Surrounded by notes from her earth science class, Tiffany Ross sits alone at a table in the library and stares off blankly into space. She looks down at her notebook and mumbles:I don’t see when I’m ever going to use this stuff again. I felt the same way about high school Algebra. I am never going to use this again.

Ross, a sophomore in speech communication from Ohio, transferred to SIUC in fall 1995. She said she is unsure if she will finish all of her general education classes by spring because all of her classes did not transfer.

I really hope I get done with these classes soon, she said. I know they are important to my education, but they are so boring. I only look at my notes the night before a test.

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The lack of student enthusiasm toward general education courses is one of the reasons the University undergraduate curriculum is becoming more diverse, tougher and will give students a better chance at succeeding, a University director said.

Ann Morey, director of SIUC core curriculum, said the new curriculum adds 30 more course choices and restructures the original GE classes. She said the integrative studies section now incorporates multicultural, American and global perspectives on critical topics.

We needed to make classes more logical and interesting to students, she said. We want to include voices of groups that are sometimes overlooked by tradition to get a fresh view.

Updating the Universities curriculum to incorporate more human issues, such as gender and race, will distinguish the classes from high school curriculum, Wendy Howard, a senior in advanced technical studies from Keiphfurg, said.

The classes will be more interesting then they are now, she said. In my experience, the current classes don’t teach anything different from high school classes. High school classes present facts and background. College courses should present world perspectives. They should make you think about the world around you.

Many students come from small rural towns and are not exposed to different lifestyles, Howard said. She said including diverse perspectives will help students accept other cultures.

I came from an all-white, Christian area, she said. I went into culture shock when I came to college. If they make classes that deal with all these different cultures, students will be more understanding and accepting.

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Many SIUC freshman will have the opportunity to sample both new and old curriculums because they will not finish their GE’s by the deadline of summer 1996 when the new course will be initiated.

Taylor Nicks, an undecided freshman from Champaign, said he thinks the new curriculum will offer more to students in a shorter amount of time.

According to the old GE curriculum, three lab science credits were needed to fulfill the 46-hour requirements. The core curriculum program drops one lab science credit, resulting in a shorter 41-hour requirement.

The change is a better idea, Nicks said. I only have to take 41 hours compared to 46. But, for less credit hours, there is a wider range of options than before.

With an undecided major, Nicks said he appreciates the large selection of classes that will be offered by different colleges under the new system.

The old class load wasn’t very exciting, he said. Only a couple of colleges offered classes. Now you can sample classes from administration of justice to zoology.

Although an updated curriculum was needed, Neil Canp, a freshman from Argenta, said he is worried about class structure changing. He said he thinks GE classes should remain simple because they really have no relevance to his major in the first place.

I just fight my way through GE classes, he said. No one really cares about GEs because they have nothing to do with their major. When I sign up for classes, I don’t take anything too difficult. I don’t want to spend forever doing homework and be burned out by the time I start taking real classes.

Currently, GE classes are not challenging enough to hold student interest, Morey said. She said students need to have more time to interact with their instructors about lectures.

Huge 300-seat lecture halls are a fact of life at a university, she said. But discussions in lectures are no longer discussions. Students sit and listen to a teacher talk for an hour without any interaction.

Morey said a new development in the curriculum encourages lecture courses to include one day of smaller discussion labs. She said instructors will have more of a chance to quiz and grade their students in labs.

Students who came to discussion labs did better in class than students that had straight lecture, she said. Instructors will have the chance to quiz students more and answer questions.

Class size has an impact on the amount of effort put into a general education class, Julie Brown, an undecided freshman from Champaign, said. Brown said she works harder in smaller classes because there is more pressure to hand in assignments.

The larger the class, the less I study, she said. In large lecture halls, you feel like the teacher doesn’t notice if you’re there or not. Why bother doing the homework if the instructor doesn’t even care?

Even though she will appreciate discussion labs, Brown said she thinks GEs are hard enough. Coming from a small town on the outskirts of Champaign where classes were small, Brown said she had a difficult time adjusting to college classes.

If they make classes harder, students like me will not be able to adjust easy at all, she said.

Nicks said he agrees that GE classes already require enough course work.

I don’t think making GE’s harder is a good idea, he said. It won’t make people attend class more. A lot of people are scared of what they have to do in GEs, not scared of what not to do.

In order to better estimate which students are having troubles in class, Morey said the new core curriculum requires instructors to hand back an early grade assessment in the eighth week of class.

Students need to know how they are doing in class, she said. If they have some type of early warning, they might have a better chance at succeeding.

Morey said she hopes the new core curriculum is effective. She said she wants students to speak up if they are not being challenged enough in classes.

I hope students complain if their classes are too easy, she said. They need to feel pushed. They need to feel a burn. You’re going to look like an ignoramus if you don’t develop strong thinking skills and become informed about the world.

The new core curriculum hopes to give students, such as Tiffany Ross, a chance to utilize the information she learns in her classes in the outside world, Morey said.

Ross seems to realize this after studying her earth science notebook a few minutes longer.

I know there must be some reason why they try to make everyone take these classes instead of just money, she said. I think my classes will definitely help me to be more well-rounded.