The University of Wyoming may be making changes to the requirements of its University Studies Program for future graduates to help improve the education students receive.
UW put together a task force to research the learning outcomes for its undergraduate programs and the task force was then asked to make recommendations based on what it discovered.
When the new USP requirements were implemented in 2003, it was decided that UW students would have to take classes that fulfilled core components of the intellectual community, a writing component and an oral communication class.
Other classes included science, physical activity, and quantitative reasoning courses, among several others.
In April 2011, UW released its report and discovered some issues relating to the university’s current USP requirements.
One issue is that if students are double majoring, switch majors, or are undeclared, the classes they have taken to fulfill their USP requirement may not be enough. For example, students who are double majoring may have to take more than one class to fulfill the same USP requirement to satisfy both majors.
Students who are undeclared or who change majors may have already taken classes to fulfill the USP requirements that do not meet the same requirements for their colleges for their respective majors. One of the biggest issues for students who change majors is when a USP requirement is embedded within a specific major and then students may have to take another class to fulfill that requirement if he or she switches majors.
The report also states that the drastic difference in the USP courses across the universities make it difficult for students to choose which courses to take if they design their own majors.
After taking a look at UW’s USP and looking at programs that have been developed by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, and based on UW’s programs and the programs implemented by AACU, UW’s USP Task Force recommended that the new requirements be as flexible as possible so students have less of chance of having to double up on classes to meet those requirements. It was also recommended that fewer of the new requirements be embedded within majors so students do not have to worry about losing those classes if they switch majors.
The new requirements have not been specified yet and have yet to be implemented.
