Recently, Dr. Barry Gidcomb, Columbia State Community College’s dean of the Humanities and Social Sciences Division and professor of history, represented the college in Puerto Rico at the American Association of Colleges and Universities Conference. 

Gidcomb, who was the lone representative for Columbia State, participated in the conference as a co-speaker during a discussion session called “Riding the Elephant: The TBR General Education Safari.”

The session featured speakers including Dr. Robert Denn, TBR associate vice chancellor for Academic Affairs, as well as current and former faculty members from Tennessee colleges discussing how the College System of Tennessee (Tennessee Board of Regents) general education model was redesigned with cohesion and institutional autonomy for its 13 colleges and 3,000 faculty members.

“We upgraded our General Education Core model to reflect Core Competencies valued by universities and employers alike,” Gidcomb explained. “In addition, we were inspired by a line from a committee member following a brainstorming session to compose a new purpose statement for General Education: 'Give students tools to create the kind of life + world they want.” 

Gidcomb’s work on the General Education Core first began in 2019 when he became part of a five-member TBR team that attended the AAC&U annual General Education Conference in Vermont, where teams learned about how to make general education more relevant in today's world and created five-year plans to reform their general education models.

After the conference, the TBR team asked each of the 13 community colleges to create a team of 10 that included a team leader to carry out this work.  

“With the delivery of our presentation at the recent AAC&U Conference on Learning and Student Success in San Juan, I felt like we had come full circle from our origins in Vermont where we began our journey to giving back to other college and university faculty and administrators who are now embarking on their own mission to reform their General Education models.” 

The AAC&U is an international organization committed to furthering the democratic purposes of higher education by promoting equity, innovation and excellence in liberal education. AAC&U serves as a catalyst and facilitator for innovations that improve educational quality and equity and that support the success of all students.

Columbia State is one of 13 community colleges in the College System of Tennessee. The College System of Tennessee is the state’s largest public higher education system, with 13 community colleges, 24 colleges of applied technology and the online TN eCampus serving approximately 140,000 students. The system is governed by the Tennessee Board of Regents.