General Education Essentials: A Guide For College Faculty

Every year, hundreds of small colleges, state schools, and large, research-oriented universities across the United States (and, increasingly, across Europe and Asia) are revisiting their core and general education curricula, often moving toward more integrative models. And every year, faculty members who are highly skilled and regularly rewarded for their work in narrowly defined fields are raising their hands at department meetings, at divisional gatherings, and at faculty senate sessions and asking two simple questions: “Why?” and “How is this going to impact me?” This guide seeks to answer these and other questions by providing an overview of and a rationale for the recent shift in general education curricular design, a sense of how this shift can affect a faculty member’s teaching, and a sense of how all of this might impact course and student assessment.

Paul Hanstedt is a professor of English at Roanoke College and the recipient of a FIPSE grant for sustainable faculty development, several teaching awards from three different institutions, and an Innovation Award for helping to create greater collaboration among faculty at his home institution.

Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) is the leading national association concerned with the quality, vitality, and public standing of undergraduate liberal education.