Students, faculty and alumni gathered in Centennial Hall for a teach-in regarding how Act 15 may affect UW-Eau Claire and the greater Universities of Wisconsin if the Board of Regents decides to adopt the new policy.
The teach-in filled a lecture hall on Oct. 29. on the first floor of Centennial Hall. Professor Heather Moody, one of the presenters at the teach-in, said she was surprised by the attendance.
“When we had 121 people sign on the sign in sheet, we thought that was amazing because we didn’t know who would be interested or who would show up,” Moody said. “Probably 98% of the people that were there were students.”
Brendan Garanyi, a first-year graduate history student, said he already understood that the goal of Act 15 was to standardize general education across the Universities of Wisconsin. However, at the teach-in, he said he learned there may be second-hand consequences to this proposal.
“The more that I learn about it, the more I understand there are these nasty side effects that are going to be really invasive towards the student and faculty experience and academic freedom in general,” Garanyi said. “The teach-in plainly showed what could potentially be lost.”
Act 15 seeks to “guarantee that core general education credits earned at one UW university will transfer and apply towards graduation requirements at another UW university,” according to a Universities of Wisconsin press release.
According to Moody, if this proposal passes, UW-Eau Claire’s Liberal Education (LE) requirements will become Core General Education Requirements (GE) requirements, standardized across the majority of the Universities of Wisconsin.
According to the Universities of Wisconsin’s page, these new Core General Education Requirements(CGER) would split requirements into six specific categories: Mathematics and Quantitative Reasoning, Communication & Literacy, Social & Behavioral Sciences, Humanities & Arts, Natural Science & Wellness and Civics & Perspectives.
“We have this fantastic framework that is going to shrink going into the new GE,” Moody said. “It’s not saying that any courses are being told they can’t teach that content, but it won’t be required content for every student.”
According to Andrew Sturtevant, a history professor at UW-Eau Claire and another speaker at the teach-in, with the currently proposed GE system, the majority of the six categories will require fewer learning experiences than in the current LE system.
“We recognize, as students, not all of your learning is in the classroom. Not all of your learning is through coursework,” Moody said. “There are other experiences you can have through our institution: research experiences, immersion experiences. That counts towards our LE. That goes away with the new model. It is strictly based on coursework.”
Sturtevant said that in these six categories, no experience could count for two different categories simultaneously, unlike in the current LE system.
The Civic & Perspectives category, for which the LE system requires 4 experiences, may only require a minimum of one in the proposed system, while Arts & Humanities may also require fewer total experiences.
Sturtevant said this new system could extend new students’ time to graduate if it doesn’t allow a single course in the GE system to count for two categories, unlike in the LE system.
“You can’t have a course that satisfies both the Humanities & Arts plus the Civics & Perspectives,” Sturtevant said. “Each category is a bucket, so you can’t have a class in two buckets at once. So there’s not an opportunity to have a class in the Humanities bucket that’s also in the Civics bucket.”
Michael Hansen, a third-year English student, said he believes there would be no silver linings if these changes were made.
“This is going to very poorly affect what we teach our students at this university,” Hansen said. “If this goes through, theoretically you have less to do, but the fact is with LEs you can do three in one class, which is great. That won’t be the case for GE.”
According to reporting from WEAU in 2023, UW-Eau Claire has seen the percentage of students graduating in four years rise from 30% to 45% since 2013. Sturtevant believes this increase is partially due to the implementation of the LE system in the fall of 2016.
“LE has already expedited how quickly students finish their degrees and now, basically without knowing and being able to thoughtfully think about how we put classes together, we could go back to a situation where it is less than 45%,” Sturtevant said.
Moody said she was concerned about the lack of a diversity category and that the Civics & Perspectives category cannot only include diversity-based courses.
“We cannot have a diversity bucket. We’ve been told that,” Moody said. “We can’t use that kind of language.”
Sturtevant said that by reducing the required number of experiences in certain categories like the Arts & Humanities and Civics & Perspectives, professors in these fields could decrease.
“Down the road, I see a scenario in which, especially because these two categories are being targeted, there will be an argument put in place that because they’re no longer required in this new GE model, that we don’t need as many professors teaching in them,” Sturtevant said.
Moody said she hoped the teach-in cleared up any misconceptions about Act 15 and made students’ voices heard regarding the issue.
“The teach-in was really meant to get students involved,” Moody said. “We wanted to hear from students, ask them, ‘What are your concerns with this?’”
With the Board of Regents set to vote on Act 15 on Nov. 19, both Moody and Garanyi said they hope students share their thoughts with the Universities of Wisconsin in the coming weeks.
“Even if you aren’t in the arts or the humanities, this still has to do with the future of our university,” Garanyi said. “I really urge students to make their voices heard. With that kind of pressure and public showing that we are aware of this and reject this, we can make the Board of Regents listen.”
Sherry can be reached at [email protected].
