UNLV brushes up on what students should learn

Friday, May 4, 2007 | 7:02 a.m.

Even as he tries to elevate UNLV as a research institution, President David Ashley wants to reexamine whether his undergraduate students are getting the most appropriate fundamental education.

As he enters his 11th month on the job, Ashley is asking faculty to redefine which general education courses should be required of undergraduates. It will be a tough undertaking because the importance of some academic departments may be elevated at the expense of others - an adjustment that affects campus egos and department funding levels.

Ashley says he wants the core curriculum to be more rigorous, more reflective of an increasingly global society, and more attune to the skill sets needed by business and industry. He also wants a curriculum that provides a shared experience for UNLV students and shapes them into well-rounded, ethical, thoughtful adults.

He isn't offering specific suggestions, but rather has mandated faculty embark on a campuswide discussion.

Ashley broached the issue in a speech last week marking his formal inauguration . "UNLV students have always been among the most enterprising of our state," he said, "and through a more rigorous course of study, we will further challenge, inspire and engage those with the most potential."

Ashley said advisers cautioned against overhauling the general education requirements because the process can deteriorate into funding battles and turf wars.

Not all academic departments, such as engineering, offer general education courses within their department, while others, such as English, offer several so-called "G.E." classes. Departments that require G.E. classes usually receive more funding and more faculty positions to support those classes. So changing G.E. requirements is often debated in a context of money, not academics, said Terrel Rhodes, vice president for quality, curriculum and assessment at the Association of American Colleges and Universities.

There are also turf wars among departments over what classes students should be required to take, Rhodes said.

At UNLV, professors worry that many degree programs dictate which general education courses students must take, and so if a student changes majors, he often must take another batch of general education courses to satisfy the new discipline - thereby stalling graduation and adding to the cost of college.

In general, UNLV students must take two English composition courses, a world literature class, a college-level math and a U.S./Nevada Constitution course. Beyond that they select from a menu of classes, taking nine or 10 credit hours of their choice in two disciplines outside of their majors. An English major, for instance, must take nine or 10 credits in the natural sciences and nine or 10 more in the social sciences. They also must take a course each to fulfill international and multicultural requirements.

UNLV's Honors College has more stringent requirements, including taking a foreign language and speech.

The university's collection of general education courses is a hodgepodge that doesn't serve the students well, said Bill Robinson, economics professor and outgoing chairman of the Faculty Senate. "There is no coherency to that and no sense of whether it is doing our students any good," Robinson said.

UNLV's philosophy of offering a menu of class offerings, which gives students control over their education, is a common national model, incoming Provost Neal Smatresk said. But as lawmakers nationwide require universities to better assess what skills or knowledge students are gaining with their degrees, more universities are reducing the options to encourage students to develop specific skills, such as communication and critical thinking.

That will be the question at UNLV: Which specific skills should students be pushed to learn in their G.E. courses? The answer will come out of talks with academic, business and community representatives, Ashley and Smatresk said.

Among the options are to develop introductory courses, such as a science class to introduce nonscience majors to the scientific method and critical thinking skills necessary to understand national issues such as global warming and stem cell research, said Ron Yasbin, dean of the College of Sciences.

Many universities are developing sets of courses team-taught by professors across several disciplines, such as humanities classes that incorporate literature, history, fine arts, writing, ethics and international requirements .

Such interdisciplinary classes are ideal but difficult to coordinate at a large, public university such as UNLV, said Chris Hudgins, chairman of the English department and chairman of UNLV's last effort to revamp the general education requirement. The last overhaul was more than 10 years ago, but Hudgins helped tweak the curriculum four years ago to meet accreditation concerns.

As UNLV's admission standards are raised and students are better prepared for college work, the general education curriculum needs to become more challenging, Ashley said.

"We've had difficulties tackling the general education curriculum in the past, but we are convinced we can do a better job of educating our students if we take that issue head on," Ashley said.