General Education Requirements Change

General education is not directly related to a student’s formal technical, vocational, or professional preparation. Students at every college campus remembers those classes they were required to take before they got into their core classes. Those are general education requirements and every student has to take them regardless of their major. WVU Parkersburg is changing those requirements.

The old general education requirements went into effect in 2009 when the college was closely affiliated with WVU. The old requirements were, Quantitive Literacy; Historical and diverse perspectives; Communication; Scientific inquiry; and Expression and Appreciation of the Arts. At one point WVU Parkersburg even aligned the course numbering system with theirs. Recently WVU revisited its general education requirements and have renumbered and realigned courses along a different conceptual framework.

WVU now has seven strands of general education however, WVU Parkersburg cannot offer all the courses they count as general education so the Vice President of Academic Affairs, worked with the General Education Coordinator at WVU to trim the general education requirements down to six strands; Composition and Rhetoric; Science and Technology; Math and Quantitative Skills; Society, Diversity, and Connections; Human Inquiry and the Past; and The Arts and Creativity

Most courses at WVU Parkersburg would have transferred to WVU if a student would have chosen to transfer there, however with their realignment, the courses WVU Parkersburg accepts as general education would not have transferred to WVU. This would put students who chose to do their general education classes at WVU Parkersburg at a disadvantage when they want to move on to a four-year program at WVU that WVU Parkersburg does not offer, like a four-year engineering program.

President Lamkin, saw the need to realign WVU Parkersburg’s general education so no student was left behind when WVU did their overhaul of their general education requirements. “While we offer terrific four year programs here, should students want to go to Morgantown to major in something that we do not offer, our responsibility as a community college is to make sure our students are prepared academically, not only in their academic skills but in what we have required them to take as General Education,” Sandra Kolankiewicz, Assistant Professor of English said. Currently WVU Parkersburg is doing its best to create articulation agreements, therefore the college wants more of the general education requirements to transfer to WVU.

Now with the new strands of general education, every single course a student takes at WVU Parkersburg as general education, will transfer to WVU with the exception of Biology 107/8 and English 107/8. These classes are still required by specific programs at WVU Parkersburg however. Students need to know that if they are under the old catalogue these requirements will not affect them. If students are under the new catalogue these new general education classes will be required.

by Amber Deeter