YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Youngstown State University has streamlined general education offerings while also enabling students to earn microcredentials.
Jennifer Pintar, YSU provost and vice president of academic affairs, said one of the reasons for the change was to align with state standards. But it also addresses concerns of students, many of whom expressed frustration about taking general education courses they viewed as irrelevant.
General education courses are required for all students.
“So we took it back to what the statement from the state was, the purpose of a Gen Ed course,” Pintar explained. “And the purpose of a Gen Ed course is that there was no prerequisite. It was supposed to give you a little taste of a different discipline” and to challenge students to look at a problem from a different viewpoint.
In 2020, Pintar gathered department chairs as well as Adam Earnheardt, YSU’s general education coordinator, and they assembled a group of faculty to examine YSU’s University Wide Learning Outcomes, which aim to prepare students for careers and life after college.
One example: “YSU graduates are critical, creative, and integrative thinkers who incorporate a range of interdisciplinary knowledge.”
Those revised and updated outcomes were approved by the university’s academic senate in 2022. The general education courses then lined up with those. The process involved extensive faculty input, Pintar noted.
Earnheardt, also a YSU communication professor, called it building a general education program for the 21st century. Some courses hadn’t been updated in a long time, and the committee wanted courses in which students would see value, he said.
“And we had over 200 general education courses,” Pintar added. “Some were heavily populated and requested by students, and some weren’t.”
The new courses span English composition, math, arts and humanities, natural sciences, social and behavioral sciences and other electives.
The list includes more than traditional liberal arts courses.
“We spread out the wealth a little bit,” the provost said. “There’s a lot more natural science courses with Survey Forensic Sciences.”
Chemistry in Modern Living, Introduction to Professional Ethics and Statistical Literacy and Critical Reasoning are some others.
“What’s really great and what’s unique that no other [Ohio] institution has at this point are these microcredentials,” Pintar said.
Beginning in the 2025-26 academic year, students will be able to earn microcredentials, with four available the first year and four more added the following year. Creative thinking, critical thinking, personal and social well-being and quantitative and scientific reasoning are the microcredentials available the first year.
For 2026-27, professional communication and presentational literacy, leadership, digital citizenship and global engagement will be added.
The benefit to students is two-fold, Pintar explained. First, it helps a student understand why they’re taking particular courses. But it’s also something a student can put on the job profile.
“It’s a conversation starter with the employer,” she said. “So the potential employer might say, ‘Oh, I see that you have a badge in quantitative and scientific reasoning. Can you talk to me about that?’”
Earnheardt views the microcredential as a value add. To determine what microcredentials to offer, the committee used crowdsourcing, asking the campus community for input. That generated about 160 possibilities. Some of those were similar or duplicate, and others extended beyond what could be covered in general education, but the list was narrowed down to about 40.
The campus community was asked to rank the list.
“And from that, we picked our top eight,” he said.
Revising the general education program took a long time though. Chet Cooper, chairman of YSU’s Academic Senate, said faculty wanted to have input.
“So it just took a lot of input from people, reiterations of ideas and things like that, to finally come up with a product that not only met the goals that we were seeking but that, for the most part, addressed everybody’s concerns,” he said.
The new program provides a broad-based education that will benefit students both socially and academically, he said.
“I’m really pleased with the fact that we’re going to be having them develop critical thinking skills, because I think that’s what’s going to be really important when students get out of college,” Cooper said.