mission and Charge

Name of task force: LinC/GenEd task force

Purpose and rationale

Our current LinC curriculum was created more than 20 years ago for a different student body and a faculty differently composed. The curriculum is the very definition of our educational enterprise and faculty ownership and design of this is critical for student success as well as the fundamental draw for new students.

During the 2018-2019 academic year, we began to reconsider our general education goals. We were also told that Middle states has asked us to create an assessment plan for our general education program. We have hired 30% plus of our current full-time faculty in the last six years. Add to this, the changing context of higher education and the cultures and expectations of our students, we are at a perfect moment to re-envision our approach to general education to make it uniquely Moravian and to give our current faculty the opportunity to reinvest in our shared curriculum.

Over the course of a person’s career, most people experience a variety of jobs and many individuals change careers completely. To succeed in the current globalized environment and future workforce, multiple and changing local environments, students must develop the intellectual flexibility and adaptability to incorporate varied sources of information into their decision-making and understanding of the world. “Raising the Bar” (2010, see reference below) was a national employer survey. In that survey employers said that college graduates needed “to have both depth of understanding in a major field and a broad range of skills and knowledge to succeed in the workplace of the present and the future.”

The Charge

The charge to this task force is to seek an innovative approach to a general education/core curriculum program -- as the joint and shared responsibility of the faculty, which is integrative in nature and also supports students through the majors, co-curricular learning experiences such as study abroad, internships, and student leadership, and their future success as members of the larger community.

  • The ultimate goal is to present a re-design of the general education program and related assessment plan to the faculty for a vote with the expectation of implementation of a new/revised curriculum.
  • The task force will have several disparate tasks. At ALL phases the task force will communicate with and invite responses and input from the full faculty regularly.

    Phase 1: Set timeline, Investigative
    Phase 2: Development of and Draft Program(s)
    Phase 3: Present to faculty for vote
    Phase 4: Implementation

Motivation for task force

  • A task force is needed to guide and inform the process because the work needs clear focus and will be a substantial part of a faculty member’s workload.
  • The task force’s work will be fundamental to managing the processes of curricular change.
  • The curriculum is the very heart of our educational enterprise and faculty ownership and design of this is critical for student success as well as the fundamental draw for new students.
  • A new LinC/General Education program should support the mission of the college.