General Education at the University of Delaware

The University of Delaware has a long and distinguished history of General Education. UD’s Study Abroad Program was launched as the first of its kind in the country in 1923. The University created the Honors Colloquia in 1976 and in 1980 instituted the Undergraduate Research Program. The current program of General Education has undergone a series of revisions since the first major review of General Education at the University of Delaware was commissioned by the UD Faculty Senate’s Ad Hoc Committee on General Education in 1998. In March 2000, the University of Delaware Faculty Senate approved nine resolutions covering a three-year provisional period of the General Education Program (GEP). The resolutions were a direct outcome of the 1998 report to the Faculty Senate by an ad hoc Committee on General Education chaired by Dr. Carol Hoffecker. The ad hoc committee report, 2000 Faculty Senate resolutions, and all other reports can be found on this page.

In 2003, the Faculty Senate Committee on General Education outlined a plan for the implementation of a university-wide General Education Initiative, with an explicit focus on the alignment of general education requirements across all undergraduate, bachelor-level degree programs at the university guided by ten goals. During Fall 2014, the UD Faculty Senate’s General Education Committee brought forth a resolution to replace the previous ten goals with four new purposes and five new objectives of General Education (see below). On 3 November 2014 the University of Delaware Faculty Senate unanimously passed this resolution, and a GenEd Task Force began work on an implementation plan. After holding several open hearings in the Spring of 2015, the Task Force issued its final report and the Faculty Senate committees formulated eight resolutions addressing various aspects of the plan. On May 11, 2015, the Faculty Senate debated these resolutions on the Senate floor and ultimately set the current framework for General Education at UD.

For more on the History of General Education Reform at UD see the History and Reform page.