General Education New Themes

General Education

New Themes

The new General Education curriculum provides the opportunity to develop additional themes beyond the four originally identified: Citizenship for a Just and Diverse World, Sustainability, Health and Well-being, and Lived Environments. Building from the report of the GE Implementation Committee issued in February 2020, the University-Level Advisory Committee for General Education (ULAC) has developed a process that allows new themes to be identified and offered in time for the GE roll-out in autumn 2022.

Timeline and Process

New themes will be developed in a collaborative, two-phase process. Groups of faculty, staff and students will develop their ideas, share them through a digital Themes Commons, and receive feedback from the university community and a committee of faculty that oversees new theme development. That feedback will be integrated into second phase proposals that include specific details about expected learning outcomes and a set of existing courses that will be offered within that theme. The most important criteria for new themes are that they are 1) different from the current themes and from other newly proposed themes, and 2) broad.

The Themes Commons, the digital workspace bulletin board through which teams can share ideas, develop their proposals, and receive feedback, launches Aug. 2, 2021. First-phase proposals were due Nov. 30, 2021, and require:

  • a 1-3 sentence summary of the theme
  • a 2-3 page description of the concept of the theme
  • a list of existing courses that might fit within the theme

Themes Commons is based in Microsoft Teams and is accessible to anyone with a “.osu”  or buckeyemail email address.  It allows dynamic feedback from the community prior to the submission date.

The New Themes Review Committee will comment on all submitted proposals no later than Jan. 31, 2022, kicking off the second phase of proposal development.  Second-phase proposals will address feedback from the New Themes Review Committee and include more information about the scope and content of the theme by providing expected learning outcomes and documentation for courses to be included within that theme. Second-phase proposals are due April 15, 2022. New themes will be identified by May 15, 2022, and will be shared as part of orientation for all incoming students in summer term 2022 so that students have a full picture of the themes available to them.

Next Steps

Guidelines for each phase of the process, information sessions intended to support development of theme concepts, and other resources are shared via the Themes Commons and linked below. Outreach to faculty, students and staff about this process will be made through the GE page on the OAA website, the GE Newsletter, and emails from college curricular channels.

Visit Themes Commons

Frequently Asked Questions

There is no set number of new themes to be added to the GE. The most important things in this process are that the new themes address broad concepts, be distinct from existing or other newly proposed themes and have course availability that will allow a student choosing this theme to complete it.

Teams are encouraged to post their broad ideas to the Theme Commons early in their development so that colleagues with similar ideas can find each other and collaborate from the earliest phases. All first-phase proposals will be visible to all teams, and the New Theme Review Committee will call out perceived areas of overlap in their review of first-phase proposals so that teams can either merge or explicitly differentiate their concepts in their second-phase proposals.

No. ULAC has recommended that this process be repeated within a few years, with the definition of “few” hinging on the number of new themes added at this time.

Theme teams can be led by faculty, staff or students. 

A good place to start is your college curricular dean, college curricular committee, or faculty/staff/student governance group. OAA has some financial resources that can support new theme development; details about these funds are available from your college curricular dean.