June 3, 2019: Update on Liberal Education Redesign Committee

Colleagues,

We are pleased to provide an update from the Liberal Education Redesign Committee (LERC).

As a reminder, in fall of 2017, based on the recommendation from the Liberal Education Pre-planning Committee that met from 2015 to 2017, Provost Hanson appointed an all-University committee to review the current status of our existing liberal education requirements, and to consider possible new models and modes of delivery of LE on the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus. This committee is chaired by Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, Professor in the History of Science.

Over the past 18 months, this committee has been meeting regularly to work through a possible new curriculum. It began its deliberations by thinking creatively about what basic educational experiences were essential for a college graduate in the decade of the 2020s. Members looked closely at newly revised general education and required gen ed curricula at similar institutions and then gathered considerable data about U of M students, including patterns of course selection, demographics (e.g. by college, student admit type), and prior credit (e.g. AP, PSEO, and transfer credit). The LERC solicited comments from all undergraduate colleges, and the chair of the committee met in Spring 2019 with the Advising Steering Committee of staff advisors, solicited student perspectives from the Vice Provost’s Undergraduate Advisory Board and the Minnesota Student Association, talked with the Faculty Consultative Committee, and met with others on request. The Chair met with FCC on numerous occasions. Recently, the committee has completed a draft report and series of possible models.

We have carefully reviewed the LE Report and proposed general education models that the committee developed over the past 18 months, and we are both extremely impressed with the work of this committee and appreciative of the great progress that was made. Given their thoughtful work, we believe, as does the Faculty Consultative Committee, that the time has now come for these materials to be circulated to the university community, in preparation for discussion and, we hope, approval by the Faculty Senate this next academic year.

The plan for communication is as follows:

  • Linked from this memo to the University community is the draft report and three draft general education models that have been proposed.
  • The LERC will meet one more time in early fall to discuss any feedback that arrives over the summer, before discussion by the FCC and faculty governance.
  • A LERC subcommittee will meet over the summer to develop ideas on the governance of the newly established curriculum.
  • In early fall, we will re-circulate all materials.
  • The FCC plans to bring this to the full Faculty Senate for faculty/staff discussion this fall, followed by a vote in late fall or early spring. More details will be provided in the early fall about the timing of these meetings.

We would like to thank the committee for their time, creativity, and hard work over the past 18 months. We especially thank Chair Gregory Kohlstedt for her dedicated leadership and for guiding the committee through the complicated process that will provide a new general education curriculum for our next generation of undergraduates.

Sincerely,

Karen Hanson
Executive Vice President and Provost

Bob McMaster
Vice Provost and Dean of Undergraduate Education

Email sent June 3, 2019 to all Twin Cities faculty and staff.