Integrating General Education into a Communication Curriculum: The Bigger Picture Question

This paper describes an ongoing attempt to modify the content of a community college communications course in the context of the institution’s recently adopted General Education mission. This mission aims to provide students with a broad and deep knowledge base, in addition to a set of proficiencies, which will help them lead successful personal and professional lives. The Department of Communication Arts and Sciences at Bronx Community College of the City University of New York (CUNY) developed an assignment that primarily addresses the student’s ability to integrate and reflect upon inter-disciplinary information. The paper reviews the student deficiencies that emerged in fulfilling this assignment and the group’s ongoing refinement of the assignment to overcome these deficiencies and better promote an understanding of the inter-connectedness of all knowledge.