Guiding Principles of the Stony Brook Curriculum

Clarity of Purpose

Our first guiding principle has been to make it clear to students, faculty, and staff why students are taking general education courses.

Clarity of Educational Objectives

Designing a General Education curriculum that maintains its clarity of purpose over the long term requires careful use of language. Simply put, it means describing each requirement not by the subject area, but by the learning outcomes to be achieved. This shift of priorities in the description of the system has multiple benefits.

Learning outcomes are not uniquely associated with the departments that provide them. The subject-driven model effectively stereotypes the education provided by our departments, thereby overlooking and forbidding unique and interesting ways for students to achieve the desired learning outcomes. In a learning-outcome-based General Education model, the judgment of experts in their own disciplines is relied upon to generate an appealing curriculum with a complete description of the opportunities available to students.

When the learning outcomes that the course should provide are contained within the title, the purpose behind taking a course becomes clearer. A move beyond subject lists also allows for natural inclusion of multi-disciplinary courses in the General Education curriculum, because each course is evaluated based upon its value to the student's education instead of simply upon the department(s) that offer it.

Clarity Concerning Certification

Maintaining clarity of purpose requires a certification process for any course that proposes to meet the learning outcomes of a category, and then recertification at regular intervals to assure that the certified courses have not diverged from their original purposes.

We envision that the steady state certification of these new measures will primarily be addressed by existing university committees. However, the initial surge of certifications will require an intense effort and likely an augmented committee.

The importance of the certification process cannot be overstated. Without alignment of the course reality with the General Education purpose, little would change in a practical sense, and we would have failed to deliver a refreshed curriculum.

Clarity Concerning Assessment

A learning-outcome-driven General Education fits extremely well into emerging models of assessment. The principal goal of assessment is to measure the effectiveness of any given course in meeting its educational goals. Courses in the new General Education system, by virtue of the learning-outcome-defined categories, will have clear and expected measures.

We believe that each course that applies for certification in the General Education system not only must specify how it meets the learning outcomes of a category, but also how its effectiveness will be assessed. We also believe that faculty involvement in the development and use of the assessment process will lead to continuing course improvement. See chapter 4 for more information on certification.

Logically, we rely upon the expertise of our faculty in their own fields. No one can judge the quality of a history paper as well as a history professor, and no one can judge the quality of student performance on a physics exam as well as a physics professor. Therefore, we envision a simple mechanism by which faculty expertise can be brought into the assessment cycle through the Undergraduate Program Directors.

We believe that General Education courses must apply for recertification every four years and that the collected assessment material will be included as part of the recertification process.

Experience Beyond the Classroom

Our second guiding principle has been to encourage students to apply their learning beyond the classroom. Anecdotal stories abound regarding the singular determination of students to "check off the boxes" of their General Education rather than to seek the life experiences that make for a complete undergraduate education. The education of a student who has experienced nothing more than lecture-midterm-paper-final during his or her undergraduate career is not as well-rounded as one that includes experience beyond the classroom. The addition of an experiential education component to the curriculum is a crucial aspect of the new curriculum.

Opportunities for experiential learning at Stony Brook include research and scholarly activity, service learning, study abroad, performance and creative activity, internship, field work, leadership, and teaching and training assistantships. We estimate, based upon course title and enrollment, that roughly 3,500 students per year are currently engaged in experiential education. Since some students seek multiple opportunities, we would like to roughly double present opportunities.

Unifying Themes

Our third guiding principle is to make it possible for students to complete part of their General Education following a themed option, a collection of courses that satisfy multiple General Education categories and have an underlying interdisciplinary connection that could culminate in a capstone course. Just as students identify themselves with their major (a conscious choice reflecting their interests and talents), we anticipate they would identify positively with a chosen theme as part of their General Education.

Simplicity, Flexibility and Accessibility

Our fourth guiding principle is to design a General Education program whose requirements are simply understood and applied broadly to all undergraduate students. A program should be flexible enough to encourage quick and timely progress towards graduation. It should also be accessible to students in all programs, thereby achieving a common experience among all academic units and providing a seamless transfer when a student changes majors across academic colleges. And, it should facilitate success of all students, whether they begin their college studies at Stony Brook or elsewhere.