In April of 2002, the Academic Senate, by the action of the Committee on Educational Policy, adopted a formal statement of Educational Objectives for undergraduate students.

Although a broad consensus among faculty probably existed prior to that, nothing was documented at the campuswide level. Since educational objectives are central to the ideas about demonstrating educational effectiveness in the new WASC Standards, it was hard to imagine how we could continue in our reaccreditation without stated educational objectives. At the same time, the looming growth would bring with it the necessity to make many decisions about priorities for campus development. General objectives could serve to guide decision making. Thus for our own internal reasons and for the reaccreditation process, it appeared that the the adoption of educational objectives through campuswide discussion would be a useful exercise. An initial discussion of educational objectives was added to the agenda of the 2001 Chancellor's Fall Conference, the theme of which was undergraduate education. Out of that discussion, came the proposal for the educational objectives. After wide circulation and a long (but sparse) collection of comments and suggestions, the proposed objectives were adopted by the Committee on Educational Policy with very minor modifications.

Given the generality of the Objectives, future work must include discussions and improved practices that will give a more concrete and operational form to the objectives. Each program can consider how the general goals interact with its offerings of classes and course requirements.

The campus has an established system of teaching program review. Over the next year, the criteria for reviews will be updated to include the newly adopted Educational Objectives. So while there is a system to evaluate the effectiveness of all undergraduate (and graduate) programs, it does not yet contain elements that are specific to the Educational Objectives adopted in April of 2002.

To date, the measures of success have been largely the traditional ones of the research university: the quality of a program is measured through the quality of its inputs and through the career accomplishments of its students and faculty. In some ways, these are relative measures: how well are students and faculty doing relative to those of other institutions? We are just beginning to think about how we might tackle the more vexing problem of measuring educational effectiveness in ways that are deeper than the traditional ones of course grades, scores on graduate and professional school entrance exams, and career success. Now that the Educational Objectives have been adopted, we can hope to look at the success of our programs relative to the stated educational objectives for student learning.

The College of Engineering has established particularly strong program review criteria that include measures of educational effectiveness. This model will influence the direction of program review in the Colleges of Letters and Science, Agricultural and Environmental Science, and the Division of Biological Sciences.