Acorn

Issue date: 2/8/08 Section: Opinion

Media Credit: Kelsi Bitgood

The Acorn staff would not be the first group to insist that general education requirements on campus should be revamped. Drew University claims to offer "a rigorous liberal arts education," comparable to any private liberal arts college in the northeast. With tuition costs what they are, it damn well better be.

There is something to be said about a university that constantly wants to present a unique brand of education-to leave its students with a specific academic mark. This is why The Acorn staff would like to commend the faculty for striving to perfect and polish its breadth requirements, in hopes of both enriching and retaining future Drewids. The current First-Year Seminars are not doing their job, with retention rates plummeting each year and current students constantly lamenting the breadth requirements' restrictive nature.

The new general education requirements that have been 18 months in the making are both legitimate and comprehensive. The "College Seminar" upgrades the First-Year Seminar from a half-year of collegiate nursery school to a full year of academic immersion that hopes to orient new students to "the challenge of academic work and college life."

The major and minor changes are liberal and free-thinking institutional ideas, mimicking schools like Hampshire College, where a comprehensive education with a focus is preferred over rigid specification. The unique and organizational "Learning Portfolio" sounds extremely high school-esque, yet in fact, these portfolios will form the basis of an assessment of Drew's general education curriculum-in effect, a tool for further evaluation and change.

The revamp of the general education requirements will boost the University's reputation, and proves President Bob Weisbuch's dedication to making Drew a progressive university devoted to helping develop student success. While the new requirements may not be perfect in the end, the Drew faculty is clearly devoted to the constant reconsideration of a student's academic experience in the Forest-nourishing what works and weeding out what does not.

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