Liberal Education Guidelines for Faculty

Statement of Educational Values and Objectives

The Whittier College community shares a love of learning and a delight in the life of the mind; these are at the heart of the Whittier College liberal arts education.  A liberally educated person develops an informed self-awareness through a lifelong commitment to learning and through responsible membership in the multiple communities and contexts that make up the environment.  (This environment may be understood in terms of time, place, and perspective, and may include physical, social, and spiritual aspects.)  Responsible membership implies the ability to effect change in one’s environment.  In the service of these values, we suggest the following primary learning objectives. 

Primary Learning Objectives:

I. Students should appreciate that education is a creative, collaborative, and transformative experience.  The curriculum should provide a framework for students’ awareness of their intellectual, physical, moral, and cultural development.

II. Students should learn to think and articulate their thoughts critically (meaning to define, analyze, and synthesize) using a variety of methods and technologies.

III. Students should develop an understanding of, and competency in, the use of signs and symbols in constructing, creating, perceiving, and conveying meaning.

IV. Students should develop the capacity to entertain multiple perspectives and interpretations.

V. Students should develop the ability to understand the convergence and divergence of different fields of knowledge.  Students should develop familiarity with essential concepts in major fields, a considerable knowledge of at least one field, and the ability to make connections across fields.

VI. Students should develop skills and methods necessary for systematic investigations.

VII. Students should develop an understanding of themselves and others in relation to physical, historical, cultural, and global contexts.

Distribution Requirements

 

Area                                                                            Units

1. Freshman Writing Experience

          Freshman Writing Seminar                                    3

          Writing Intensive Course                                         3

2. Mathematics

          Quantitative Reasoning                                           3-4

3. Natural Science

          Introductory Lab Science                                         4

          Science and Math in Context                                  4

4. Civilizations, Cultures, and Global Perspectives

          American                                                                   3

          European                                                                   3

          African, Asian, or Latin American                           6

          International or Global Perspectives                       3

          Individual in a Social Context                                   2

5. Comparative Knowledge

          Paired or Team-Taught Courses                             6

6. Creative and Kinesthetic Performance

          Creative Arts                                                              2

          Kinesthetic Performance                                          2     

                                                                                           44-45 

 

Guidelines for the Curricular Categories

General Guidelines for All Categories:

1. All requirements should be satisfied by courses taught by full-time tenure-track faculty.  Although an occasional adjunct may be necessary, no requirement should be approved that can only be fulfilled with the use of adjuncts.

2. Courses which meet the guidelines for more than one category may satisfy requirements for each of those categories concurrently.  Courses used to satisfy general education requirements may also be used to satisfy requirements in other areas such as majors, minors, and credentialing programs.

3. All courses should have at least one class or section meeting per week with no more than 30 students.  It should be understood that this ceiling is firm and will be monitored by the Dean and Registrar.

4. All courses are encouraged to provide opportunities for the development of writing and quantitative skills, oral communication skills, and active learning through discussions, simulations, small group activities, field trips, and other forms of collaborative learning where appropriate.

5. In order to keep general education courses on the lower-division level as much as possible, ordinarily these courses will not have prerequisites outside the general education program.

6. The Liberal Education Committee will oversee the program.  In monitoring the program, if the committee finds that institutional constraints or new visions of the curriculum suggest the need to rethink these guidelines, it will bring these issues to the faculty for its consideration and approval.

 

Guidelines for the Freshman Writing Experience

 

Freshman Writing Courses (1A):

1. While each seminar will require at least three formal essays, the maximum number will be at the discretion of the instructor.  The number of written assignments is generally less important than developing the habit of thorough and careful revision.  The formal essays should be prompted by detailed descriptions of the writing assignment and should include extensive revision.

2. Essays and exercises should be designed to improve critical reading and thinking.  Exercises will focus on such skills as summarizing and paraphrasing, documenting sources, and using strategies of analysis, argument, description, and narration.

3. Students will learn to correct surface errors through assigned exercises.

4. Students will learn to think of writing as a process including multiple revisions of writing assignments.  Revision depends upon explanatory feedback from the instructor.  Although peer review is valuable, it is not a substitute for detailed written guidelines and feedback from the instructor.

