College of Architecture, Planning, and Design
(CAPD)
College UGE Assessment
A CAPD student must complete a minimum of 18 credit hours of
approved UGE courses. Only one of the three undergraduate
programs, landscape Architecture, has placed additional requirements
on the selection of UGE courses. The landscape Architecture
curriculum requires 32 elective credit hours, 19 are directed
(6 in business, 6 in social sciences/humanities, 4 in science,
and 3 in Architecture). Directed electives may be taken as
UGE. For all CAPD students, no more than 3 credit hours can
be selected from CAPD courses and cannot be within the major.
It
should be noted that the entire ten semester (5 year) design
studio sequence and many of the history courses (a minimum
3 history courses are required of every CAPD student) promote
an active learning environment, provide experiential settings
and develop connectedness among the courses. The college has
actively sought approval of international programs as UGE
course experiences because they more than satisfy the intent
and spirit of UGE. Approximately two-thirds of CAPD students
participate in an international program.
Shortly
after the original UGE program was implemented, we noted the
following:
-
Transfer students entering the CAPD after completing 1-2
years of study in a program articulated with CAPD (approximately
22 programs) were going to have to extend their programs
of study by one semester to complete UGE requirements. An
adjustment to the number of UGE credits a transfer student
must complete and the ability to grant exceptions largely
eliminated this problem.
-
The shortage of UGE courses above the 300-level has been
problematic and forces students to take courses that are
of little interest to them. This is particularly frustrating
when a student has identified a course ( which may, in fact,
meet UGE requirements, but is not approved) and he or she
can't take it. In these cases, the college has granted exceptions
to these students to avoid extending their programs of study
beyond 5 years.
-
A number of our students want to pursue foreign language
study and have not been able to do so because either the
approved courses in a language are too advanced (French
only 500 level or above) or too basic (German I, II). Only
three languages have any UGE course offerings which has
also been a limiting factor.
-
Students seeking a minor outside CAPD have had difficulty
completing the minor if the courses required for the minor
did not meet UGE requirements. At this time, the college
has not been asked to grant any exceptions so a student
could complete a minor.
We
constantly monitor our students progress and UGE is obviously
included. Inclusion of questions about UGE on our fifth-year
survey will yield some insight but this is the first year
(2001-2002) which will include students who have been required
to take UGE courses.