Justin Cook | the Roanoke Times

Radford University junior Jamie Dillard studies English literature at the Bonnie Hurlburt Student Center. University administrators are in the final process of overhauling the school’s core curriculum.

RADFORD -- Perhaps nothing is more central to a university's identity than its general education program. After all, those courses define the skills and knowledge the university believes educated people share whether they earn their livings as bankers, biologists or band leaders.

Radford University is redefining its version of those commonalities and the way it teaches them. A lot of colleges and universities are doing that. Few are moving as quickly as Radford. Both the speed and the top-down process that's reshaping general education at Radford are causing some friction.

The Radford University Board of Visitors decreed in August that the core curriculum -- about 40 percent of the courses taught at the university -- will be overhauled, general education requirements will decrease from 50 hours of study to 42 and that the whole process will be completed and the new classes in place by this fall.

"That's a recipe for disaster right there," said David Haney, vice provost for undergraduate education at Appalachian State University. "I'd say the problem there is mandating things like hours from above and having way too tight a timeline."

Appalachian State will have some classes from its new general education program in place this fall, but the full plan goes into effect in the fall of 2009. The process started in 2005.

Evaluation and planning took up a little more than two years. Implementation is expected to take a little less time.

Four years is about average for the whole process, according to Susan Keefe, the anthropology professor who led the task force that reshaped Appalachian State's program.

Radford set out to do the same thing in one-fourth the time.

"It's impossible to do it in the time allotted," said Fred Singer, a Radford biology professor. "I and my colleagues are not smart enough to do it in the time allotted. I don't think anyone is."

As recently as November, Rector Randal Kirk was emphasizing the 2008 deadline. Kirk said last week that he did that after the board, the administration and the faculty senate had reached consensus. But the faculty senate hadn't even seen the plan then. After the senate's committee on general education saw it, the committee suggested modifications and suggested it begin no sooner than fall 2009.

Even if the new program could be ready this fall, the university wouldn't be. Provost Wil Stanton told a board of visitors committee last month that 5,000 returning students will still be taking general education classes under the old system, so the old and new systems would have to operate simultaneously. Even if there were enough faculty to do that, there wouldn't be enough classrooms. The renovation of Young Hall is taking 17 classrooms off-line, Stanton said. Committee Chairwoman Nancy Artis interjected that implementing the new program this fall would mean holding some classes in trailers.

The board seems to understand the need for more time. "I like 'Ready, aim, fire' better than 'Ready, fire, aim,' " board member Steve Musselwhite said.

But that hasn't eased all the tension.

Faculty are still concerned that the mandate came from the board, that the mandate specifies the number of hours in the program, that a committee appointed by the vice provost concocted the original plan and that the faculty -- who will design and teach the courses -- have been so little involved in the process.

According to a timeline now under consideration by the board, the new program will be approved by April 24. The timeline calls for at least two town hall-style meetings before then.

"These are all just immense demands coming from the top down," said Glen Martin, president of Radford's chapter of the Association of American University Professors. "Why should they be giving us a deadline?"

No one has even established how the current system is lacking, Martin said. A message distributed to faculty declared the old system a failure, but it didn't explain how or why.

"It did not cite one iota of evidence. It just said these things," Martin said. "And not all faculty agree with that."

Singer, the biology professor, said general education programs need perpetual examination and adjustment. But the process should begin by asking what students need to know, then figuring out how to help them learn it.

"We actually started with, 'What do we want students to learn?' " Haney said.

There were no mandates from Appalachian's provost, according to Keefe. His board of trustees didn't get involved until the task force's work was done.

That work included studying what other campuses are doing and how that has served students. It included input from businesses, alumni, high schools, community colleges and the Appalachian State community. There were 11 campuswide meetings in addition to meetings with specific campus constituencies.

"That openness and inclusiveness was crucial to shaping our work," Keefe said. "The campus community helped us move in a direction of success."

James Lollar, president of Radford's faculty senate, said he considers the 2009 deadline achievable.

Haney said he considers it very ambitious.

"You can't do this right without doing all the stuff that we did," he said, "and that really takes a couple of years."