BRC Recommendations February 12, 2015

Upper Division General Education

Background The current upper division GE program is structured so that students must take one course in each of three domains of knowledge (UD-B, UD-C, and UD-D), selected from one of nine topical perspectives (or organizing themes). Students must also take courses in any of four overlays that were not fulfilled by their lower division courses (Social Justice, American Ethnic and Racial Minorities, Global Perspectives and Environmental Sustainability). We can think of overlays as requirements that are typically fulfilled concurrently with other requirements. For example, if there is a UD-B course that addresses issues in social justice, it could be designated as fulfilling the Social Justice overlay, effectively allowing the student who takes it to meet two requirements (UD-B and Social Justice) in one and the same course.

The four overlays (Social Justice, AERM, Global Perspectives and Environmental Sustainability) were chosen because they were seen as reflecting core San Francisco State values, building on distinctive strengths and interests of both faculty and students. Accordingly, we will refer to the four as San Francisco State’s “signature commitments.”

There is an enormous variation in the seat distribution among the various domains of knowledge and topical perspectives. A student who selected Creativity, Innovation and Invention (CI), for example, might be able to find a seat in a UD-C class, but would find it much more difficult to find seats in UD-B or UD-D in that topical perspective. Likewise a student taking courses in Life in CA and the Bay Area would be able to find seats in UD-D but would find it virtually impossible to get a seat in a UD-C course.

Transfer student issues While first-time freshmen have four years to complete their four SF State overlays, transfer students (roughly 60% of our students) must complete all four within their major and upper division GE. There is no requirement to have an overlay designation in upper division GE and approximately one-third of the approved upper division GE lack an overlay designation. Many majors at SFSU are concentrated in the upper division, so although the total units may be relatively low, a transfer student coming in with 70 units has very little room in their schedule outside of their major requirements and upper division GE in which to complete their requirements. By Fall 2016 we will need an estimated 4000 seats per semester in each area of upper division GE. In Spring 2015 we were able to offer just 3361 seats in UD-B and 3219 in UD-C. Given this scarcity, many students will be forced to take a UD-B or UD-C course without an overlay, which will add yet another course (or two) that they need to take over and above their overlay requirements.

Given the implementation challenges that make the new Upper Division General Education requirements impossible to mount as planned, the BRC offers the following recommendations. Any solution must address the need for enough seats to accommodate over 7000 students each year, and must address the need for 4000 transfer students a year to complete their non-major graduation requirements (including upper division GE and overlays), often in only 9-units.

Recommendations

  1. Eliminate topical perspectives but continue to require that students fulfill each overlay as well as the three domains of knowledge (UD-B, UD-C, UD-D).
  2. Automatically approve courses in certain topical perspectives for their most proximate overlays, as follows:
  3. Courses in the Environmental Interconnections topical perspective approved for the Environmental Sustainability overlay
  4. Courses in the Social Justice and Civic Knowledge/Engagement topical perspective approved for the Social Justice overlay
  5. Courses in the World Perspectives topical perspective approved for the Global Perspectives overlay.

Process

These recommendations are a product of extensive discussion and consultation. We have met with representatives who have played a leading role in crafting GE at San Francisco State (LCA Associate Dean Susan Shimanoff and Senate Chair Trevor Getz, 11/9/14), associate deans of all of the colleges (11/25/14) and student representatives from SF State’s tutoring and mentoring programs (2/12/15). The response to these two recommendations has been extremely supportive. In our meeting with student representatives, they endorsed the plan to end topical perspectives (recommendation #1) by seven votes (7-0 with two abstentions).

At the BRC’s February 12 meeting, we voted overwhelmingly in favor of recommendation #1 (##[JT1] in favor, 1 abstention) and recommendation #2 (## in favor).

1

[JT1]Need exact numbers.