5. Students will write a final paper of substantial length, approximately six to eight pages, involving analysis, synthesis, and revision.

Writing Intensive Courses (1B):

1. Courses satisfying this requirement must be taken after successful completion of INTD 100 and should be completed by the end of the first semester of the sophomore year.  Therefore, courses meeting this requirement should be lower division.  The writing intensive course may be taken within or outside the major, and may simultaneously satisfy other liberal education requirements.

2. In order to accomplish the desired goal of continuing the emphasis on writing instruction through a second semester course, courses satisfying this requirement must include several papers, of which at least one is rewritten after substantial evaluation by the instructor.

3. In addition, at least one longer paper should be assigned in order to continue to emphasize the importance of applying information and interpretations gleaned from research or textual analysis.  Research papers should emphasize using information and interpretations in presenting a case or argument rather than simply cataloging information; those papers emphasizing the analysis of textual material should involve some degree of comparison, analysis, or synthesis of ideas presented in the various sources.

4. Enrollment for courses satisfying this requirement will not exceed 25 students to allow the instructor time for careful evaluation and emphasis on structured rewriting of papers.

 

Guidelines for Mathematics, Laboratory Science, and

Science and Math in Context

[These guidelines are based on the document “Integrated Mathematics and Science Requirements for all Whittier Students” which should be consulted for further details.]

Mathematics -- QR (2):

1. The course should have interdisciplinary context and should emphasize the importance of mathematics to other disciplines.

2. The mathematical course material should be presented via applications that are relevant and engaging for the students.

3. The course should emphasize both the utility and the logical and aesthetic beauty of mathematics.

4. The course should develop the students’ ability to use computers as problem solving tools.  This includes but is not limited to the use of spreadsheets, graphing tools and a statistical package.

5. The course should encourage students to practice a variety of communication skills such as reading, writing, and oral presentation. As part of this guideline, the course should emphasize the use of mathematics in written and oral communication.

6. The course should be a college-level experience in quantitative reasoning, rather than a remedial skills course.  The quantitative reasoning course should teach students to understand and create mathematical models, and emphasize problem solving and logical thinking.

Introductory Lab Science -- ILS (3A):

1. The ILS courses should stress use of the scientific method and problem solving.

2. While a survey of a particular science may be appropriate for the one semester ILS courses, departments might also wish to consider topical courses to allow in-depth study of a smaller range of material (e.g., a physics course on waves).

3. Lab sciences require extensive use of active student learning.  In particular, departments might wish to consider innovative formats such as the Workshop method for the ILS courses.  Active student learning works best in workshop/lab sections with at most 30 students.

4. Courses taught in Workshop format should meet a minimum of four to five hours of workshop per week.  Courses taught in traditional lecture/lab format, should meet a minimum of three hours of lecture and three hours of lab per week.  As such, these courses should carry at least four credits.

5. Where appropriate, ILS courses should help students develop skills to use computer tools such as use of spreadsheets, graphing programs, and statistical analysis software.  The Liberal Education Committee will coordinate the selection of a set of software for use in QR, ILS, and SMC courses.

6. To facilitate the Advisement process, ILS courses should be categorized as either physical science (e.g., Physics, Geology, and some Chemistry courses) or life science (e.g., Biology and some Chemistry courses).

7. ILS students should engage in scientific writing.  Although such writing assignments will receive a larger emphasis in the SMC courses, some exposure in the ILS courses is desirable.

Science and Math in Context -- SMC (3B):

1. SMC courses should involve rigorous analysis of selected issues with scientific and/or quantitative components and enhance opportunities for active student learning and use of computer tools.

2. SMC courses will involve at least one faculty member with competency in the Natural Sciences/Mathematics area.  If the course is taught by an individual faculty member extensive use of guest lectures from other divisions (and possibly other institutions) should be used to support portions of the course which are not in the usual domain of the instructor.  We recommend enrollment limits of 30 for Context courses taught by an individual faculty member and 60 for team-taught courses.  Moreover, SMC courses should meet in a group no larger than 30 at least once a week.

