by Catherine Rogers
Staff Writer
When you became a Bryan student, you entered into a contract between yourself and Bryan College, agreeing to meet their guidelines and requirements in exchange for a degree. That contract is known as the course catalog, and that catalog is about to change.
The faculty will be voting on the General Education Core Curriculum for the 2010 Catalog this month, according to Vice President of Academics Dr. Bradford Sample. These changes will become official for incoming students on July 1.
“To give more flexibility to students in terms of choices is basically what we’re trying to do,” said Sample.
What does this mean for current Bryan students? An opportunity for two things: fewer credit hours required for general education and more course options to choose from within those requirements.
Currently, Bryan offers one core curriculum for all students, but the coming changes will provide two—one for those studying toward a Bachelor of Science degree (B.S.) and another for those aiming at a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.).
Professor of Mathematics Dr. Phil Lestmann is chair of the committee that’s been working on these changes for almost two years. He said that the purpose of these changes is “to make a distinction between a B.A. and B.S. degree.”
This distinction will bring the general education requirements “to more national norms,” said Sample.
Sample explained that, “traditionally, a B.A. and B.S. are ‘inverted versions of each other’.”
A B.A. should be broader in its general requirements and more limited in its focus on a major, whereas a B.S. focuses more of its credit hours on a specific area of study.
Currently, Bryan general education requirements consume 60-74 credit hours of the 124 needed to graduate. The proposal for the new requirements will call for 46 credit hours for a B.S. and 68 for a B.A. As a result, this new contract leaves a B.A., for example, with18-24 credit hours completely free after 68 are used for general education and 30-36 towards a major.
So, the first advantage of the new catalog is that more credit hours are left available for students to use toward personalizing their degree whether it include taking another major, adding a minor or a combination of the two.
Lestmann said, “we’re trying to create more flexibility to help students in their planning, which should be especially helpful to transfer students who find it very difficult to fit all our requirements into two or three years.”
The flexibility that Lestmann mentioned is not just in regard to the number of required general education courses but also to the number of courses you must take.
For example, currently all students must take Intro to Fine Arts. In the proposed B.S. core, that could be replaced by a category for Creative Arts where students can choose between Intro to Fine Arts, Music Appreciation, Intro to Theater, Medium of Film and Intro to Literature. This is just one example of many similar changes.
The second advantage of the new catalog is that there will be more options of classes to choose from within the core curriculum.
As of now, the committee chaired by Lestmann has made a recommendation to the faculty about these changes to Bryan’s core curriculum. The faculty is in the process of configuring amendments to the proposed changes and will decide through a vote how they will be implemented into Bryan’s 2010 catalog at two meetings scheduled for April 16 and 30.
Students will be informed towards the end of this semester of the official changes and will be asked late next semester to declare which catalog they wish to use.
If you change catalogs, you change contracts, which include both requirements for core curriculum as well as for majors and minors. Your decision will be permanent, and the catalog you choose will be taken as a whole—that means no picking and choosing from both catalogs—and once you pick you can’t change your mind.
According to Dr. Lestmann, the changes to core curriculum “should be very very helpful.” So, choose wisely!