SAGES is ending next semester. But what’s actually changing?

Shreyas Banerjee Executive Editor

Since 2003, students at Case Western Reserve University have been required to take courses within the Seminar Approach to General Education and Scholarship (SAGES) sequence. Forming the basis of CWRU’s undergraduate curriculum, SAGES classes are seminar-style courses meant to teach students the basics of writing. This educational process occurs over three total classes, which begin the first semester during a student’s first year. For decades, SAGES has been an essential component of a CWRU education, as it forms a universal experience for all students. That’s all about to change as CWRU plans on phasing out the SAGES program and introducing new Unified General Education Requirements (UGER) in fall 2023.

The new UGER keeps the same overall values and format of the SAGES program but aims to give students more flexibility in choosing their electives and more exposure to academic departments throughout CWRU. In essence, the changes broaden breadth requirements for students by moving SAGES-type courses directly under specific academic departments rather than having their own classification.

The one exception is the introductory freshman writing course, which will remain pretty much the same.

The current four-credit SAGES “First Seminar” will transition into a threecredit “Academic Inquiry Seminar.”

The new introductory seminar will have similar goals to current First Seminar classes but students can take it their first or second semester at CWRU, theoretically allowing for more flexibility in what courses students wish to take. Academic Inquiry Seminars will continue to be provided on an array of topics, though they won’t be under any specific department. The intermediate SAGES courses, currently known as “University Seminars,” will be transitioned into academic departments with the label of “Communication Intensive” courses, of which students will still have to take two. By being under specific academic departments, students can use these courses to fulfill major, minor or breadth requirements that they may have.

There will now be a single breadth requirement of 18 credits, which students will have to take between three categories of “STEM,” which consists of all natural and mathematical science courses in the College of Arts and Sciences, all engineering courses and all nursing courses; “Social Sciences and Management,” which consists of all social sciences in the College and all Weatherhead courses; and “Humanities and Arts,” which consists of all humanities and arts courses in the College. If someone’s primary major is in one of these categories, students will have to take at least two courses in each of the other two areas, along with two additional courses in either non-major area. These breadth courses may include either or both of a student’s “Communication Intensive” courses or courses that fulfill other UGER requirements.

These new Academic Inquiry Seminars will be taught by a new group of adjunct faculty lecturers from the Department of English that the university claims “will have greater stability than the SAGES lecturer positions were able to have.”

CWRU also asserts that they expect most SAGES lecturers to continue teaching with the new UGER.

With the move of these mandatory courses to be under specific academic departments, CWRU hopes that students will be able to explore more departments across the university outside their major, hopefully allowing them to pursue new interests. A side effect of this change will be an increase in enrollments occurring in humanities classes in the College of Arts and Sciences directly. This will theoretically allow the College to increase its budget as CWRU allocates undergraduate tuition revenue depending on enrollments to each school under CWRU, which includes the College, the Case School of Engineering and the Weatherhead School of Management.

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