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California State University, Chico

GE Course Review

At least once every five years, the Curriculum Advisory Board will review all General Education courses.

As directed in EM 25-002, the Course Review will ensure the following:

  • EO 1100 subject area compliance
  • thematic coherence of upper-division GE Pathway and GE Minor courses
  • evidence of racially just classroom practices, antiracist pedagogies, including the dismantling of anti-Black practices, with the overall intention of contributing toward a healthy racial campus climate that results in equitable educational experiences for students from historically marginalized populations, especially Black, Indigenous and all other students of color. Course proponents will provide evidence of how equity gaps have been addressed and provide non-instructor specific data, if available, concerning those equity gaps
  • evidence of low-cost course materials

The Course Review is in keeping with EO 1100, the Academic Senate "Resolution Regarding Equity Gaps of Underrepresented Minority Student Achievement" adopted April 4, 2019, and the College Textbook Affordability Act of 2015. Following review, CAB will recommend retention or removal of courses from GE and/or the GE Minor.

In 2021-22, a Curriculum Advisory Board (CAB) subcommittee consisting of students, staff, and faculty met to discuss the review process.

This subcommittee included faculty from seven departments and four colleges, officers from the Asian and Pacific Islander Council, Black Faculty and Staff Association, Chicano/Latino Council, and Native American Staff and Faculty Association, as well as representatives from the Associated Students, Office of Faculty Development, Office of Accessible Technology and Services, and Educational Opportunity Program (including PATH Scholars).

In Fall 2021, this subcommittee recommended seeking CAB and student feedback on Daniel Soodjinda's (CSU Stanislaus) "Antiracist, inclusive, and culturally sustaining course objectives." Focus groups took place with students in the CCLC, Honors Program, REACH Program, Office of Tribal Relations, and STAR Center.

The Chair and Vice Chair of the Black Faculty and Staff Association reviewed the feedback from student focus groups and CAB and recommended the creation and adoption of a faculty self-assessment that utilizes Soodjinda's course objectives (with modifications based on student feedback), and strongly encouraged that faculty be provided with sample self-studies and resources.

In Spring 2022, CAB accepted and endorsed this recommendation with minor changes to ensure faculty participation and privacy.

Process

Each year, all faculty members who teach a section of a course under review will complete a Self-Study (for their Department Chair) about GE subject area as well as antiracist teaching practices and pedagogies. 

Then, for each GE course, Department Chairs will submit a report to the Curriculum Advisory Board (CAB), using evidence from the faculty Self-Studies to address questions about antiracist teaching practices and pedagogies, and using the syllabus to provide evidence that the course meets the expectations of the GE Area and (where relevant) the Pathway and/or GE Minor.

Faculty and Chairs who have already begun self-assessing their GE Courses will have the opportunity to upload existing documentation rather than completing the entire self-assessment.

CAB will review the Chair's report, and may require changes to the course to resolve any issues with the GE subject area and (where relevant) the Pathway or GE Minor. At this time, CAB will not require any changes to a course based on Chairs' answers to questions about antiracist teaching practices and pedagogies, but CAB will monitor that faculty and Chairs are reflecting upon and, ideally, implementing antiracist teaching practices and pedagogies, and may recommend changes to help cultivate "a healthy racial campus climate that result in equitable educational experiences" (Academic Senate Resolution in Condemnation of Violence Against Black People and Commitment to Antiracist Policies and Practices).

Schedule (subject to change)

22-23: Courses in GE Areas Oral Communication (A1), Written Communication (A2), Critical Thinking (A3), and American Institutions (AI)

23-24: Courses in GE Areas Quantitative Reasoning (B4), Social Sciences (D), and Upper Division Quantitative Reasoning (UD-B)

24-25: Courses in GE Areas Physical Science (B1), and Upper Division Social Sciences (UD-D)

25-26: Courses in GE Areas Biological Sciences (5B), and Upper Division Arts and Humanities (UD-3)

26-27: Courses in GE Areas Arts (3A), Humanities (3B), and Ethnic Studies (6)

GE subject areas are defined in Executive Order 1100 and can be found in Course Catalog - General Education.

