Board member continues push for more gen-ed qualifiers

First, he started with history. Then political science, then sociology. These departments… First, he started with history. Then political science, then sociology. These departments offered many courses that provided education ­— but not general education requirements.

Student Government Board member Alex Zimmerman thought that needed to change.

“Something I heard a lot is that students were frustrated about some courses not qualifying as general education requirements when it seemed like they should,” Zimmerman said.

So he started with those departments, talking with the heads and faculty about making their courses qualify as general education requirements. This initiative, to broaden the number of courses students can take to fulfill their gen-eds, began two years ago when Zimmerman was elected chairman of SGB’s Academic Affairs Committee.

“There’s only one of me, so I try to approach it methodically,” Zimmerman said. “I start with the departments with the fewest general education courses.”

He said he couldn’t give an estimate of how many courses changed to fulfill gen-eds since he began the project. But success is difficult to measure because he isn’t informed if a course is allowed to fulfill a general education requirement because of his intervention or not, he said.

The Board member said his current goal moving forward is his initiative’s longevity, especially because he’s graduating in the spring.

“I only have maybe two more semesters left before I leave. I don’t know that there needs to be a policy change, but I would like to change the general mindset,” he said.

Still, as a member of the Arts & Sciences Undergraduate Council, a group made up of five students and six faculty members who review proposals for new courses and new or revised instructional programs, he said he often sees proposals come through for courses about which he spoke to department heads.

This semester, Pitt offers more than 750 courses that fill general education requirements in the School of Arts & Sciences.

Juan Manfredi, vice provost of undergraduate studies in the School of Arts & Sciences, said that for a course qualify as a gen-ed, its professor must submit a proposal to the Arts & Sciences Undergraduate Council with a reason for why the course should count as fulfilling a certain requirement.

“Most of the proposals are approved, even if it’s not always the first time,” Manfredi said.

He said that he sees a “spectrum” of universities in regards to policies on general education requirements. Some schools require almost no general education courses, and others are very gen-ed heavy. Manfredi said Pitt tries to take a middle-of-the-road approach.

The general education requirements for the School of Arts & Sciences include an introductory composition course, two writing-intensive courses, a quantitative reasoning course and courses in literature, the arts, philosophy, social sciences, historical change, natural sciences, foreign language, international culture and non-Western culture.

George Reid Andrews, the head of the history department, said he supports Zimmerman’s venture. He said his faculty seems to have been accepting of making more courses available for general education requirements.

“It seemed reasonable to me for students to have more choices when it came to fulfilling these requirements,” Andrews said.

In some departments, there are issues of resource allocation. Zimmerman said that even though the political science department has been open to his ideas, they lack sufficient faculty to open more courses for general education fulfillment.

Andrews said that sometimes it simply doesn’t occur to professors to open their courses as general education classes. The requirements were instated in the early 2000s.

But the issues can get more complicated.

John Twyning, the associate dean of undergraduate studies for the School of Arts & Sciences, said the course must be considered in relation to the rest of a subject’s curriculum, which only the department can know.

However, Twyning has a positive attitude toward Zimmerman’s efforts.

“I’m glad someone like Alex is taking an interest in this. It’s good to have student insight,” he said.