The University has all the plans in place to soon transform undergraduates’ educational experiences.

The Connecting the Undergraduate Experience Committee, an ad hoc committee of the Faculty Senate, gave its final report at this month’s meeting after a 19-month development process.

CUE is now moving into an implementation phase, with a new committee charged last Friday and a meeting planned in the near future, said Neal Jesse, implementation committee chair.

“Most membership is in place and we’re ready to go ahead and start putting elements of the CUE proposal into place,” he said. “I’m excited to get the committee together and begin implementing a wonderful new program for general education.”

CUE’s main goals include revamping undergraduate general education courses and restructuring the freshman BGeXperience program, Jesse said. The committee will implement both changes within a timeline established by University President Carol Cartwright as part of the “Strategic Plan.”

“We did some analysis of current general education and found that most students view it as a hurdle,” said Paul Moore, a committee member. “They don’t feel connected and don’t understand the outcome. Because our current general education model isn’t doing what it’s supposed to do, we’re developing a new model that would achieve the learning outcomes of the University.”

With CUE’s new model in place, students will have a rewarding, singular educational experience, Moore said.

“When the model is fully implemented, the freshmen coming in will have a completely different educational experience,” Moore said. “But for now, it’s still a work in progress, because we’re still working on developing courses and shepherding the process through paperwork and approval committees.”

Kevin Basch, Undergraduate Student Government president, serves as the implementation committee’s undergraduate student representative. Other members include a representative from Graduate Student Senate and faculty and administration from all across campus.

“My role is to provide a student perspective for the curriculum,” Basch said. “I think CUE is really going to make general education courses more meaningful for students and bring connections between classes across the curriculum.”

Students should be excited about CUE’s future work, he said, because the committee has great potential to remove the mentality of getting general education classes “out of the way” and to restructure undergraduate education.

“I wish I had another year here, so I could see how it goes,” Basch said with a laugh. “This is an opportunity to do a lot of good things for the undergraduate experience. I have high expectations and I think it’s going to go very well and be successful, and make a lot of degrees more meaningful.”

To learn more about CUE, visit http://www.bgsu.edu/cue.