Introduction

Center for General Education

● Overview

The Center for General Education currently has 6 full-time faculty members, with approximately 50 adjunct faculty members, including professors, associate professors, assistant professors, and lecturers, who belong to different academic and teaching fields.

The teaching and administrative space is housed in a four-story building. In addition to offices for the center’s administrators, faculty, and staff, and meeting rooms, there are 13 classrooms of various sizes.

● Characteristics

Our university is the first art-specialized institution in the country. It currently has seven colleges: the College of Music, College of Fine Arts, College of Drama, College of Dance, College of Film and New Media, College of Cultural Resources, and the College of Humanities. Compared to general universities in the country, our school is considered a small art-specialized institution. Its characteristics are as follows:

1.A single-discipline art university:
The departments and students are highly homogeneous, unlike general universities where students from different departments or majors can interact and naturally form a cross-disciplinary general education environment. 

2.Fine division of art specialties:
The learning characteristics are unique. Teaching methods for specialized subjects are focused on individualized instruction, group teaching, and small class teaching. Performance activities are also an integral part of the learning process, especially in drama and dance, where frequent interpersonal interaction takes place. The content and methods of art education differ from those of other disciplines.
 

3.Art students possess exceptional talents:
The students in art departments are those with special artistic talents. The characteristics of the students must also be a key consideration when planning the curriculum. 

4.Art education demands a large investment of time and energy:
The specialized courses in art departments are intensive. For example, a practical art course requires 2–3 hours of class per week for one credit, plus additional practice outside of class. Even if students are interested in general education courses, their time is limited due to their heavy workload.

The implementation of general education in a specialized art school is constrained by the school’s characteristics, student traits, teaching methods, and time and scheduling factors. The success or failure of the general education curriculum depends on the recognition and acceptance of it by both faculty and students.

● Organization

The Center for General Education is a teaching department dedicated to implementing general education and is under the College of Humanities. The center includes full-time and adjunct faculty and administrative staff as mentioned previously. To coordinate with the school’s administrative structure and promote the center’s activities, the organization has a director and one teaching assistant who manage the center's teaching, administration, curriculum, and various meetings.

● Course Overview

In order to achieve the goal of holistic education, general education was actively promoted by the Ministry of Education starting from the 80th year of the Republic (1991), and was fully implemented in the 83rd academic year with the concept of holistic education.

The Ministry of Education has proposed five major fields for non-professional courses, including Chinese literature, history, foreign languages, the Constitution of the Republic of China and the national spirit, and general education, with a total of 28-32 credits. These courses aim to expand students' horizons beyond their majors, adapt to the changing modern world, and develop the ability to make judgments and determine their life values. The courses also include modern scientific techniques and methods for further research and development.

After thorough research, our university’s Center for General Education has decided to align with the five major fields proposed by the Ministry of Education and, based on the university's characteristics, develop five additional areas of general education: humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, tools, and artistic literacy. These areas serve as the non-professional part of holistic education. In other words, the university will implement a comprehensive general education curriculum as a required part of the program.

Starting from the 96th academic year (2007), the new credit system has been revised, with courses divided into three main categories:

• A. Specially designed integrated thematic courses/core general education courses

• B. Cross-artistic field art appreciation courses

• C. General education category courses