3. SMC courses will be required of all students including science majors, and thus each section of the SMC course should ideally be open to students who have taken any one of several science courses.  Particular SMC courses should not list a particular ILS course as a prerequisite.  Instead, SMC courses should fit into one of three categories: those which admit students with any physical sciences ILS course, any life sciences ILS course, or any ILS course.

Guidelines for Civilizations and Cultures; International or Global Perspectives; and the Individual in a Social Context:

Note: The ways in which specific courses on Civilizations and Cultures address the guidelines and themes discussed below will vary among disciplines and instructors.  All courses will necessarily touch on all of these, some paying greater attention to textual analysis and some to context, some being primarily thematically organized, and some being primarily narratively organized.

The requirement that each student draw no more than two of the courses for 4A and 4B from a single discipline and that the selection include courses from more than one Division (Humanities, Social Sciences, and Natural Sciences) is intended to help the student select a range of Civilizations and Cultures courses which will include significant focus and a range of perspectives on each of the themes below.

A central mission of all of these courses will be pursuit of Learning Objective VII (understanding self and others in relation to physical, historical, cultural, and global contexts) through the liberation of the student from temporal and spatial provincialism, the condition of being locked into one’s own time and place.

American; European; African, Asian, or Latin American (4A-4B):

1. Civilizations and Cultures courses should locate their focal period and locale within their broader temporal and geographical contexts.  Courses should either cover or locate themselves within a broad setting and historical consideration (of centuries), even where the major focus is on a particular country, a set of authors, or a specific period.  (4B -- Africa, Asia, and Latin America -- has to involve courses from two different geographical areas.)

2. Learning Objective IV specifies that “students should develop the capacity to entertain multiple perspectives and interpretations” and specifies certain themes to be examined through these: cultures, beliefs and ideas, institutions, class and status, gender, race or ethnicity, and the physical environment.  Civilizations and Cultures courses should expose students to the entire range of such issues and to some variety of perspectives on them.

Cultures: Culture is a definitive element in this series of courses, and exposure of the student to variations in approaches to the study of cultures and cultural materials is one of their objectives.  Some of the courses may focus primarily on high culture or even on specific texts and some may focus on explicitly holistic, anthropological understandings of culture.

The beliefs and ideas, the world views, values, aesthetics, and paradigms (scientific and other) that help define civilizations and cultures will be the central focus in many of these courses and will enter into courses which are part of this series.

Political, social, economic, artistic, intellectual/scientific, and religious institutions enter into these courses as sites of textual productions, as subjects of textual commentary, and as central foci of certain of the courses themselves.  Taken together these courses should give attention to family organization, forms of government, exchange systems, the organization of artistic, intellectual/scientific, and religious patterns, and the relations among these institutional spheres.

Themes of class and status, gender, race/ethnicity, like institutional arrangements, enter into these courses in a variety of ways.  Textually based courses typically consider both authors and subjects relative to such factors.  Those courses dealing more specifically with historical processes and conditions will carry special responsibility to ensure that the student taking the Civilizations and Cultures series has an opportunity to examine the full range of life situations and perspectives as related to these factors.  These courses should take the student beyond the study and perspective of those in privileged life situations and similarly should avoid a focus only on the least privileged or most oppressed.  Not only should there be study of a full range of life situations but attention to a full range of expressions.

Physical Environment: Our identities are partly defined by the landscapes in which we live.  If it is true that culture and environment transform each other, this will be reflected in the cultural materials we are studying; however, the relationship should be explicitly recognized where relevant.  Moreover, the Civilizations and Cultures series should introduce the student to serious examination of this reciprocal transformation, including the role of technology in this process.

3. Because category 4 calls for interpretation of these cultures (that is, the construction of meaning through the analysis, evaluation, and synthesis of evidence), it is essential that students be active interpreters, not parrots of paradigms.  In doing this, students should be able to use a variety of methods and technologies and there must be critical reading, evaluated writing, and informed discussion.  The experience should include serious interpretive encounter with texts/primary sources as a major focus within at least some of the courses.

To accomplish that end, courses should be small enough for those activities to take place. There must be at least one class meeting each week where one faculty member meets with no more than twenty-five students.  That allows for the possibility of a large lecture course with weekly small sections.  For example, two professors could team-teach a course with a hundred students.  Twice a week, there could be lectures to the entire group.  But at least once a week, that large group should be subdivided into sections of no more than twenty-five students led by one of the two instructors.

