To the Academic Senate, Santa Cruz Division:

Mindful of the negative impact of Proposition 209 on affirmative-action related programs, the Committee on Affirmative Action focused on promoting affirmative action and diversity on this campus in a number of ways this year:

We continued our efforts to institutionalize faculty mentoring in order to improve retention rates of minority faculty at UCSC. Having failed to get Senate approval on an earlier resolution calling on the departments to assume mentoring responsibilities, we worked with the Committee on Committees to propose that the responsibility for developing, implementing, and evaluating a mentoring program for ALL faculty reside with the Committee on Career Advising. The Academic Senate approved this resolution on May 26, 1999. We also worked with Senate Chair Helene Moglen to provide staff time for coordinating the faculty mentorship program in the Senate Advisory Committee's Initiative Proposal for Partners Opportunity Program. This initiative was not funded.

Aware that the implementation of affirmative action plans reside with administrators, we scheduled meetings with various administrators (i.e., the Chancellor, Executive Vice Chancellor, Dean of Humanities, and Dean of Social Sciences) throughout the year to express our concerns and discuss their commitment and plans for diversity at UCSC in the face of Proposition 209. We found these meetings very productive and hope to continue them next year.

To dispel misunderstandings about affirmative action and call attention to its need on this campus, we put great effort in organizing a series of educational forums on affirmative action (see attached Appendix). On October 22, 1998 we joined a UC-wide effort to support affirmative action by holding a Teach-In at the Stevenson Dining Hall that was co-sponsored by 30 campus units and endorsed by 80 faculty members. Over 1,000 students, staff, and faculty came to hear faculty, staff, and administrators speak on the issue. We then organized a follow-up forum on February 19, 1999 to hear staff, faculty, and community experts on the subject discuss the legalities and arguments for and against affirmative action. Over 500 people attended this second event at the Stevenson Dining Hall. We were able to form an ad-hoc committee consisting of Judy Yung, Bettina Aptheker, Faye Crosby, Cheryl Van De Veer, and Cheryl Gomez to compile a collection of articles by UCSC faculty on the subject. Thanks to a grant from the Center on Teaching Excellence, the "UCSC Affirmative Action Reader" was published and sold at cost to students at the forum. (Copies of the reader are still on sale for $11.38 plus tax at the Copy Center in the Communications Building.) Finally, on May 12, 1999 we joined the Equal Opportunity Program in sponsoring a talk by Professor Ronald Takaki titled "Towards a Theory of Affirmative Action: A Pro-active Response to Prop. 209." This time over 200 people, many of whom were students of color, attended the event at Stevenson Dining Hall and a lively discussion followed Prof. Takaki's talk. The Center on Teaching Excellence grant also provided us funds to videotape all three events and to start a videotape collection on affirmative action at McHenry Library. In cooperation with our Public Relations Department, the last two videotaped events were broadcasted on the local Santa Cruz station, thereby allowing us to educate an even broader audience on the issue.

In response to EVC John Simpson's suggestion at one of our meetings, we researched the possibility of using cluster hiring as a strategy for recruiting and hiring Ethnic Studies faculty at UCSC. We looked at a number of universities that have been successful at diversifying their faculty and curriculum through cluster hiring. Harvard University and the University of New Mexico used the "stars" approach to launch their programs in African American Studies and Native American Studies respectively, meaning they recruited the most prominent scholars in these fields to start their programs. UCLA, UC Davis, and University of Michigan chose to hire a cluster of scholars in various disciplines to build their Ethnic Studies programs. By creating a critical mass of scholars in one area of Ethnic Studies (i.e., African American Studies, Native American Studies, etc.) but across disciplines (i.e., literature, history, anthropology, etc.), they were able to diversify faculty and curriculum while also insuring faculty retention. Also, cluster hiring on the basis of programmatic needs would not go against the dictates of Proposition 209. We therefore recommended to Executive Vice Chancellor John Simpson that cluster hiring be used to develop Native American Studies on this campus. (We presently have only one ladder-rank faculty member who teaches Native American Studies.) Following the University of Michigan model, we specifically recommended that cluster hiring be used to recruit and hire one senior Native Americanist, who will then be involved in the hiring of four junior Native Americanists in a range of disciplines. This recommendation was made with the firm belief that courses in Native American Studies will benefit ALL students and that the presence of Native Americanists on this campus will in turn help us recruit and retain Native American students, staff, and faculty.

Finally, our chair served on the Search Committee for the new director of EEO/Affirmative Action after Valerie Simmons resigned, and we are in the process of developing a web site that will help keep people informed of new developments and resources on affirmative action and diversity. It is temporarily housed at http://arts.ucsc.edu/faculty/cope/home.

October 1, 1999