Sydney Martinez, Campus Carrier news editor

Alicia Meehan, Campus Carrier reporter

President Sandeep Mazumder has launched the General Education Renovation Project (GERP), a series of updates that will be made to the general education curriculum at Berry College to more closely align with the school’s mission and values. This project began with Mazumder’s instruction to the deans and provost David Slade to support faculty in evaluating and updating the foundations curriculum to shape general education to fit the needs of today’s students.

The course renovation process began this summer. Slade, and the deans have already begun scoping out the project. This past summer, the provost’s office soft-launched the project by offering innovation grants to professors who wanted to update their first-year courses to fit the needs of their students, to appeal to and inspire first year students. 

“My office offered some innovation grants, both individuals and departments as a whole, to innovate within their first year courses, to make them inspiring to kind of meet their first year students, where they are in terms of just their learning needs, and to really think about because sometimes these courses were designed many decades ago,” Slade said.

Ten or more departments reached out to the provost to update their courses to satisfy the needs of their students.

This fall semester, meetings will be held among faculty to discuss the aims, values and purpose of foundations at the college. Beginning spring semester, a group of faculty will propose a model for the adoption and an action plan that specifies the curriculum and implementation of the renovation project. Next summer, the group will finalize the updated curriculum and will present it to faculty for approval. This will be followed by more innovation grants for professors to renew their courses. 

Berry’s mission, guided by Christian principles, aims to provide not only academic opportunities but also professional experiences, personal growth and mentoring to all students. This is all intended to be done in accordance with Martha Berry’s educational philosophy to educate her students’ head, heart and hands. 

General education courses at Berry were first formed in the 1970s. At the time, students took a course in each of the core subjects of history, math, english and science. It was not until 10 years ago that the foundations courses most current students know were organized into categories such as Intercultural Knowledge, humanities and arts, to name a few.

Slade, administrator in the academic affairs unit of the college, said Mazumder has opened a conversation to update the foundation curriculum. 

“[Mazumder] is charging the faculty to go think about putting together a curriculum, not just the individual classes, but the way they fit together, that matches our mission and values,” Slade said. “That’s our first priority.”

For that reason, Mazumder charged the provost and deans to review the curriculum based on a series of priorities. The top priority in GERP is to develop a general education framework that more clearly reflects Berry’s mission and values. 

The second priority of the project is to foster excitement and engagement in foundation courses by integrating meaningful hands-on experiences. 

Slade expressed excitement towards the ideas that the faculty could bring forward based on the first and second priorities.

“I know there’s more of that energy and excitement in our faculty [to rethink foundations courses], and I’m most excited about trying to help build a structure in which that is what our whole general education is based on,” Slade said.

Slade said that the faculty has the most power over the changes, instead of himself as the chief academic officer. He recognizes that something like this project could be very invasive to how a professor teaches, what they teach and the assignments they hand out. GERP allows the faculty and professors to oversee all changes to how they run their courses. 

“You know, we’re doing this in a way that we’re staying committed to all of our faculty and the work that they’re doing,” Slade said,“and we’re trying to create a space in which faculty can do this, knowing that their own place in the curriculum is not under threat,” Slade said.

The changes to foundations are on a broad scale. In order to effectively communicate Berry’s mission, the provost and faculty will update the categories each course is in. Over the years, the foundations committee has added and removed courses, but this project is going deeper and changing the fundamentals of how courses are structured in relation to Berry’s mission.

“The mentality is not ‘let’s take something broken and make it passable,’” Slade said, “that’s not the mentality. The mentality is we’re going to take something that is good and we want to make it even better.” 

GERP’s third priority is to highlight a focus on liberal arts and sciences. Slade explained that a higher focus on these areas will provide more of a resource for students when dealing with contemporary challenges. He explained that this focus will challenge students to be more thoughtful, socially aware and give them resources to intelligently handle modern problems.

The fourth priority in the renovation project is to further develop the “Berry Journey” in foundation courses. Student exploration of calling and vocation through study abroad and undergraduate research should be emphasized to test the students’ purpose and experience before leaving Berry.

Laurence Marvin, professor of history, is unsure about updating the curriculum. He feels that changing the curriculum to follow the mission statement is out of order. 

“I wouldn’t construct a curriculum around a mission statement, but rather one that contributes to a meaningful education as determined by a very well qualified and experienced faculy,” Marvin said.

Marvin teaches two foundations courses, both world history courses. To him, foundations courses serve as a way for students to learn more than they would have if they didn’t branch out of courses for their major. 

“By and large, the purpose of foundations is to give students a well-rounded education as opposed to training,” Marvin said. “In my case, they’re not going to become historians, but they need to know a little bit about the world.”

Marvin is not against updating the curriculum. Instead, he mentioned that it is not unusual to revisit courses’ syllabi now and then. In fact, Marvin said that these courses go through a significant number of changes, with a specific faculty committee that approves updates made to foundation courses. In the 10 years since general education courses became foundation courses, plenty of small changes have passed through the committee.

Marvin explained that change is welcome under a new administration. It is not abnormal for a new president to come in and show curiosity in how the college works and want to bring in an outsider perspective with new ideas on how the college could run.

“It wouldn’t necessarily be unusual to revisit [the curriculum] and may be healthy to revisit, but in any event, [Mazumder] is not mandating any changes,” Marvin said.

Slade recognized that GERP would not be an easy project to pursue. He knows that getting faculty to rethink something as fundamental as general education courses poses a challenge. The provost recognizes that foundations are a critical part of the professor’s time, efforts and commitments, with their assignments built around the curriculum that was written years ago. 

“I care very much about how this actually translates for faculty and students. So it’s not an easy project, but it’s okay,” Slade said.

GERP has a goal to end the academic year with an actionable plan. The fall of 2026 is when those who worked on GERP aim for approval from the Academic Council on the plan for implementation and transitioning into the new curriculum. 

Slade stated that the governance process takes time, and he projects that the earliest the changes will go into effect for students is the fall of 2027.