If general education classes have always seemed to you like a monotonous drag, reprieve from dull requirements may soon be on the way. The University of Massachusetts was among 32 schools chosen recently to participate in the Association of American Colleges and Universities’ (AACU) “Shared Futures: Global Learning and Social Responsibility” program, which aims to equip students with a better understanding of pressing world issues through their general studies curriculum.
The initiative “will be organized around three strands: communications and public advocacy for global learning; curriculum and faculty development through online and face-to-face meetings and institutes; and outcome and assessment efforts to develop and test global learning rubrics,” according to an AACU release.
According to Martha Stassen, director of assessment at UMass and the leader of the UMass faculty working on the general education for a global century program, this agenda for implementing the program will last about two years, with heavy focus on international learning opportunities.
Shared futures is “a two-year project; and the first year is spent developing an inventory of current global learning opportunities on the UMass Amherst campus, collecting feedback from students and faculty alike, and developing an action plan for next steps,” she said.
“The Shared Futures project is one component of the University’s larger effort to enhance gen ed,” Stassen stated, “and provide opportunities for students to make connections between their gen ed experiences and the subjects that interest them most.”
Participating colleges and universities will extract their new content from three themes: “Diversity, Democracy, and Global Emphases,” “Scientific Literacy” and “Advanced Integrative Inquiry,” another AACU release announced.
According to Kevin Hovland, director of Shared Futures’ General Education for a Global Century program, UMass will be expected to “develop additional global thematic structures within general education that reinforce connections to the first year living-learning communities, first year college writing seminars, junior writing requirement in the major and a new general education Integrative Experience.”
Stassen said this new curriculum is being developed in the hopes of preparing students to live in an international world.
The new approach will “help students prepare for life and work in an increasingly global society through a focus on courses and other educational experiences that emphasize issues of global significance (e.g., global environmental threats, sustainability, cross-cultural communication and understanding, and social justice in a global context),” she explained.
“Often we hear in particular that the [general education] requirement (one or two courses in humanities, one or two lab sciences, one or two social science courses, perhaps a studio art course),” said Hovland, “are lost on students and faculty.”
This is consistent with UMass students’ feedback Stassen said, which “indicates that students often have difficulty seeing the relevance of gen ed to their own interests, or to preparation for the workplace.
Consequently, “[Shared Futures has] focused on global issues,” said Hovland, “to reinforce the notion that general education is relevant to the ‘real world.’”
Hovland encouraged students to keep in mind that “[o]ne of the fundamental purposes of general education is to give students the intellectual flexibility to face new challenges and unscripted problems that they will face as graduates. The Shared Futures project seeks to give students practice on those problems while they are in college.”
Michelle Altman can be contacted at [email protected].
