By: Emily Washburn, senior writer

On Oct. 7, 2017, students, faculty, staff and alumni were notified by Dr. Mike Sosulski that Wofford College received a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation worth $500,000. This grant will be distributed over the next three years and will be used to fund the continued review and potential restructuring of the general education curriculum at Wofford, an ongoing process the faculty and staff members have been developing since 2015. As a result of this recent news, many students have been curious to see what the potential changes to the general education curriculum might mean for themselves as well as future Wofford students.

In the spring semester of 2015, the General Education Reform Steering Committee was formed. It included 13 faculty members from across the disciplines, split among genders, and included representation across the divisions of social sciences, natural sciences and humanities. During the first few semesters, the committee spent time reading and discussing numerous topics as well as facilitating reading groups with faculty and staff in order to gain a broader perspective.

Afterwards, Dr. Christine Dinkins in the philosophy department conducted interviews with each of the different departments about their understanding of the general education curriculum. The committee then formed task groups to look at different aspects of the general education curriculum, with one person from the Steering Committee and one non-member chairing the task groups while the groups themselves were open for anyone from the faculty or staff to volunteer. After the interviews with the departments, members of the Steering Committee spoke to Campus Union and Dinkins spoke to focus groups of students.

In spring 2017, the Steering Committee presented five resolutions that they believed reflected the feedback they had received and that would help them to continue this process. The basic gist of each of these resolutions are as follows:

1. Changing the science requirement to be the same for B.A. and B.S. Degrees.
2. Changing the general education science requirement from two lab sciences to one lab science along with a 3 credit hour course that would present science in context, such as a class on science in society.
3. Opening up the possibility of teaching general education courses during Interim—this would not exclude other types of interim courses, but would make it another option for students.
4. Continuing to explore and refine the course distribution model—for example, there are no social sciences in the general education curriculum currently, unless students take one as their Cultures and Peoples credit, so the Steering Committee is examining what our current requirements do and do not accomplish.
5. Possibly spreading the general education curriculum throughout the four years instead of clumping them into the first and second years. One idea along with this would be a required seminar for juniors and/or seniors that pulls everything they’ve learned back together as well as something like the Humanities course for first year students. These would be called “bookend seminars.”

Sosulski advised the Steering Committee to vote by the last faculty meeting in May 2017 in order to come to a decision, but the members felt their research was not done and there was still more to learn before deciding fully.

None of these changes to the general education curriculum are set in stone. The Steering Committee is still learning, processing and filtering information in order to make the best decision possible for Wofford College.

Associate Provost Dr. Trina Jones commented, “There’s nothing necessarily saying that vast changes need to be made. The guiding questions that have taken us through this process and continue to take us through this process are, ‘What should a Wofford graduate know and be able to do? How does our curriculum make that the most possible?’”

The generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation allows faculty members to continue searching for the answers to those questions and to improve Wofford College. Jones said that the Steering Committee hopes to come to a conclusion and start implementing new ideas as soon as possible. The committee hopes to provide the opportunity for students to take general education courses for credit during Interim as soon as 2020.