Auniversity’s general education courses help students gain broad knowledge across disciplines and cultures. They also help students develop and practice critical thinking, communication, leadership, problem-solving and other skills that help them understand and shape our future world.
As trained educators and experts in their field, faculty at colleges and universities including UW-La Crosse and around the world collaborate to design general education requirements, reflecting local expertise and insight into student needs.
For example, as an anthropological archaeologist at UW-L, I study how human societies have survived environmental change, navigated cultural differences and grappled with the legacies of colonialism. In my world archaeology course, students explore how humans developed technology, art, language and culture; the rise and fall of past urban societies; and how distinct cultural ideas about race, gender, class and identity show up in everyday objects. Our current general education program at UW-L helps students make sense of these challenges today.
Now, Wisconsin legislators and Universities of Wisconsin administrators — not faculty — want to impose a one-size-fits-all general education plan across all 13 campuses. By imposing this structure on all campuses, the plan circumvents individual campuses’ dedicated requirements for history, ethnic or cultural studies, and foreign languages, limiting students’ options to learn about the world beyond their own experience.
At a time of deep division, students need more, not fewer, opportunities to build cultural understanding and communicate across differences. I urge community members to stand with UW-L faculty and demand the Board of Regents reject this proposal.
Heather Walder, La Crosse