Standard 3

As was noted earlier, California, more so than any other state, has invested heavily in its public research universities. Discussing UC Davis, former President of the University of California, Clark Kerr said:

"Davis was an all-around joy. It had its own special place in the university as the primary center for agricultural research-one of the best in the nation and even in the world, I discovered as I traveled abroad. Managers of sheep ranches in Australia and vineyards in France spoke of Davis as the center of research in their specialties. It had professional and academic respect…It was, above all other campuses, an integrated and intellectual community." ¹

President Kerr praises then Chancellor Emil Mrak for his leadership during what has become known as the first tidal wave of campus growth. Standard 3 is concerned with the human, fiscal, organizational, and physical resources that are devoted to creating an institution that can achieve its objectives. Clark Kerr's comments indicate that our campus began its modern development with the effective leadership, accomplished faculty, support staff, and facilities that are necessary for excellence. In this section of the essay, we will highlight our present status in those areas and the process we use to build upon past successes.

Our present Chancellor, Larry N. Vanderhoef, is only the fifth individual to serve at the helm of our campus. Having come to campus in 1984 to serve as Executive Vice Chancellor, he became Chancellor in 1994. Many members of the senior management team have long histories with the campus. But we conduct national searches for almost all of our senior positions, so we also recruit and hire talented leaders from other institutions. The result is a nice blend of institutional memory and new blood. Evidence of the caliber of our senior management team can be seen in the number of individuals who have moved on to lateral or higher positions at other prominent universities. This list would include the present Presidents of the University of Wyoming and Kent State, the Chancellors of UC Santa Cruz and UC Merced, the Executive Vice Chancellor of University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and the Provost of Virginia Tech.

In addition to administrative leadership, another crucial institutional resource is our faculty. Enhancing faculty excellence in a time of rapid growth requires some care. To deal with the financial shortfalls of the early 1990s, amounting to $400M or about 25% of the total state allocation, the UC system offered a very attractive "golden handshake" that successfully enticed many faculty and staff into partial or full retirement. As a result, the late 1990s did not see a large number of retirements because so many employees who were eligible for early retirement took advantage of this opportunity in the early part of the decade. Now we are seeing that large numbers of staff and faculty are eligible or close to being eligible for retirement. As we indicated in our Institutional Proposal, this retirement blip coincides with a student growth blip. In our plans for expansion, we have factored in both genuinely new positions allocated by the State for growth, as well as positions vacated by retirees. Since we have been in this growth period, we have had to hire large numbers of faculty, at a time when many peer institutions have been hiring in similar disciplines. Competition for the promising junior faculty and distinguished senior scholars can be fierce but the deans have held firm to the principle that a faculty investment is the most crucial one made by the University. Most of them operate under the rule that if they can't get their first or close second choice faculty member, then the search is rolled over to the following year.

Given the level of campus growth, we are fortunate that we have had stability in our human resources. We also have a first-rate staff on campus. We are considered more than a model employer - we are a family friendly employer in the context of our outstanding childcare services centers, funds to support students, and the lactation program. Nevertheless, for the past two years, the UC budget has had a particularly negative effect on staff salary increases, limiting them to 2% or less. It should be noted that UC staff have fared slightly better than most other State employees.

As disappointed as we are at being unable to adequately reward our staff for the enthusiasm they have demonstrated in grappling with our growth, we have instituted a number of measures to show our appreciation for their hard work. These include more generous funding of Thank Goodness For Staff events, flextime accommodations, and gift certificates for employment anniversary milestones.

TAs, Unit 18s, Assistant IIIs, Full Off-Scales, Full VIs, SOEs, Associate-Ins, Clinical Xs

To most of our students, any individual standing in front of a room with chalk or a laptop is a member of the faculty. Because of the scope of the University of California and its sweeping research and teaching mission, the system evolved a complicated faculty personnel system. The titles in the heading above are just a sample of the multitude of titles under which members of the University of California instructional body are classified. Our faculty personnel processes contain many checks and balances to ensure that faculty are reviewed and rewarded appropriately. However, during this period of growth, the campus has struggled with issues that come with this multi-tiered system. How much instruction should be entrusted to graduate student TAs? Should lecturers enjoy the same job security as ladder faculty? Should assistant professors teach advanced graduate students? Should full professors routinely teach freshmen? Although we have either established policy or understood expectations that address many of these issues, different constituent groups have challenged those norms. We will be re-examining and modifying our views on these issues as members of the UC system and, in many cases, within the context of labor contract negotiation processes. UC Davis teaching staff, regardless of classification, take their teaching mission seriously and our student outcomes are a testimony to this dedication.

Some of the more specific aspects of the institutional processes by which we assure the very high quality of faculty, administration, and staff, are covered in the institutional portfolio web site in Criteria 3.1 - 3.4.

Planning Councils, Steering Committees, Task Forces, Working Groups, Ad Hoc Groups, Coordinating Councils

UC Davis relies on many strategies to sustain its operations and support achievement of educational objectives. Most of these strategies are developed and debated at a meeting or series of meetings. The information in the web site portfolio with Criteria 3.8 - 3.10 lays out the formal organizational structures, which support planning and decision-making. We have long-standing groups such as the Council of Vice Chancellors (COVC), which meets weekly, and more task-oriented groups convened in response to a particular issue, such as the Tactical Advisory Committee on Year Round Instruction, which meets on an as-needed basis. For all of the groups, we seek appropriate representation, and we solicit student participation whenever possible.

