By Cole Strzelecki
General University Requirements (GURs) are classes that undergraduate students must take to complete a degree in their field of choice. These courses give students a broad background in various subjects beyond their main field of study. Western New England University, like most institutions of higher education, requires students to satisfy GUR requirements to develop skills considered crucial to success in contemporary society. However, the way our University’s GUR system works will soon change.
Western New England University plans to improve the GUR system. The current system has been in place for 20 years with only minor changes to its basic orientation. Faculty and administrators are now seeking to overhaul the GUR system to benefit students.
In January 2023, Provost Maria Toyoda assembled a faculty committee to look into changing the GURs of our University. The committee included Toyoda, Anita Dancs, a Professor of Economics; Rob Gettens, a Professor of Biomedical Engineering; Mary Schoonmaker, an Associate Professor of Marketing & Entrepreneurship; Sheralee Tershner, a Professor of Neuroscience, and David Mazur, a Professor of Mathematics and chair of the committee, to make sure everyone had representation and a say in the final decision for the university’s new GURs. Mazur explained that the committee “was to address the course ‘bottlenecks’ in the current system, increase flexibility, and make it easier to articulate the value of the GUR.”
Mazur and the group spent months reviewing the GURs of our University, taking the suggestions from students and faculty over the years into heavy consideration. They even attended conferences and workshops on various topics related to general education reform, met with other education leaders in this area, and compared their ideas to those of other institutions to help them make their decisions. Based on these influences, the group then created two potential models for our University’s new GURs.
The committee shared these two models with Western New England University’s faculty in early June 2024, soliciting feedback about the advantages and drawbacks of each. “Right now, we are surveying faculty to determine the degree of support for each model,” Mazur explained. “The survey results will help inform our next steps and hopefully push us towards a final model, which may be a hybrid of the two.” Once the faculty decides on their preferred new GUR model, the committee plans to elicit student input on these ideas.
The committee hopes to finalize and approve a new GUR model by the end of this semester. “Assuming all goes well, we want to start rolling it out with the first-year students who are starting in Fall 2025,” said Mazur. “There are a lot of academic catalog changes that would need to be made and potentially new courses to develop in a relatively short amount of time, so we will have to see what makes sense – there’s a lot that has to happen behind the scenes.”
The committee believes that the changes they’re making will significantly affect the education Western New England University offers. One such effect is students’ mindset towards GUR courses. The committee hopes that students will understand the purpose and value of these courses and enjoy them more rather than feel like they’re just checking off boxes. They want these courses to inspire students.
The committee hopes that students will find the new requirements more flexible. The hope is that it would allow students to pursue new interests that the current system never would have given them the chance to pursue. Students will thus receive an experience truly unique to Western New England University that only they will carry with them after graduation.
The committee has worked extremely hard to reform the GURs. “All of us are engaged in this work because we care about our students, their learning, and getting them ready for today’s world,” Mazur stated. The process has required careful consideration of higher education standards, Western New England University’s resources, and the feasibility of students completing these requirements.
“At the end of the day, we want to make sure that we are delivering something meaningful for our students,” Mazur said. The committee wants to ensure these new university general education programs are much different from what was in place. They’ve even gone as far as to state they will rename the program, no longer calling them GURs. Whatever path the committee decides to go forward with for this program, one thing is for sure: the education of Western New England University’s students will greatly benefit from it.
