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General Education Assessment

The General Education Requirements Committee (GERC) is one of four curricular committees the faculty maintains to provide the first level of consideration for particular academic matters at the College; all GERC actions are subject to review by the Educational Policy and Governance (EPAG) Committee.

Macalester has four General Education requirements (GERs): Internationalism; Quantitative Thinking; U.S. Identities and Differences; and Writing.  

GERC approves courses that fulfill these requirements.  Another of GERC’s roles is to “assist in evaluating whether the goals of the requirements are being fulfilled on an institutional basis in consultation with relevant College programs, offices, and individuals.”  The Assessment Office collaborates with GERC on general education assessment. 

An “Assessment for Learning” philosophy (Fall 2019 HLC Workshop) aligns best with our campus environment and priorities.  This embedded approach to assessment places emphasis on alignment among assignments, the examples of student work we collect, and the rubrics used to score student work.  We use systematic and regular assessments to gather information about what’s going well and how we could improve.  

Please see the Provost’s Committees and Reports webpage for recent GERC reports; see our  Assessment Schedule for additional details.

2025-2026 GERC members:

  • Cari Gillen-O’Neel, GERC Chair, Associate Professor & Chair of Psychology
  • Britt Abel (Writing), Director of Writing and the MAX Center, Fellowship Advisor, Associate Professor (NTT)
  • Myrl Beam (US Identities and Differences) Associate Professor & Chair of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
  • Nancy Bostrom, Director of Assessment
  • Amy Damon (Internationalism), Professor & Chair of Economics
  • Christina Esposito (Quantitative Thinking), Professor & Chair of Linguistics
  • Felix Friedt (Quantitative Thinking), Associate Professor of Economics
  • Duchess Harris (US Identities and Differences), Professor of American Studies & Chair of History
  • Bethany Miller, Interim Registrar
  • Beth Severy Hoven (Internationalism), Professor of Classical Mediterranean and Middle East
  • Serdar Yalçin (EPAG Rep), Associate Professor of Art and Art History