University of Hawai'i at Mānoa (Area/Diversification requirements)

Memorandum Feb. 2009
Memorandum Dec. 2008

Memorandum February 12, 2009

To: Kenith L. Simmons Assistant Vice Chancellor University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo
From: Ronald E. Cambra Assistant Vice Chancellor (signed)
Subject: Articulation of UH Hilo Area Courses to UHM’s Diversification Requirement

Thank you for giving us an opportunity to look further into your General Education curriculum as it relates to our own.

The goals of my December 18, 2008 memo were:

To simplify the often cumbersome and time-consuming processes of within-system articulation to UHM; and
To recognize the work of General Education alignment that has occurred and continues to occur across most of the UH system.

I appreciated the document on UH Hilo General Education that you attached; we here at Mānoa have not been as informed of what you are doing as we could be. Your Area requirements and their associated criteria closely parallel the Diversification requirements at UHM, at most of the community colleges, and at UHWO. The only significant difference I note involves your singular Humanities domain, a domain that, as a result of faculty decision-making, is divided into three categories at UHM.

That difference, it seems to me, is not significant enough to keep UHM from including UH Hilo in our new articulation process for Diversification courses. Assuming that UH Hilo follows the criteria and processes described in my memo and your document, and assuming that UH Hilo will participate in any future assessments relating to this new articulation process, we will be happy to extend the process described in the December 18, 2008 memo to UH Hilo courses. In the specific Humanities area, we will consider any two UH Hilo courses that comply with the UH Hilo definitions and processes (including the provision that the courses involve different humanities areas) as meeting the UHM Diversification requirements in the Arts, Humanities, and Literatures. A single UHM Humanities course will satisfy 3 credits of the UHM requirement. I think this should work best for the students.

Thank you for your interest and support. I hope that our faculties can cooperate more extensively on curriculum development and articulation in the future. The effort will benefit both our increasingly mobile students and our campuses.

cc: Peter Quigley, VCAA; Thomas Hilgers, Director, GEO; Jan Heu, A&R

Memorandum December 18, 2008

To: Academic Advising Officers University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
From: Ronald Cambra Assistant Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate Education (signed)
Subject: Articulation of UH System General Education Diversification (D) courses

Most of the UH system campuses have parallel General Education requirements. Most campuses have, for example, Diversification requirements (DA, DH, DL; DB, DP, DY, DS) that align with UHM’s D requirements and category “Hallmarks.”

The goal of Diversification requirements is to ensure “that every student has a broad exposure to different domains of academic knowledge” (UHM 2008-2009 Catalog, p. 73). The Hallmarks that distinguish the various UH Diversification categories all mention the terminology, theory, and/or processes associated with different methods of academic inquiry. An ad hoc group of UHM faculty, staff, and administrators, as well as the UHM Faculty Senate’s General Education Committee, recognize that methodological approaches to the same content matter may, in theory, legitimately vary from campus to campus and even from instructor to instructor.

To ensure that UHM’s undergraduates complete their Diversification requirements with exposure to the different domains of academic inquiry, UHM respects the approach to inquiry emphasized by the specific classes for which UH system students have earned credit. As of this semester, any UH system course that transfers to UHM will carry the Diversification category employed by the sending campus, not UHM, as long as the sending campus’s Diversification classification is consistent with UHM’s Diversification course-eligibility policies, category hallmarks, and designation processes Thus, a student who transfers LING 102 (DH) from XCC to UHM will satisfy a DH requirement, even though the course carries DS at UHM.

In order to make the UH system’s officially equivalent courses truly equivalent throughout the system, UHM urges the UH system to sponsor regular meetings of discipline-specific faculty members from all campuses. One of the goals of such meetings should be to encourage uniformity in methodological approach, and thus in the D category, for every course that shares the same Alpha and Number. To do otherwise is to ensure misunderstandings on the part of the students and their advisors.

Please make this information available to all who advise UH students on transfer of System courses to UHM. If you have any questions, please telephone Stell Hieda at UHM (808) 956-6232, who coordinates UH system course articulation at UHM.