Objectives

CAB has adopted the following Objectives, created by Dr. Daniel Soodjinda (CSU Stanislaus), and modified with permission during the consultation process. These Objectives will continue to evolve with feedback from students and instructors. A shared goal of these Objectives is that course content, student activities, instructional strategies, and assessments should affirm and validate Asian, Black, Latinx/e, Indigenous, Native American, and other People of Color by normalizing those voices through a course’s curriculum.

  1. Course content is inclusive/accessible for students to process with their own unique abilities and strategies.
  2. Students are offered multiple opportunities to demonstrate knowledge (via assessment strategies) in ways that are best aligned to their own unique abilities.
  3. Assessments and feedback are provided in such a way that allows students to self-assess their own strengths, learning gaps, and needs.
  4. Course content, student activities, instructional strategies, and assessments emphasize and support the maintenance of students’ diverse, multiple, and intersectional identities.
  5. Course content, student activities, instructional strategies, and assessments foster and empower student competence, student agency and the desire to effect change.
  6. Course content, student activities, instructional strategies, and assessments develop cultural knowledge that is co-constructed through students’ lived experiences and that normalizes sharing, critiquing, reviewing and renewing.
  7. Course content, student activities, instructional strategies, and assessments are aligned to student assets and resources (content knowledge background, learning strengths, ethnicity, race, socio-economic status, linguistic resources) as well as student interests and aspirations.
  8. Course content, student activities, instructional strategies, and assessments address student barriers, which may include content knowledge background, learning challenges, cultural backgrounds (ethnicity, race, socio-economic status) and/or linguistic challenges.
  9. Course content, student activities, instructional strategies, and assessments are developed through a lens that: A) Explores racial justice issues; B) Provides opportunities for students to think critically about race and racism and their intersections with the course’s central concepts; C) Confronts and disrupts racial inequities (in the classroom and as related to the course’s central concept); D) Normalizes a critical lens; E) Actively de-centers whiteness.
  10. Instructors interrogate, confront, abolish, and redevelop course content, student activities, instructional strategies, and assessments that are steeped in white supremacist, oppressive, deficit-oriented, and racist underpinnings.
  11. Courses have a space that allows students to critique and challenge, and provide feedback to instructors when students face oppression, or are not represented or heard.

Resources

CAB has created antiracist pedagogy resources keyed specifically to courses' GE Subject Areas. CAB coordinated with the grant-funded Research in Equity, Antiracism, Diversity, and Inclusion (READI) hub (2022-2024) to produce these resources.

To support faculty in completing the GE Course Review form, CAB, in coordination with the Office of Undergraduate Education, is providing two Support Workshops in hybrid format. At these Support Workshops faculty can complete their Self-Study alongside others and receive support from relevant faculty.

  • AY 25-26 Support workshops TBA

During the 2021-22 consultation on the construction of a GE course review process, students (from the Cross-Cultural Leadership Center, Honors Program, REACH Program, Office of Tribal Relations, and STAR Center) strongly supported the twelve antiracist teaching practices and pedagogies, but had very important concerns to share with instructors.

  • Students want instructors to take these objectives seriously.
  • Students want instructors to research publications on students lived experiences and cultural assets, rather than expecting students to "teach" their instructors (in reference to Objectives 6, 7, and 9).
  • Students want instructors to be especially aware of never putting BIPOC students in situations where they might be expected to represent their cultures (in reference to Objectives 4, 6, and 7).
  • Students want instructors to be mindful and respectful of students who don't share the underlying values expressed by the antiracist teaching practices and pedagogies (in reference to Objective 2).
  • Students want instructors to implement student self-grading judiciously since students with imposter syndrome may self-assess much more harshly than students with less or no imposter syndrome (in reference to Objective 10).
  • Students want instructors to be aware that classroom climate surveys about racism are never really anonymous for students from deeply underrepresented groups, and BIPOC students fear retaliation for providing honest feedback (in reference to Objective 11).
  • Students want instructors to never use student experiences, perspectives, or testimony in their own research or advancement.