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General Education: K-State 8

K-State 8 History

From 2003 through 2008, several groups worked toward assessing and revising Kansas State University's general education program. The groups consisted of faculty members, students, academic advisors, student service representatives, department heads, and dean's representatives.

The General Education Task Force (2006-2008) submitted a proposal to Faculty Senate in June of 2008. Members of the task force continued to work with the Academic Affairs Committee on several revisions. The K-State 8 General Education Program (pdf) was approved by Faculty Senate on May 12, 2009.

During the following months, departments tagged their courses and reviewed lists of tagged courses to determine viability of the K-State 8 for undergraduate curricula. On May 18, 2010, Academic Affairs resolved that the K-State 8 tagging procedures would be approved once an acceptable outline of an assessment procedure was provided. Faculty Senate approved the K-State 8 Assessment Plan on November 9, 2010.

Following approval of the K-State 8 proposal in May 2009, a working group was formed to begin plans for the modifications needed to implement the K-State 8 in iSIS, DARS, the undergraduate catalog, and the course schedule. That group has worked consistently from Summer 2009 through Spring 2011 to have the K-State 8 ready for spring 2011 enrollment.

Initial implementation of the K-State 8 General Education Program led to three major concerns: the consistency of tagging across departments and colleges, the number of tags that could be assigned to a one-credit course, and the availability of a sufficient number of tagged courses in different programs.  Faculty Senate leadership requested that the Faculty Senate President and Provost and Senior Vice President appoint a joint task force to consider these and other issues.  The following charge was given to the task force appointed for the 2011-2012 academic year:

  • Develop recommendations for a set of defined criteria for inclusion of a course within the K-State 8 General Education Program.
  • Consider if changes are needed to the current review process that uses the Course and Curriculum Change process to add, delete or modify K-State 8 tags associated with courses.  Both the process for initial review and approval and the process for periodic review and continued approval or modifications required to retain a specific tag should be considered.
  • Consider options for addressing any constraints that may exist within specific academic programs or colleges

The task force provided several recommendations and those are included in the K-State 8 Tagging Criteria and Guidelines Task Force Report and Recommendations.  The Guidelines for Identifying a K-State Tag were included as part of this report.

In 2018, Faculty Senate's Academic Affairs committee, in coordination with the K-State 8 Council, reviewed current guidelines. In June 2019, K-State’s Faculty Senate unanimously approved new guidelines for classes with K-State 8 course tags. This included a review and appeal process for classes with K-State 8 tags.  These new guidelines did not change the tags of any existing K-State courses. Furthermore, the eight categories and descriptions remained the same. 

Starting in Fall 2019, faculty shall incorporate these new requirements into any K-State 8 tagged class that they teach. Furthermore, any new proposed courses or changes to existing courses involving K-State 8 tags will be evaluated based upon these new guidelines.

To see K-State 8 reports for previous years, visit K-State 8 Assessment page.