Day: February 1, 2024

On June 27, 2023, University Senate Proposal 18-23, “Proposal to Revise General Education Requirements (Essential Education) for Bachelor Degrees,” received final administrative approval. At the end of the fall 2023 semester, eight faculty and staff cross-curricular working groups were assembled and began full operation to implement the various components of the new Essential Education curriculum per the Senate proposal.

Following are mission descriptions for four of the eight Essential Education Implementation working groups. The other four working groups’ report-outs were published on Jan. 31.

If you have any questions, comments, or feedback about any of these working groups or about the implementation process, please contact the Essential Education Implementation Leadership Team at essential-ed-l@mtu.edu.

• Activities for Well-Being & Success Working Group
  Activities for well-being and success foster students to connect with others, be active, restore their minds and bodies, and expand learning beyond the traditional classroom. This working group is reviewing the binning list created by the Course List Working Group to identify current courses that align with these goals, developing a process for the campus community to suggest activities, determining training/resource needs for instructors and liaising with the Assessment Working Group to determine assessment requirements for these courses. The group is developing a process for new course suggestions and a list of training and resources.
  
• Essential Education Minors Working Group
  This group is tasked with proposing 15 minor themes for development (or revision) into SHAPE Essential Education minors by spring 2025. These Essential Ed minors, an alternative to the Distribution Pathway courses, will be housed in SHAPE departments. This group will create a timeline for the development of these Essential Ed minors, a risk analysis report, a minor audit template, and a proposal for working groups for each minor. The group is currently analyzing the output of an interdisciplinary task force and previous working groups to identify recurring themes for potential Essential Ed minors. Meetings are being conducted with SHAPE units to assess interest and capacity as hosts and collaborators for these minors. They are also developing processes for reviewing minors for compliance with requirements and ensuring continued evaluation, support, and potential revisions to the minors.
  • The minors working group will submit an announcement in Tech Today later in February regarding preliminary themes identified for Essential Ed minor development, on which we encourage your feedback.
    
• Assessment Working Group
  The group envisions a future state where faculty and staff appreciate that helping students learn is a collective activity: everyone does their part, and students grow in the Essential Education arena in ways that complement their degrees and positively impact their careers and other personal journeys after graduation. The group’s mission is to propose an overall structure for assessment, an implementation timeline, and a schedule that supports that future state. The group is reviewing previous Essential Ed work, as well as information about the current approach to general education assessment (including challenges, opportunities, issues, and recent pilots).
  
• Marketing and Communication Advisory Board
  This group’s role is to serve as an internal advisory board for University Marketing and Communications (UMC), liaising with other working groups and identifying communication and resource needs for advisors, faculty, students (current and prospective), and employers throughout the Essential Ed implementation process. The group’s current focus is assisting UMC’s first communication priority, which is a new series of pages on the Registrar’s website. These pages will serve as the “user manual” for Essential Ed, housing detailed program information and key advising materials.