Faculty forum held to discuss LAE reform

Last Friday, a faculty forum was held with one of the topics of discussion being Liberal Arts Essentials, or LAE, reform.

“It was very preliminary thinking,” said Professor of Philosophy Todd Lekan, chair of the philosophy department. “It is a slow process.”

As of now, no changes are to be made to the LAE curriculum requirements. The discussion was to generate ideas on how the LAE could be changed and improved.

“One suggestion was whether it would be desirable to decrease hours,” said Lekan.

Other thoughts included combining categories and including more courses in categories to make the LAE a little smaller and faster to complete so students could focus on courses geared toward their majors.

Right now, LAEs comprise 45 percent of the hours taken toward graduation.

“It is toward the upper end compared to other liberal arts schools’ curriculum,” said Lekan.

First-year Mallorie Wagner agreed that the amount of LAEs to take was a lot.

“I want to focus on my major, early childhood education, and I don’t think I should be required to take the religion and art classes,” said Wagner.

The last time that the LAE was significantly revised was in the ’80s.

“There have been a number of discussions about changing the LAEs,” said Lekan. “But nothing has developed yet. It takes a while to change fundamentally.”

He said that the questions that need to be asked are: “What should general education be for?” and “What does it mean to be liberally educated?”

The LAE is intended to let students explore a broad range of potential academic majors and develop an understanding of all academic areas.

“The goal is to give a basic competency to students, skills that are transferrable no matter what you are studying,” said Lekan. “Being able to learn for yourself and being able to take perspective of others and others’ cultures are extremely important.”

The LAE also provides an opportunity for students to choose courses they would not choose naturally. Lekan used the argument of breadth versus depth. The LAE gives students a breadth of understanding and knowledge, while classes in a student’s major go into depth about that subject area.

Sophomore Karen Wells, a math education major, finds taking courses that are unrelated to her major difficult.

“It’s hard to take classes that you seem to find unimportant,” said Wells.

There is also the question of how much emphasis is placed in a certain category.

“My major deals with math education, and for LAE, you need only one math course but two science courses,” said Wells. “How is it decided which is the most important?”

There are classes that students have found unexpectedly to be valuable.

“Speech communication was helpful with learning to be more comfortable speaking in front of kids,” said Wells. “Also, psychology proved to be useful in understanding how and why people think what they do, which will be important when dealing with kids.”

Wagner also found the speech class useful.

“It will definitely help me for education,” said Wagner.