*“Sometimes I feel like I’m paying for a degree, not earning it.”
~Student Melissa Gonzales*
Greg Evans, events coordinator for UNM’s Core Curriculum Task Force, has a vivid example to illustrate the problems he said he perceives in UNM’s core curriculum.
“I have a student in my (English) class who has a Master’s degree in Rhetoric and Writing. Her undergraduate core credits didn’t transfer, so now she has to take a class from me that she’s qualified to teach,” he said.
The Core Curriculum Task Force was set up by the University in August. Its goal is to come up with a set of recommendations for the University to help improve its core curriculum requirements.
The Task Force held a meeting in the SUB on Friday to listen to student input. After taking the student input into account (including reviewing the results of a five-question survey distributed by the Task Force), it will make final recommendations to the administration May 15.
Sixty or so students, faculty and staff were present at the meeting. Student Melissa Gonzales said she came to the meeting because she is unhappy with the core requirement system in place.
“I came because I do a lot of complaining about UNM in general. It’s frustrating with all the red tape,” she said. “I’m hoping they’ll broaden the core requirements and open them up to other fields. Sometimes I feel like I’m paying for a degree, not earning it.”
Student Gael Whettnall was on hand to pass around a petition asking the University to add a Sustainability Studies class to the core curriculum.
“I feel that in this day and age, we need to teach students about the environmental problems in the world,” he said.
The Task Force is divided into five subcommittees: Educational Values, Learning Outcomes, General Education Models, Writing Across Communities and Transfer Students.
Doug Thomas, Writing Across Communities subcommittee chair, recommended that writing skills be built into all core curriculum classes.
“It ought not to be the case that the English department is completely responsible for teaching you writing skills,” he said. “Other classes in the core should be responsible for that, too.”
Stefani Hines, Learning Outcomes subcommittee chair, said the core curriculum classes are not organized together under one organization, which causes confusion among students and staff.
“Here, the core curriculum does not have any ownership,” she said. “When you don’t have any ownership, you don’t have a shared vocabulary. You’re all shooting in different directions.”
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Michelle Hall Kells, chair of the Task Force, offered an anecdote about a student who lost out on education because he was forced to spend too much time completing his core requirements.
“(This student) eventually racked up $15,000 in student loans, and he was frustrated by all the core classes he had to take,” she said. “He never finished his degree. He had to go home after three years to help his family and that’s wrong.”
Kells said the Task Force has received support from students since it started.
“We started a Facebook account, and we had 5,000 kids on it within five days of posting it,” she said.
