Every day, students sulk out of their general education classes,
muttering curses about their professor giving them too much
work.
With last fall’s unit increase for GE courses, professors
have had to make an equal increase in workload if it isn’t
already at the level required for a five unit course.
“The … general education courses had to be evaluated,
and if they weren’t five unit courses, we had to send them
back and beef them up,” said Scott Bartchy, a member of the
General Education Governance Committee and senior lecturer in the
history department.
Bartchy, who teaches History 4, did not need to give his
students more work because his course was already at the five unit
level even though students were receiving four units for it.
Many students were already dealing with a five unit level
workload, but were only receiving four units for the course before
the reforms were put in place.
“We just couldn’t get (the courses) approved for
five units because four units was the maximum amount they could
have,” he said.
The change was implemented because the Faculty Executive
Committee and the Undergraduate Council decided all GE courses
should provide a foundation that represents depth and breadth,
according to Karen Rowe, chairwoman of the College of Letters &
Sciences FEC.
She said within that context, it was determined that all of the
courses for the general education curriculum should be five unit
courses.
There is no set standard for how a course should be changed to
meet the unit increase, but the GE Governance Committee specifies
that students in a five unit GE course should spend 15 hours a week
doing work for the class, according to their guidelines for
certification of GE courses.
“Students had to do six hours of community service or a
five-page paper (before the increase),” said Roger Bohman,
senior lecturer of Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology 30
and 40 classes.
“The length of the community service has been raised to 10
hours, and the paper has been increased to 10 pages,” he
said.
Other means of increasing workload range from adding reading
materials to requiring an extra hour for labs or discussions.
These changes have made the five unit GE courses distinctly
different from four unit ones.
“One reason (Astronomy 8) is five units is because it has
a lab and a definite discussion, and if it were four units, one or
both would be taken out,” said Art Huffman, senior lecturer
for the physics and astronomy department.
After the department changes the course syllabus to satisfy the
15 hour requirement, it has to be approved by the FEC and the
Undergraduate Council.
The classics department decided to make all of their lower
division classes five units, and detailed their changes for
approval by the two groups.
“When the GE reforms were taking place last year, every
general education course had to be resubmitted,” said Robert
Gurval, chairman and associate professor for the classics
department.
The consequences of the reforms were felt by students who
believe GE classes should not make up the majority of their
workload when they have requirements for their major to
fulfill.
“We have upper division courses that we have to
concentrate on,” said Sulema Campos, fourth-year economics
and sociology student.
Campos left the geography class she was taking last quarter due
to the heavy workload and lack of direction in the course.
Other students recognize the amount of work they are being
given, but aren’t upset by the changes.
“For some classes, (the workload) is quite heavy, but I
manage to handle it,” said Robert Kim, a first-year biology
student.
While students are busy worrying about their extra work, they
may not think about how these increases affect their
professors.
With the amount of papers, assignments and exams increasing,
professors put in more time to correct and organize them.
“I prefer students to do the community service because it
means I have less papers to correct,” Bohman said.