Undergraduate requirements may change to eliminate arts and humanities (AHUM), social science (SOCS), and creative expression (CREX) requirements and modify CORE requirements, but changes wouldn’t affect incoming freshmen until fall 2010.

The proposed changes would eliminate AHUM and SOCS requirements and instead allow professors to submit courses in which non-majors could participate, which would count for the general education requirements, Buxton said.

A faculty meeting will take place on April 24 in which all full-time faculty who teach in the undergraduate program will vote on whether they accept the new model, Buxton said.

He said votes will be tallied on May 8 and a majority of the faculty has to agree to the changes. If adopted, the proposed changes will not impact the Daniels College of Business requirements.

Rod Buxton, a member of the General Education Committee, has been discussing possible curriculum changes for the past year with members from every division that teaches in the general education curriculum.

Buxton, associate professor in the Department of Mass Communications and Journalism Studies, said the general education committee was requested by the provost’s office based on recommendations from the Academic Planning Committee, Faculty Senate, Thematic Core Committee and several faculty members to examine the university’s requirements for AHUM/SOCS.

Buxton said the main problem was that there was “a disconnect between what foundation courses were supposed to do and what they were actually doing.”

He added, “Foundation courses were supposed to be preparation for CORE courses and that wasn’t happening. There were no specific learning outcomes required of AHUM, SOCS, and even [natural science requirements] and math – they were not as strong as they could be.”

Under the proposed revision, if a student took a psychology class to fulfill an undergraduate requirement and he or she was a psychology major, that one class would count for both requirements, Buxton said.

“That way, it’ll reduce the number of courses the student will have to take,” he said.

Also, instead of AHUM and SOCS, students would have to take courses that fall into two categories: the natural and physical world or society and culture.

The analytical inquiry requirement that is currently the math requirement for undergraduate students would change. Students would have to take 4 credits in the natural and physical world and 8 credits in society and culture.

Buxton said students could take classes in this area that range anywhere from math classes that are offered now, to classes about philosophical symbolic logic.

For the scientific inquiry requirement, students would have to take 12 credits worth of classes that fit in the natural and physical world category and 8 credits in society and culture.

Instead of the CORE requirements, students would take 4 credits of an advanced seminar, which Buxton says would be the “bookend” to the first-year-seminar.

Students wouldn’t be able to take the advanced seminar until they complete all other general education requirements.

In addition to those requirements, students would still have to take 8 credits of writing and rhetoric and 12 credits to fulfill the foreign language requirement.

Students who test out of the foreign language requirement would still have to take a 4-credit class in a foreign language.

“There are a few people in the faculty senate who had had reservations; some people would like to see more requirements and other people would like to see even less,” Buxton said.

However, he said, “we are optimistically hopeful that it will pass.”