On Oct. 11, the Academic Affairs office sent an email to all students announcing the removal of the Health and Physical Education (HEPE) credits as a graduation requirement. HEPE classes will still be available, and students will still be able to earn up to three HEPE credits towards the total graduation requirement, but the classes are no longer required to graduate.
Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Greg Domski said the removal of the HEPE credit has been discussed over the past few years and was looked at further when Augustana’s strategic plan, Bold & Boundless, began last January. Domski was involved in the HEPE credit’s removal and said all general education requirements are being reviewed.
“It’s been under discussion for several years, first on what we call the 12 to 1 working group, and then the sustainable semesters working group,” Domski said. “And then [it] wrapped up with the discussion of the strategic plan, and part of that is looking at revising and renewing our general education curriculum.”
Domski said many working groups discussed the removal of the HEPE credit before the faculty voted on the amendment. Associate Professor of History Brian Leech helped facilitate the conversations throughout the process of the HEPE credit removal.
“That group was chaired by Mike Wolf, the geology department [and] had a variety of people from across campus, the athletic director and a bunch of people,” Leech said. “They looked into a lot of options. They were really interested in perhaps expanding the physical education requirement into a bigger broader wellness requirement.”
While this is something that the working group is interested in, Domski said it would need to be further looked into and is something that wouldn’t happen for many years.
After the faculty council met for discussion, they came down to the idea that Augustana should limit the HEPE credit to one required credit. This would make it so that no club sports would be available for credit use.
The next step was the all-staff faculty meeting. Augustana faculty came together in the Olin auditorium to hear the ideas of the faculty council, debate the issue and then vote.
“Faculty who thought, ‘Well we should instead drop it to zero because we are going to do a bunch of changes in the future anyway and who knows what’s going to happen,’ they actually proposed the amendment to the motion to drop it down to zero,” Leech said. “There was a big long debate over it that lasted most of the hour and a very narrow vote by four faculty [for] the zero credit, and then we voted for this newly amended zero credits.”
The removal of the HEPE graduation requirement has been enacted immediately, now allowing seniors to graduate if they haven’t taken their HEPE credit yet. The updated graduation requirements will become apparent on Arches in February.
