| UC Davis Summary of Evidence | |||
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Standard 1 Since institutional autonomy and integrity are components of Standard 1, it is worthwhile reviewing the structure of the University of California (UC) before moving on to the key subject of institutional purposes. Now a ten-campus system, UC guarantees the top 12.5% of California's high school seniors access to an affordable education at a preeminent research university. The hierarchy of the University includes a President of the entire system (Richard Atkinson) and individual chancellors on each campus (Larry N. Vanderhoef at UC Davis). Shared governance characterizes UC, so there is one systemwide Academic Senate with individual divisions on each campus. Although the University has a largely advantageous constitutional autonomy within the infrastructure of the State, an appointed Board of Regents is responsible to the citizens of California for governing UC. The University and its employees and policies are subject to laws of the state. Thus UC Davis must comply with policies established by the Regents, the systemwide Academic Senate and, of course, any legislative actions approved by California voters. Decisions about academic plans must be evaluated through a systemwide approval process, and issues such as the size of enrollment growth are dictated by the Office of the President. While this governance mechanism can prove to be cumbersome and even Byzantine at times, the University of California system is often recognized as the finest state-supported university in the world, so it seems clear that citizens are well-served by all of the checks and balances that have been put in place. Even a selective extrapolation from the 2001-2002 UC Davis Fact Card suggests the breadth of the institution:
Although the campus relishes the breadth that characterizes us, the scale assigned to UC Davis comes with the obvious responsibility to avoid the mediocrity that can develop when an institution tries to be all things to all constituencies. Strategic decision-making often involves discussions of at least two important factors. On the one hand, we talk about preserving the "Davis Advantage." In other words, we believe it important to invest in those programs where Davis has traditionally excelled. But we are also eager to expand into new arenas of discovery. Our initiative on Technocultural Studies exemplifies this goal to be on the cutting edge of new knowledge. We also periodically assess our offerings in terms of developments at peer institutions both within the UC system and with other outstanding research universities. As an example, we are investing heavily in Genomics because we have a core faculty research interest in this field and benchmark institutions are making similar investments. In our Educational Effectiveness review, we will focus on educational technology and student research because enhancing these areas is a goal common throughout the campus. Purposes, Missions, Objectives, Goals The most important element in Standard 1 is an articulation of institutional purposes through a mission statement and a statement of educational objectives. At UC Davis, the Philosophy of Purpose plays the role of a mission statement. It was created in 1989, updated in 1999, and reformulated in 2000. Although extensive attempts at campus consultation were made, we still believe it likely that, if asked to articulate UC Davis's mission statement, most of our faculty and staff would respond with the ubiquitous mantra, "research, teaching and service." As we tried to develop the kind of cogent, memorable mission statement promoted by most strategic planning gurus, faculty resisted any statements that could apply to other campuses similar in profile to UC Davis. We reviewed samples from other campuses, came up with our own versions and found that campus members did not want to attach themselves to a nonspecific text. On the other hand, our rather longer Philosophy of Purpose met with more approval as individuals repeatedly indicated support, saying that it suits our campus. No one has memorized it. It won't fit on a snazzy little card. But we doubt that any shorter statement would satisfy the way that this one does. In our concluding essay we will refer to nascent plans to embark on a strategic planning process that might result in a briefer campus mission statement. The second key document for institutional purposes is the statement of educational objectives. Our Institutional Proposal includes the development of educational objectives as one of the products that we hoped to obtain from our reaccreditation process. An important goal for the 2001 Chancellor's Fall Conference was the development of educational objectives for the campus. This process proved to be much simpler than some of us expected. Given the size and intellectual range of our population, getting agreement on a set of educational objectives might have been difficult. Several breakout groups were asked to develop the objectives independently. Then a faculty member took the lists from those groups and collapsed them into one list. Each of those individual lists had a great deal of overlap. For example, all groups urged that the development of students' oral and written skills should be a campus objective. Some objectives did not emerge on every list, e.g., life-long learning, but once the item was raised in discussion, other participants quickly concurred that this was an important goal for our students. Following the conference, we circulated the draft through the campus administration, faculty senate committees, the student government, and to the population at large through Dateline, the faculty and staff newsletter. Each department received a copy. Ultimately the changes suggested were minimal, and the Committee on Educational Policy (CEP) approved the final version during the spring 2002. During the next several years, we will seek ways of making the educational objectives operational. To ensure that the educational objectives do not become stagnant, the new Academic Senate Undergraduate Council will review them regularly. Within the Integrity component of Standard 1, there are six criteria. For a major institution such as UC Davis, five of these are simply built into the way business is done. Evidence for this can be found in the online portfolio, and we will highlight an example related to one of those at the end of this essay. Considerably less straightforward is Criterion 1.5, which reads, "Consistent with its purposes and character, the institution demonstrates an appropriate response to the increasing diversity in society through its policies, its educational and co-curricular programs and its administrative and organizational practices". In its 1991 report on UC Davis, the visiting WASC team was enthusiastic about our recently enacted Principles of Community, as well