Lesli Marchese, Campus Carrier News Editor

On Jan. 14, the Academic Council voted in favor of the proposed general education (GE) requirement changes.

Kirsten Taylor, department chair and associate professor of government, spoke to students during the first SGA meeting of the semester about the proposed changes.

“The goal was to make [General Education] a more coherent curriculum,” Taylor said.

These changes restructure the goals and class requirements for the General Education curriculum. 

For example, a current GE goal is effective communication. This goal is met by two required courses, Rhetoric and Writing (RHW 102) and Rhetoric and Public Address (COM 203). These courses are currently the only two that fulfill the requirement for the effective communication goal. However, with the GE changes, future classes could also meet this goal.

Most of the changes made were to the structure of the GE requirements in order to more clearly define the learning goals and outcomes of the classes.

During this past Tuesday’s SGA meeting, senior Blake Petty, a student representative for Academic Council, explained what the process will look like now that the reform has passed.

For the 2016-2017 academic year, the GE Curriculum will be in a state of moratorium, which means that all GE classes will remain the same. Entering into the 2017-2018 year, faculty will have the option of submitting classes to a committee that will vote on whether they fulfill certain GE requirements. The incoming class of the fall of 2018 will be the first class these changes will fully affect. 

Some students were worried that the new class options would take away from the well-rounded model of a liberal arts education.

“They’re still going to be taking government and history and religion classes and psychology classes,” Petty said. “What will look different behind it is the themes.”

Instead of classes that are labeled and taught as introductions to a concept, there will be the opportunity for more diversified classes. 

For example, instead of an introduction to chemistry class, there could be a class on the chemistry of food and how those chemicals work in your body, or biochemical warfare and the ethics surrounding it.

“Classes that were previously only experimented with … will be available for everyone to take,” Petty said. “Students are now able to take classes that really interest them.”

Other students are excited about the opportunities the changes will bring to future students.

“I think it’s a really good idea because it will give students more flexibility in what kind of classes they can take,” junior Valerie De Wandel said. “It may get students more excited to take certain classes.”

These changes also give faculty the option to be more creative with future GE classes. 

“I think it will move beyond the high school curriculum that some of the classes feel like now and enrich the curriculum that we already have,” junior Rebekah Sweatt said. 

The learning goals in the new curriculum are effective communication, mathematical reasoning, intercultural knowledge, and foundations of knowledge.

“I think that it’s great that we’re adding the new cultural aspect,” senior Alex Moon said. “I think the flexibility will allow students to take classes they never even thought they could.”

The general education reform has passed in time for it to be reviewed during Berry’s reaccreditation process.

The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) is an education organization that reviews schools with the goal of “improvement of education in the South through accreditation,” according to their mission statement.

“The initiative started out of a need to try and make some of the goals of [general education] clearer and more accessible for our SACS review that we undergo every 10 years,” Taylor said.

The discussion of these changes has been ongoing for more than five years. 

 “People tried to reform it, tried to fix it, to say ‘hey we need to do something different’ and it never passed,” Petty said. “Finally a compromise was met … this was the finished product of a long thing that none of us had ever seen.”