Reconsideration of CMU's General Education Program

The reconsideration of CMU’s current General Education Program began as a Quality Initiative, approved by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) as part of our accreditation cycle. As part of that initiative, faculty were surveyed about our current program. There are a number of key takeaways from the survey results, but perhaps the most notable is that over 90% of those surveyed supported a faculty-led revision of the program.

When considering potential new General Education Models, one can approach them directly in terms of the models themselves or in terms of the components making up those models.  To allow different individual preferences to reconsider our program, we think it’s important to allow both types of approaches. 

The following are links to four potential general education models and a link to details about the components for CMU to adopt.  To put them all in a similar framework, it might help to consider them against the backdrop of the American Association of Colleges and Universities’ Essential Learning Outcomes. Opportunities to provide feedback on all models and the components will be linked from each page.

Note: these models are structural.  Whatever model is approved will then require a call for courses to satisfy various parts of the model.