4. As long as all guidelines are satisfied, courses taught in languages other than English may fulfill these requirements.  Moreover, instructors of courses offered in English are encouraged to include relevant readings in second languages.

5. Approved courses that students take when studying abroad may fulfill the European or African, Asian, and Latin American requirements.

Guidelines for International or Global Perspectives (4C):

An International or Global course should provide exposure for students to major issues confronting the global system (including the relevance of this concept to particular periods).  These courses may focus on specific topics such as the environment, development, the global impact of technology,  health, comparative cultures, human rights, or the role of institutions (governmental or nongovernmental) in the international system, but should include a variety of perspectives from the areas listed in 4AB.

Courses that satisfy this requirement need to include consideration of two or more of the regions listed in 4AB or need to take a whole-planet approach to their subject.

Guidelines for the Individual in a Social Context (4D):

As stated in the “Statement of Educational Values and Objectives,” Whittier expects students to develop “an informed self-awareness . . . through responsible membership in the multiple communities and contexts that make up the environment.”  Many courses and activities students engage in while at Whittier provide opportunities for this development, and most courses, including others in Civilizations and Cultures, at least touch on these themes.  Courses which satisfy the Individual in Social Context requirement are drawn from designated courses which focus upon the individual or upon a particular institutional setting.  These courses either transcend particular historical/cultural contexts or introduce the student to particular communities of practice.

Such courses might include those whose focus is on individual psychology or human development, on gender, on philosophical or ethical issues faced by the individual or community, or on the analysis of particular spheres such as the religious, educational, familial, media, social service, political, economic, or business.  Among courses satisfying this requirement are approved supervised research projects, practice-oriented courses, and internships introducing the student to the assumptions, practices, and contexts of work and service.

The requirement may be satisfied by a single course of 2 or more units or by two (typically practice-oriented) courses of one unit each.

(Whittier currently offers a number of opportunities for students in these areas and has the long-term goal of providing such opportunities for all students who would like to include service learning as part of their academic experience at the college.  Students may explore these possibilities through individual academic departments or through the Office of Student Life on campus.)

 

Guidelines for Comparative Knowledge (5)

The characteristics for courses in this category were spelled out in detail in the “Distribution Requirements for the Revised Curriculum” which stated that these courses would provide a “Comparative approach to two or more cultures, civilizations, paradigms, disciplines, historical periods, or other appropriate epistemological constructs; to be conducted in a paired-course, team-taught, or seminar format.”

1. Paired courses must come from two different disciplines.  Despite this essential difference, paired courses will clearly be parallel in significant respects (particularly through the use of common readings), will require that the two professors meet regularly during the semester, participate in each other’s classes, and seek to coordinate the two courses.

2. Team-taught courses are six credit offerings spanning at least two terms and the same team must teach the entire sequence.

Guidelines for the Creative Arts Requirement (6A)

1. Courses satisfying this requirement should emphasize the creation of art as opposed to the study of art.  Art, as defined by this requirement, includes visual art, creative writing, music, theater, and dance.

2. This requirement could be satisfied by taking two 1-credit courses, or could be satisfied by taking one 3-credit or 2-credit course.  Students in majors emphasizing the creative arts are encouraged to fulfill this requirement by taking courses outside their own major.

Guidelines for the Kinesthetic Performance Requirement (6B)

This requirement emphasizes the physical aspect of being.  It will consist of one 1-credit course emphasizing fitness and wellness for life, and a second 1-credit course emphasizing active participation.

1. Courses satisfying the fitness and wellness requirement must include the following components:

a. The course must present information related to the five components of physical fitness and the improvement of the quality of life through wellness;

b. The course must provide active participation in assessing physical fitness and wellness;

c. The course must provide information that will aid students in determining what physical activities meet their lifelong fitness or wellness needs.

2. Courses satisfying the active participation portion of this requirement must engage students in exercises that contribute to lifelong fitness and wellness.  The course which satisfies the activity requirement must be taken after the fitness and wellness course.