as evidence of our goal to create an inclusive and harmonious campus. When campus incidents have threatened our sense of community, the Principles have provided a framework from which we could seek resolutions to the potential divisions that faced us. There have been several positive academic developments germane to Criterion 1.5. In 1993, the Native American Studies program (NAS) was awarded departmental status and, in 1998, the department accepted its first class of graduate students. In 1999 the Asian American Studies program (AAS) undergraduate major proposal was approved by the Academic Senate. In 1994, the NAS Department, the AAS program, the American Studies program (AMS), the Chicana/o Studies program (CHI), the African American and African Studies program, and the Women and Gender Studies program (WMS) were co-located in the same building. Although an expensive undertaking at the time, this move has resulted in the newfound ability of these offices to share some central staff and functions. Further, physical proximity afforded by this change allowed faculty in this group, also known administratively as the Hart Interdisciplinary Programs (HIP), to foster intellectual collaborations among themselves and with colleagues across the campus. One very concrete result of this effort is the relatively new Cultural Studies Ph.D. program. Elsewhere on campus, other efforts have been made to diversify the faculty and the curriculum. This process can be challenging to accomplish, particularly as rapidly as we would like. As our educational effectiveness review on undergraduate research will more thoroughly indicate, we have invested quite heavily in "pipeline" activities---namely those kinds of sponsored programs that offer support to K-12 students and our own undergraduates. In pursuit of the state's highest-achieving underrepresented minority students, we have extensive recruitment programs that take our staff, students, and faculty to all corners of California to inform high school seniors about the educational advantages of UC Davis. Our faculty have been aggressive in their pursuit of federal and foundation dollars that permit targeting underrepresented minority students. From Howard Hughes funds in the biological sciences to California Alliance for Minority Participants (CAMP) in engineering to the McNair Scholars Program in the social sciences, we have successfully sought every kind of external resource available to benefit these students. Indeed, we have leveraged these programs so that they undergird our overall undergraduate research program. For example, our Undergraduate Research Conference (URC) began in 1990 as a showcase for sponsored programs for underrepresented students. The conference was a success, and we were eager to extend it as an option for all students participating in undergraduate research. We will further elaborate on undergraduate research in the Educational Effectiveness review. In recent years, the percentage of underrepresented minorities have increased in both the senior management team and within the staff. However, we have not made equivalent strides at the faculty or student level. A separate document, perhaps the length of a full-size book, could be devoted to the impact of SP1 and SP2, the Regental actions that ended affirmative action policies for student admissions criteria at UC, and Proposition 209, the referendum that eliminated such policies in the State of California. UC Davis must comply with these measures. However, many members of the campus community would agree that continued excellence in research universities and multi-ethnic and gender-balanced populations go hand in hand. Thus we have explored numerous strategies to meet this goal. Our faculty searches are exhaustive and deans close down searches when pools are too homogenous. We aggressively compete with other universities for faculty. Although the quaint, bucolic character of the city of Davis makes it an attractive destination for many prospective faculty, its own lack of ethnic diversity and its rural ambiance can be negative factors for others. The portfolio includes information that documents some of the institutional procedures that help us to make progress in this area. Case Study: Summer One aspect of Criterion 1.7 is how the campus represents its goals, programs and services to students and the public. An interesting case study can be seen in the process we have been undergoing to increase the number of curricular opportunities available in the summer. This relates to our responsibility as a public institution to accommodate qualified students and to assure that the expectation of graduation within four years is actually feasible. As noted above, because we are part of a state system, we must pursue legislative and systemwide goals. The "Tidal Wave II" student growth stimulated the Legislature to encourage the UC system to deliver more of its curriculum in the summer months. For several years, each of the UC campuses has been planning to shift to a fully State-supported model for summer instruction. Summer 2002 marked UC Davis' first official summer session supported in the same fashion as the other three quarters. To prepare for this, we began with extensive collaboration. We closely examined the data on student/faculty participation on our own campus and others in the summers of 2000 and 2001. This research revealed several misconceptions about summer school. For example, many campus members had assumed that summer students were typically marked by academic jeopardy, but, in fact, we found by looking at their GPA's that this was not the case. A subcommittee of the Academic Senate articulated a set of principles to follow in the process. By examining the outcomes of the three UC campuses that were ahead of us in the queue, we learned that student financial aid was an extremely important factor in making summer school attractive to students. We studied the curriculum and provided incentives for departments to teach the courses with the highest student demand. Our research demonstrated that, of all the student services needed, those at the Learning Skills Center were foremost in the students' minds, so we provided more resources to that office. Two major committees comprised of faculty, staff, and administrators oversee these efforts. We will assess this program both at the end of this summer session and continually thereafter as we pursue the growth of a summer quarter. To conclude this essay, we emphasize the development of educational objectives. We established the formation of this goal in our institutional proposal, and we have met it. The objectives are the most important element in Standard 1 as it relates to the new WASC philosophy. They are crucial to demonstrating the institutional capacity to continue to the Educational Effectiveness review. Reflections
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