UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA

1) Science is more than the natural sciences. The core curriculum defines "Scientific Literacy" only in terms of the "natural sciences". This is contrary to the view of the major entities involved in the support of science in the U.S., such as the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. Scientific literacy should also be inclusive of social and behavioral sciences, which also apply systematic principles and technologies to understand contemporary issues.

2) Interdisciplinary approaches to understanding issues are given short shrift. The proposed General Education Core Components and Learning Outcomes seem to be organized around traditional departments/disciplines. One can more-or-less match up traditional departments with the components and outcomes. This is not the best way to educate students in how to conceptualize problems in society and potential solutions. Some exposure to interdisciplinary approaches is important for functioning in today’s society.

I wonder whether the committee has considered the 'lower-division' label on the overlay courses. It seems to me some of these overlays might usefully be integrated into students’ major coursework, meaning that they’d likely be at the 300+ level. I think it would be a shame to ask students to take a lower division course in lieu of an appropriate course addressing these important topics in the context of the field they have committed to study. For example, history has an excellent major requirement called HIST 300 that is a research methods course that might well-serve the information literacy overlay. But if that requirement is restricted to lower div courses, then it would be ineligible for that overlay credit. I am sure a number of other departments have undergraduate methods and professionalization courses that would fall into a similar category. In addition, I teach applied ethics in the philosophy department. All of these courses (e.g., medical ethics, engineering ethics, environmental ethics, etc.) are at the 300+ level but they are perfect ethics values and social responsibility offerings for students in particular majors. Some of the curricula for these majors (engineering, pre-med) are so tight that adding a second EVSR course would be prohibitive so that the students would be trading something specifically relevant to their program of study for a general purpose course. I can’t imagine this was the intent of the committee, but it will be a consequence of the lower-division label on the overlays (even if exceptions can be made on a case by case basis, since it would affect MANY students). It is currently not the case that the overlay courses in the CAS are restricted to lower-division offerings. Please re-consider allowing these overlays to be at any level. One rationale for making them lower division might be that you prefer students to take these courses early in their career. But course numbers do not necessarily cohere to a student’s level in many cases. In my engineering ethics course a majority of the students are sophomores and first-years, so the 325 number does not restrict it to junior and senior students by any means. I made this point at one of the forums last year, but I am not sure it registered.