While all of this consultation is admirable, we are even more proud of the way in which we take the deliberations of the various groups and put them into action. Most groups need to report on their activities and accomplishments, forcing the leadership to always ensure action plans are developed and implemented. Clearly, we are not perfect in this regard. In 2000-2001, a group was charged with examining our commencement processes. It worked hard for several months and reported its findings to the Council of Deans and Vice Chancellors (CODVC). One clear recommendation was that the campus pursue a December graduation ceremony. Although CODVC accepted this recommendation, seven months later we realized that no one had been put in charge of creating the new ceremony. That situation has been rectified, and there will be a fall commencement in December 2002. We are usually more goal-oriented than that example suggests. In recent years, we have made very effective use of joint Academic Senate administrative groups organized around specific campus goals. For example, several years ago Chancellor Vanderhoef and Academic Senate Chair Jeffrey Gibeling charged a committee of administrators and faculty to explore the possibility of establishing a School of Education on campus. This group worked diligently on its charge and, as a result of its efforts, we now have a Dean of Education, and we were just authorized by the UC Regents to proceed with developing a School of Education. Faculty searches have been conducted with many more positions targeted in the years ahead, and we have identified space on campus for this enterprise.

When faculty are asked to take on a particularly time-consuming leadership role, we often find a way of compensating them either through a course load reduction, summer salary, laboratory support, or similar incentive. These workload modifications are developed on a case-by-case basis. In some instances, we are able to secure the services of emeriti faculty still committed to our mission. A recently retired faculty member coordinated campus efforts to justify the new School of Education and she went on to chair the search for a Dean.

Through the principle of shared governance, the primary responsibility for courses and curricula is delegated to the faculty. The organizational structures and processes by which they exercise that responsibility are covered in the portfolio in Criterion 3.11.

Space: The Final Frontier

Fiscal, physical, and informational resources are also essential to our success. Many aspects of these are covered in the portfolio with Criteria 3.5 - 3.7. Perhaps the most difficult one within these categories is space. We don't think that UC Davis faculty are distinct from their colleagues at other universities in their persistent exhortations for more space. As we noted in our commentary on Standard 1, we do not operate autonomously. Particularly when it comes to matters of construction, we must adhere to an intricate web of rules imposed by the State, the Regents, the campus itself, and, in many instances, the City of Davis. Thus, we acknowledge that synchronizing increasing numbers of people with their space needs continues to be a challenge. However, we take space planning very seriously and have a very intricate growth plan, which is included in the Institutional Portfolio under 3.5.

Chancellor Vanderhoef often notes that UCD has come to stand for "Under Construction Daily." It is clear that the UC Regents earmarked our campus for a sizeable portion of the Tidal Wave II growth, because with our 5,200 acres of land, we are the largest in land area of the ten UC campuses. From the Science Laboratory Building, the Activities and Recreation Center (ARC), the football stadium, to the Graduate School of Management, we are endeavoring to meet many critically needed space requirements for the campus.

Shortage of classroom space is a particularly vexing challenge. Ask most students and faculty if we have sufficient classroom space and they will respond, "No!" Ask the California Post secondary Education Commission (CPEC) if we have sufficient instructional space, and they will respond, "Yes." The Commission uses the same formula for this recommendation for all the strata of higher education institutions. Thus, the California State and community college standards are the same as those applied to UC campuses. Yet UC students don't share the commuter profile of their counterparts in the other systems. The community and four-year state colleges serve a much larger part-time student population, a cohort of students more likely to work during the day and expect to take classes in the evening and on weekends. Although many of our students do work, it is usually a much less intense schedule and the expectation is that evening and weekend time are to be devoted to study. We are, however, offering more and more evening and weekend classes and laboratories.

Information technology is one of the Criteria (3.7) in Standard 3 and is also central to one of our Educational Effectiveness self-study topics. Our discussion in 3.7 describes how we have made major changes in our information technology institutional organization. One of the main goals was to produce a structure that is better able to align the efforts in improving technology with the needs and priorities of our campus. We are now much better organized to apply information technology in student learning. Our Educational Effectiveness self-study will explore this topic much more extensively.

Reflections

A pair of Eggheads rest on the hill between Mrak Hall, the administration building, and King Hall, the Law School. Arneson called the pair "See No Evil and Hear No Evil." Both heads have their mouths open as though talking, but neither has ears. Each head has one blank eye. Through these whimsical pieces of sculpture, Arneson was no doubt imploring those of us charged with campus leadership and the dispersal of the campus's resources to privilege the listening and looking aspects of consultation and collaboration.

Robert Arneson, See No Evil, from The Egghead Series, 1991-92, Richard L. Nelson Gallery & The Fine Arts Collection, © UC Regents. Robert Arneson, Hear No Evil, from The Egghead Series, 1991-92, Richard L. Nelson Gallery & The Fine Arts Collection, © UC Regents.

¹ Clark Kerr, The Gold and the Blue: A Personal Memoir of the University of California 1949-1967. University of California Press: Berkeley 2001 306.