|
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA,
SANTA CRUZ |
AS/SCP/1338 |
COMMITTEE ON COMMITTEES
COMMITTEE ON PLANNING AND BUDGET
Resolution to Establish Special Committee on the Colleges
TO: The Academic
Senate, Santa Cruz Division
As the campus enters
the final stage of developing its 10-year Academic Plan, the Committee on
Planning and Budget believes that the time is right to ask what role the
College-form might play in implementing the new directions UCSC will take. The
attached letter gives CPB's reasons for proposing a Special Committee to
consider the future roles that Colleges might play at UCSC. Attached, also, is
a Resolution, jointly sponsored by CPB and the Committee on Committees, creating
such a Special Committee. We will ask our colleagues to adopt this resolution
at the Senate Meeting on March 6.
Respectfully Submitted;
Chair Shelly Errington
Chair Bob Meister
February 14, 2002
|
|
January 10, 2002 |
VPAA George Brown
McHenry Library
Dear George,
On November 29, 2001, the Committee on Planning and
Budget had a productive consultation with you, VP/DUE Goff, Dean Chemers,
Provost Ladusaw, and Associate Dean Leaper on the revised bylaws for College Nine,
and on the status and potential of the UCSC college system. Our
recommendation on the College Nine bylaws has arrived as a separate
letter. Here we address more general issues about the colleges that were
sparked by our discussion.
Evaluation and Review of College Nine
As emphasized by Dean Chemers, AD Leaper, and VP/DUE
Goff, the plan for College Nine, which incorporates close oversight and control
by the Division of Social Sciences, should be viewed as an experiment.
The Divisional model being tested for College Nine may offer new opportunities,
especially related to the establishment of academic programs, that could lead
to renewed faculty interest in college academic affairs. However a
Divisional model has several potential downsides. If, for example, it
evolves into a system where college requirements are effectively set by the
division (though we acknowledge that college faculty have formal control of the
curriculum), the perceived arbitrariness of such requirements could be
problematic, as students are often assigned to their second or third choice
college simply to manage campus housing. If the student population were
to be drawn principally from the division managing the college, this imbalance
in undergraduate life also would be troubling. Thus, the campus must
develop methods to evaluate this experiment in college organization, paying
special attention to the rationale for college-based graduation requirements
(if any), the principles by which students choose and are assigned to colleges,
and the nature and degree of faculty involvement in whatever curriculum the
college develops. We recommend that VP/DUE Goff, Dean Chemers, AD Leaper,
and other interested parties develop explicit procedures for assessing the
College Nine experiment. Collection of metrics should begin as soon as
the College Nine bylaws are approved by the Regents. In addition, we
recommend that the college undergo a review after three years. We see no
reason for other colleges to adopt the model of College Nine while it is still
in its experimental phase.
Planning for Future of the Colleges
Timing of the College Nine review is critical.
Rapid campus growth over the past five years has stressed all aspects of the
college system. If the college system is to be maintained as UCSC
enrollments grow further, the campus must develop a broad plan for college
organization and academic mission that is both acceptable to the faculty and
attractive to students. The Report of the Advisory Group on UCSC Colleges
provides a nice overview of the organization of the colleges, along with their
strengths and weaknesses. The report makes several recommendations about
college organization and the colleges as student affairs units that are under
review by administrative committees. The report recognizes, however, that
decisions regarding college faculties and academic mission must flow from the
faculty. It recommends a number of short-term actions by faculty, such as
a) clarifying the college affiliations of faculty, b) reviewing core course
content, c) developing new models for meeting Subject A requirements, and d)
clarifying what role (if any) college faculty should have in mentoring freshmen
and sophomores. We agree that these issues must be addressed, but think
that the time is ripe for a more fundamental examination of the college system.
In our meeting on November 29th, VP/DUE Goff asked
us to consider how the campus should go about planning for the academic mission
of the colleges. We recommend the following strategy. The Academic
Senate should establish a Special Committee to evaluate alternate models for
college academic organization. The Committee should examine two
issues. First, it should explore a range of models for college academic
mission that preserve the present function of the college as units for
delivering services and perhaps an academic program to undergraduates.
