GREENSBORO – UNC Greensboro recently revised its General Education (or “Gen Ed”) requirements to take more of a multi-disciplinary approach to an increasingly complex world.

Starting in the fall of 2021, entering students would be required to meet 11 basic competencies by choosing from a broad array of classes.

As might be expected, the new requirements have generated some questions.

“We have gone to competency-based learning as opposed to siloed, disciplinary learning,” UNCG Chancellor Frank Gilliam says in the accompanying video.

“We’re looking to train students in a multi-disciplinary way to deal with a complex world,” Gilliam says. “… These students have to be prepared to live in that world. They have to be prepared to be global citizens. They have to be prepared to deal with all kinds of different people.”

He notes that in a global economy, employers increasingly want workers who can deal with different cultures.

“It’s a new day,” he says.

A quantitative reasoning requirement, for example, will ensure students learn math in context – which is proven to be a better way to help students understand and retain mathematics.

“They’re going to take math – they’re just going to take it in a different way,” Gilliam says. “Some might take mathematics. Some might take computer science. Some might take statistics of some sort. But they’re going to be exposed to quantitative reasoning. 

“We’re saying that knowledge has to be applied in the context of this increasingly complex world. We’re all hearing that employers talk about, ‘Students can’t read, students can’t write, they don’t know how to collaborate.’ Well our students will.”

Andrew Hamilton, UNCG’s Associate Vice Provost for Student Success, says the course offerings should offer more direct connections with the real world.

“Have we dumbed down the requirement? No, we’ve served it in multiple ways that make more direct sense to students,” Hamilton says.

It would be difficult to fulfill requirements in the humanities, fine arts or diversity and inclusion, for example, without a deep historical understanding, he says.

“Our students are going to be exposed to historical thinking and to historical knowledge, even if not in a course that’s prefixed ‘History 101’ or ‘102.’”

In a world where opportunity often bridges the borders between traditional disciplines, says Gilliam, “Developing students who have an open intellectual aperture – not a closed one – is really what our goal is.”