On Thursday, Dr. Mark Thompson, Chair, University Educational Policies Committee (UEPC), led the second open forum to discuss changes to the General Education (GE) requirements.
Issues that were brought to the table have impacts on all students who will attend Stan State in the future, as well as how Stan State faculty does their jobs.
Faculty were happy to work together on these issues for the benefit of students.
Dr. Thompson explained that all GE requirements are important for all students to take.
“We require students to take a variety of GE courses because it produces well rounded and well informed citizens,”Dr. Thompson said.
Dr. Molly Winter, Professor and Chair of the English department, explained her struggle with making changes to the current GE Program.
“We struggle between what we want for students in terms of experience and knowledge and the idea that we want to reduce the number of units required for students to graduate,” Dr. Winter said. “We want students to get the most of of their experience here, but more experience equals more units, taking away experiences from students means a more timely graduation.”
The two main GE areas that faculty seemed most concerned with were: Area E, Individual Resources for Modern Living, and Area G, Multicultural Requirement.
Since the last meeting, faculty has narrowed changes to Area E down to two options: Either change the one unit activity requirement from a GE requirement to a graduation requirement or the Kinesiology department will develop a two unit course that is linked to an activity course.
Dr. Erin Hall, Professor in Kinesiology, believes that these classes are very important for students to take.
“This is the only area where students get a psychomotor domain and it’s good for their own physical, mental, and emotional well-being,” Dr. Hall said.
Executive Order 1100 requires that courses in Area G, the Multicultural requirement must either double count with another GE area or they must be made a graduation requirement. Faculty at the meeting agreed that either way, it is important to continue to require students to fulfill this requirement.
Part of the vision outlined by Stan State faculty is to create programs to serve a diverse student body, and requiring students to take a class from Area G way to reach this goal. 
Christopher Guzman (junior, Finance) is trying to save as much time and money as possible and said he would not take the Area G requirement if it was not required.
“I think it would be good to just get rid of it, that’s just one less thing that I have to do to graduate, there are a lot of GE requirements and some of them seem repetitive,” Guzman said.
Changing the GE program also means faculty will have to change how they do advising. This creates a certain set of challenges for advisors. 
Betsey Eudey, Faculty Director for Advising and Learning Cohorts, explained that students catalog rights may complicate advising for students that are already enrolled when these changes take place in the 2018 Fall semester. 
“We are gonna have to be really smart about this because this catalog year thing is something that we rarely talk to students about,” Dr. Eudey said. “We are going to make mistakes but we need to figure out how to limit them.”
Faculty aim to make the best decisions possible for students within the time constraints.