Additional course descriptions, as well as a listing of outcomes and assessment tools, appear in Appendix A. Appendix B has the “sample” syllabi that were constructed as part of the process of having the new courses approved by Faculty Senate.
As the below budget projection indicates, the cost to the University to implement the QEP will be very modest, as the QEP will require no additional hiring, so the funding for the QEP should be well within the capacity of the University's operating budget, even if no existing or new grant funding can be found to finance the QEP. The University also has adequate physical facilities to implement the program: classrooms large enough to accommodate the largest of the classes (the Humanics Capstone classes) are available in Hathaway, Carver and Bradford halls, as well as in the Academic Services Building, and additional capacity is being added with the renovation of other buildings on campus. Additionally, the Bradford Auditorium is large enough to accommodate all sections of the Capstone class plus additional audience for the presentations of the Capstone projects. For computer and research resources, multiple computer labs exist in Hathaway, Carver and the Blazer Library. Since research teams for each Capstone project will consist of five students conducting research, there will be no need for a computer facility large enough to accommodate the entire class section. The only physical facility budget item is for renovation of an existing space to use as a "flex space" for the QEP (see Budget section), the cost for which should be modest. Blazer Library maintains subscriptions to multiple electronic data resources, which should be sufficient to allow for research and literature review for the Capstone projects. As is the case with all other General Education classes, including the Integrative Studies classes being superseded, the HUM 101 and 201 classes should be limited to 20-25 students per section and be able to use the regular classrooms and computer labs used by the other classes in the General Education core.
Our best resource for implementing the QEP is a faculty that is skilled and willing to teach these new supporting classes and to engage in further curricular revision, as detailed above. Due to the existence of the interdisciplinary courses (Integrative Studies) at the University for decades, we have a cadre of instructors with teaching experience in the kind of interdisciplinary courses like the Humanics courses. The reception for the concept of the QEP has been generally enthusiastic, so we do not anticipate any problems in recruiting the current IGS teachers and faculty from other disciplines to both teach in the Humanics sequence and to alter current pedagogy for other class offerings to eventually incorporate the kinds of skills that are at the core of the QEP.
As an example of the willingness of the University faculty to adapt instructional methodology, we can consider the changes that came about to our freshman classes in English, Reading and Mathematics as a result of the Corequisite program that has existed since 2016 and has been enthusiastically embraced by the faculty, staff and administration of the University (see the report on this program in Appendix C). Focusing on Inquiry-Based Learning and requiring each instructor to work with an Instructional Counselor in a teaching team analogous to the HUM 301 team, the program required a radical transformation to the curriculum (with the elimination of developmental classes that did not count toward graduation) and to the instructional approach, and the adaptation was made both swiftly and effectively, with the corequisite classes having student pass rates that are above those that were being seen in the "traditional" version of these classes. The success of the corequisite program speaks to the University's faculty, staff and administration possessing the will and having a willingness to commit time, effort and funding to seeing a new approach to student learning implemented.