Starting in Fall 2020, the University is excited to implement its new General Education Program for all new students.
This follows nearly two-years of work by faculty across the campus. One of the central goals of this effort was to align general education with the University’s Strategic Vision and its four goals: (1) promoting the values of service and community and civic engagement, (2) immersing our students in applied, impactful learning experiences, (3) adapting the liberal arts to an age of accelerations and a global digital environment, and (4) creating a diverse and inclusive community as an essential requirement for academic excellence and academic success.
The new program has three layers which build upon each other: Foundations, Methods of Investigation, and Connections.
- Foundations courses establish skills for later success at UMW, are fundamental to the liberal arts, and are generally taken early in the academic career.
- Methods of Investigation are lower level courses that explore how different disciplines approach the world and its complexity. Students will take courses in arts and literature, humanities, natural science, quantitative reasoning, and social science.
- Connections courses provide students with opportunities to make connections between classroom learning, the world, and life beyond UMW. These include Digital Intensive, Diverse and Global Perspectives, Beyond the Classroom, and After Mary Washington.
While the new program maintains UMW’s signature strengths in the liberal arts, retaining our speaking, writing, first-year seminar, and experiential learning goals, there are several distinguishing features of this new general education program:
- Flexibility and choice. By streamlining distribution requirements (Methods of Investigation) students will have fewer required courses and greater flexibility to customize their academic experience from multiple disciplinary perspectives.
- Writing and speaking in the major. UMW has long been known for its writing and speaking across the curriculum programs. The new program sustains those efforts while ensuring that all students engage in writing and speaking within their major.
- Enhanced opportunities beyond the classroom. Experiential learning has been expanded to create even more applied learning experiences in the areas of service and community engagement.
- Preparation for life after Mary Washington. A distinctive aspect of this curriculum is the inclusion in the Connections component of a goal focused on translating the knowledge, skills and habits of mind of the liberal arts approach to the world of work. With this element, UMW is among a small handful of schools across the country who weave career readiness into the curriculum.
- Digital Intensive and Diverse and Global Perspectives. New across the curriculum requirements will further enhance UMW graduates’ life and career readiness by equipping them with competencies, fluencies, and tools necessary to navigate a digital and global world.
- Language requirement. This program sets proficiency at the 201 level which can also be satisfied with high school Language Level IV (four years).
All returning students will have a one-time opportunity to switch to the new program in the Spring, and students are encouraged meet with their advisors discuss the advantages and disadvantages of opting in to the new curriculum. This enrollment period will run throughout the month of March, and all students will receive information from the Office of the Registrar prior to Spring Break. Further details can be found at the Office of Academic Services website.
Nicole Crowder, Associate Professor of Chemistry and Chair of the General Education Committee