[Richard Wolcott]  General Studies is the most popular curriculum at Erie Community College.  It's grown from; beginning in 1980, of 200 students to over 4000 students at the three campuses and it has the most graduates every year from Erie Community College.  There is a very good reason why it has grown and that reason is that it serves the purpose of the students in a way that no other curriculum can.  The students are allowed to explore all the curriculum at Erie Community College, then those courses eventually fill degree requirements in general studies, so the person is killing two birds with one stone.  He or she is exploring different avenues of education at the same time moving towards an actual Associate in Science degree in Liberal Arts.

The second reason why general studies is so popular is that students are given the opportunity to prepare for college level work and to prepare for other curriculum at the college.  We have a number of students that have come to the college expecting to be in another program and maybe thinking that that other program was appropriate for them, pursued that avenue through general studies and stayed in general studies, graduated from general studies and can transfer in particular to and SUNY institution that has the same requirements in general education that Erie Community College has. 	

[Rozanne Redlinski]  The job of this muscle is to move your head, to rotate it down like this...

[Richard Wolcott]  The courses that general studies students take are generally liberal arts courses taught be the liberal arts faculty, which would include the science faculty, biology, chemistry, physics, English faculty, math faculty, social science faculty, psychology, sociology, history, who teach those courses, but are not the general studies faculty, but they are an integral part of the education for the general studies students.

The education of the faculty, in terms of their degrees, is exceptional.  Any number of the faculty has their doctorate in their specific discipline, particularly in the science areas and the humanities areas.  So it is a very well educated faculty, but it is also very committed to students who come to a community college.

About 80 to 85 percent of the students that enroll here do work and a good portion of them work full time and they also have families, so, there is a lot of what I call, impediments to being successful in college.  So the faculty can help the student to understand and to work with all those other responsibilities that they have in terms of being successful in college.  They model that; the faculty has worked in the real world so they are very conscious of what students need to do to be successful in college. 
   
[Roy Pipitone]  What might the company do to get you from here to here?  

[Richard Wolcott]  I see general studies as what college is really all about.  Students come here with varying degrees of skills and maybe not too clear on what they want to become and general studies and Erie Community College allows them to be very successful in various areas and that is the most exciting thing.  

[Various]  Yah Whoa!