Background and Nature of the General Education Program
Background:
Wichita State University is an urban institution that serves a large number of non-traditional students. We have many minority, international, part-time, first-generation-to-go-to-college, and transfer students. Indeed, only a small minority of our graduates consists of traditional four-or five-year students who take all of their general education courses with us.
These facts of life have had a strong effect on the nature of our general education program and on the means by which we can assess it. At some institutions, the general education program consists of a limited number of courses so that there is a strong element of shared experience for students; that is not possible here. At some institutions, outcomes are measured by a single exam given to all; that also is not possible here.
The essence of our assessment program is that it is a means for providing feedback to ensure that we are achieving our goals to the fullest extent possible. It is based on the premise that our faculty members are professionals who are competent to judge outcomes in the courses they teach.
Nature of the program and its relationship to the mission of the university:
The mission of Wichita State University includes equipping our students “ . . . with the educational and cultural tools they need to thrive in a complex world, and to achieve both individual responsibility in their own lives and effective citizenship in the local, national, and global community; . . .”
In the context of our general education program, we interpret this statement in terms of the skills and breadth of experiences needed for our graduates to succeed. The skills we emphasize are those involved in finding, assessing and analyzing information and formulating ideas so that they can be communicated orally or in writing, as appropriate. The diversity of intellectual exposure demanded by our general education program provides our students with the breadth they need to “thrive in a complex world.”