Q: Where is this drive to redesign our General Education program coming from?
A:
This Institute has been a long time coming, with discussions around revising the general education curriculum reaching as far back as conversations about the need for an external review of Manoa’s general education program in 2015-16. Given the already existing system-wide articulation agreements, collaborating on a more elegantly designed Gen Ed program that spans the 10 campuses and addresses 21st-century skills, was the next essential and most logical step in our vision for an interconnected, easier-to-negotiate UH system.
Q: How were the members of the UH General Education Curriculum Design Team chosen?
A:
The process for recruiting and selecting the Design Team members is described on this page of the new Gen Ed Redesign website.
Q: What is the timeline for the General Education Redesign project?
A:
The General Education Curriculum Design Team will meet in Summer 2021 at the Summer Institute. For more information on the schedule, and updates on the Institute timeline, please visit the Summer Institute informational page and Process and Timeline page.
Q: What impact will the General Education Redesign have on programs, such as certain CTE and AAS offerings, that currently select discrete elements of the General Education requirements in order to create a custom, truncated set of requirements that fits their program’s specific needs?
A:
These types of programs may adapt the General Education requirements to fit into the framework of their often-shorter, technical program’s framework. These programs will continue to have the right to exercise that type of discretion and flexibility after the new General Education Redesign has been approved and implemented.
Q: How does Manoa’s external review of general education relate to this process?
A:
Manoa underwent an external review of its general education program in 2016-17. In preparation for that review, an internal review was also conducted. Both documents provided recommendations that may be useful for a system-wide redesign, but are not required to be present in the redesign efforts. In part, the system-wide redesign process was created to avoid campus-specific changes that would have emerged from the Manoa external review. That being said, the external review recommendations encouraged out of the box thinking, which the system-wide design team is also encouraged to do.