Possible models include the following. 1) Remove all curricular content from
the colleges; keep them solely as student affairs units. 2) Keep our current,
one-size-fits-all, core-course model. 3) Have all the colleges forge
tight links with divisions (i.e., adopt the College Nine model, if it proves
successful). 4) Have the colleges develop much more focused curricula and allow
them to set general education requirements (e.g., the UC San Diego model in
which students choose, at the time of application, among a relatively small
number of college). 5) Move to an eclectic system, where different
colleges have very different types of academic organization.
Second, the committee should explore whether there
may be creative uses of the colleges other than as the primary conduit for
delivering undergraduate student services. An obvious example that has
received a good deal of discussion is a Graduate College. Another
alternative would be to establish professional schools or other academic units
as new colleges (e.g., College of Education, College of Natural Resources,
College of International Affairs, etc.), or as programs under existing
colleges. Here, UCSC would take advantage of the recognized role of
"Colleges" throughout the UC system in performing a variety of
academic functions.
The lists of ideas above are not exhaustive, and we
are not advocating any of them. We offer them only to emphasize that the
committee should be considering ideas that could lead to broader uses of the
college form of organization, and not just those that tinker with the current
system.
To be effective, the Special Committee must have a
broad membership that includes faculty who arrived at UCSC in the 1990s, after
the historical role of the colleges had changed. Such faculty may
currently have no connection to the colleges, but might be
interested in the colleges as loci for new
programs. While considering alternate models, the Special Committee
should consult with administrative offices and committees, students and alumni
groups. Different college models may have major implications for the
admissions process, housing, college diversity, student life, alumni affairs,
and development, so these impacts and costs must be evaluated thoroughly.
Following this period of evaluation and more limited consultation, the Special
Committee should put forward two (or at most three) models for consideration by
the campus community as a whole. After a period of public consultation, a model
would be chosen by vote of the Academic Senate.
We recognize that given ongoing concerns about the
budget, and the recent debate regarding narrative evaluations and grades, some
faculty may not be eager to explore the college question immediately. We
believe waiting would be a mistake. Despite the near-term budget
shortfall, enrollment growth that will severely tax the college system are
likely in the next five years, and the need to develop new curricular entities,
particularly at the graduate level, will continue.
Finally, we emphasize, in agreement with the Report
of Advisory Group on the UCSC Colleges, that the goal must be to strengthen and
re-invigorate the college system. The colleges play a vital role in the
lives of our students, chopping a large, sometimes impersonal university into
smaller, more intimate communities. We must maintain this role of the
colleges as we devise plans for their academic mission that meet the needs of
our future students and faculty.
|
|
Sincerely, Bob Meister, Chair |
cc: EVC Simpson
VPDUE Goff
Provost Ladusaw
Dean Chemers
Associate Dean Leaper
COC Chair Errington
GC Chair Williams
CEP Chair Freeman
BE IT RESOLVED THAT:
A Special Committee on the Colleges be formed with
the following charge.
There will be six members of the Santa Cruz Division
representing a broad sector of faculty constituencies, including those involved
in the colleges as they currently exist and those who are not. One non-voting provost’s representative
selected by the Council of Provosts as well as one graduate and one
undergraduate student representative shall be invited to sit with the
committee.
In consultation with a broad range of campus constituents, including relevant senate committees, the committee will explore a range of models for the colleges. The committee will be established in Spring 2002 and make an initial report in Winter 2003.
Respectfully submitted:
COMMITTEE ON COMMITTEES
Sandra Faber
John Hay
John Isbister
Lincoln Taiz
Shelly Errington, Chair
And
COMMITTEE ON PLANNING AND BUDGET
George Blumenthal, ex officio
Ben Friedlander
Susan Gillman
Alison Galloway, ex
officio
Jennie McDade
Graeme Smith
Lynn Westerkamp
February 14, 2002