New General Education System

Concord University has a reputation for two important things: low class sizes and a strong academic criterion. Concord offers a strong, traditional liberal arts education to its students. Now, there is a movement to change the way academics are handled in the state. As a result, Concord will soon change the general study requirements. 

    Dr. Peter Viscusi, Vice President and Academic Dean, went into detail about how exactly the changes will come to be. “The general education requirements haven’t been changed in over 41 years. That’s a long time for a general studies or a general education program to be in existence. Campus faculty have been working on a revision for about a year now. There’s a comment period that’s going on. The General Studies subcommittee of the APC (Academic Policy Committee) produced a document, and they sent it on to the APC for comment, who sent it along to the Faculty Senate for comment, and the comment period is going to be going over into the third week of September, and after that, Dr. Boggess will receive the documents and make the final decision on what the new general education program.” 

    The changes to the educational requirements are going to be intensive. According to Viscusi, the need to change the curriculum began with the state’s push for every student to graduate in four years if they took 15 credit hours every semester. The state in recent years has been pushing for college students to graduate with about 120 credit hours. A person could do that if they took and passed 15 credit hours every semester. Essentially, some students at Concord cannot graduate in four years while taking 15 credit hours because the general education requirements are so high.

    To that end, Concord’s goal with the new general education requirements is twofold: First, to decrease the number of general education credits down to 39, and to give students more options than they currently have in the general education program now. This would put Concord more in line with the academic requirements of Marshall University and West Virginia University, who have had to make similar cuts to the amount of credit hours required. Though, as Viscusi said, exactly what courses they are going to offer under the new program will remain unclear until the details are fully worked out. 

    Viscusi also added that this new system will streamline the way students interact with their general education courses. With fewer credit hours, students will be more free to pursue a double major, multiple minors, and hopefully be more prepared for a specific field that they wish to enter in overall. In addition, the IT Department is working on an update to the website. With the update to the website, adding classes will be much easier, as clicking a class will cause a drop-down box to show what areas the class would fulfill. Viscusi is hopeful that the update to the Concord website will be finished and available for students to use when the new general studies program comes into effect. 

Should president Boggess approve of the changes, the new general education requirements would go into effect January 2017. Anyone with questions or comments about the changes to the general education requirements is encouraged to contact Dr. Viscusi via email at pviscusi@concord.edu or by phone at 304-384-5243.