General Education Requirement Committee

The General Education Requirement 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. See Fall 2023 updates from GERC here (gdoc).

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 Office of Institutional Research & Assessment collaborates with GERC on general education assessment. See the GER assessment cycle here.

Please see the Provost’s Reports and Planning webpage for recent GERC reports.

2023-2024 GERC members:

• Cari Gillen-O’Neel, GERC Chair; Associate Professor, Psychology
• Brigetta Abel, Director of Writing, Serie Center for Scholarship and Teaching; Associate Professor (NTT), German and Russian Studies
• Nancy Bostrom, Associate Director of Assessment
• Amy Damon, Professor, Economics and Latin American Studies
• Arjun Guneratne, Professor, Anthropology (EPAG Representative)
• Cynthia Kauffeld, Professor, Spanish & Portuguese
• Beth Severy-Hoven, Professor, Classical Mediterranean and Middle East
• Timothy Traffie, Registrar
• Lori Ziegelmeier, Associate Professor, Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science