We must discover why many students leave without graduating and make every effort to correct those conditions which are under our control. We would expect that implementation of many of the recommendations in this report will help in this respect, and we should expand our efforts to gather quantitative and qualitative information on why students drop out of Montclair. Undergraduate Education Quality teaching and the learning it allows is not limited to what goes on in individual classrooms. Education is not simply the accumulation of a given number of courses however excellent in themselves. Within each program, within the undergraduate academic experience itself, there should be some coherence, some focus.
Programs are the province of the departments and schools.
Providing coherence for the entire undergraduate academic experience is the role of General Education. The Planning Committee has no desire to assume the work of the new General Education Committee, but in our discussions a number of concerns have arisen that we would like to share with that committee. The General Education Program should provide students with the knowledge and critical thinking abilities needed to begin the process of lifelong learning and to make reasoned and informed judgments throughout their lives. It should make students aware of cultural diversity and engage them in productive and questioning dialog with cultural values other than their own. It should teach them knowledge that bridges and transcends the various disciplines, initiate them into new ways of thinking, open up new possibilities for them, and allow them to make informed choices for further study.