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Standard 4 The elaborate consultation network described in our Standard 3 essay is particularly important in our efforts to create an organization committed to learning and improvement. The main element is a planning process that is informed by appropriate institutional research. We have two main units devoted to institutional research: the Office of Resource Management and Planning (ORMP) and the Student Affairs Research and Information Office (SARI). They are key resources which are available to virtually all campus groups and can provide the current and sophisticated institutional data that are the basis for informed decisions and sound recommendations. From decisions such as those that the Council of Vice Chancellors grapples with concerning the long-range development plan to alternatives about what countries in which we should develop Short Term Programs Abroad (STPAs), we enjoy the benefit of superb institutional researchers. Strategic Thinking and Planning Although new members of the UC Davis administration, faculty and staff may bemoan the list of acronyms that matches our multitude of committees, they come to realize that these groups are essential for planning the progress of the institution. The efforts of all of these committees and the institutional researchers who support their efforts continue to be challenged by the Tidal Wave II students. The late 1990s was not the first time UC campuses began planning for increased enrollments. Less than a decade earlier, a surge of enrollment was predicted, and campus planning had commenced. However, that phantom tidal wave of students never materialized. Some faculty and staff were understandably reticent about the planning for the next predicted surge, but these students have indeed arrived. For an example of institutional planning at UC Davis, we will now describe the process that led to the Academic Plan. UC Davis began planning for the growth with the formation of the Provost's Academic Advising Council (PAAC) in 1998. This group was comprised of faculty and administrators from across the campus. They began by articulating principles upon which to solicit proposals from throughout the campus. It was important that all academic units have the opportunity to participate. Although re-investing in established programs is often an appropriate and necessary thing to do, we know that it is also important for an institution of our caliber to develop new initiatives. Thus, the process began with a broad solicitation of new initiatives to be followed by the solicitation of plans for growth for extant programs. With its long tradition of interdisciplinary collaboration, the campus was successful in attracting proposals that pool much of our faculty talent. Another principle that was promoted by the PAAC was the notion that enrollment growth would not be the driver of FTE allotments. Instead, we opted to invest the new FTE more strategically and use alternative revenue streams to fund some of the campus' curricular needs. Following the PAAC process, the Academic Planning Council was formed. The new group was comprised of both the original PAAC members as well as a number of additional senior campus leaders who further vetted recommendations. At relevant meetings, members of our institutional research office were in attendance. They provided the members of the group with several important kinds of information. This material included instructional workload data, faculty/student ratios, profiles on the research rankings of our departments, budget materials for colleges and divisions. Additionally, the ORMP staff offered multiple models on the workload impact we could anticipate as we chose which colleges and divisions into which to enroll the new students. We have noted before that we are sometimes constrained by mandates external to our processes. In this case, the evidence clearly indicated it was time to accept many more graduate students so that we could improve the graduate student/undergraduate student ratio. However, the California Legislature puts a much higher priority on undergraduate enrollment than on graduate student enrollment. Widespread campus consultation took place throughout the academic planning process. Given our size and complexity, it would be unrealistic and perhaps even unhealthy to expect that all campus citizens buy in to all of the points in the current Academic Plan. However, we believe all relevant parties were given the opportunity to comment. The conclusion of this process can be found in the Academic Plan available in the on-line portfolio. The UC Davis Graduate Group structure has provided us with extensive experience in cross-college cooperation. Even so, new cross-campus academic initiatives pose significant implementation challenges. For each of these, we identify a "lead dean." This dean is charged with working with the other relevant colleges and divisions to move an initiative forward. We are now finding that we might have been more concrete in our statements and planning for curricular needs. More often than we would like, we are adding courses very close to the beginning of the quarter. A recent systemwide audit reveals disproportionately large classes and disproportionately small classes. During the next academic year we will convene a group to redress this problem. Additional important examples of planning processes can be found in the portfolio. They include the Chancellor's Fall Conferences and the Long Range Development Plan. A noteworthy example connected with Criterion 4.2 is the very ambitious New Business Architecture (NBA). Although we have excellent data on student outcomes and satisfaction and have established procedures for program review for quality assurance, we do not have institution wide or highly developed tools for gathering or using direct measures of student learning beyond those used in each individual class. Key to progress in this area is an articulation of educational objectives and a body charged with developing our methods for measuring educational effectiveness and using the results. We have recently put both of these elements in place. In the coming academic year, the next steps will be taken. Commitment to Learning and Improvement Criteria 4.6 and 4.7 are concerned with the institutional commitment to improvements in teaching methods and student learning. For several reasons, we have opted to talk about the Physics 7 and Chemistry 2 series offered in the Division of Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS). Both of these series are very important foundational ones vital to the academic success of students in many science-oriented majors. They are service courses, and at UC Davis, the students in them often come from colleges and divisions other than MPS, the division that is expected to support them. They have counterparts at most major universities and colleges. Because of their laboratory sections, they are among the most expensive lower division courses on our or any other campus. As the number of students we accept increases, we must constantly think about ways to accommodate them in these courses. Since the preparatory review is intended to demonstrate our capacity to foster increased undergraduate research experiences (an element of our educational effectiveness self-study), it is worthwhile to undertake a discussion of courses that are likely to have a direct impact on whether or not our students in the sciences are actually ready to pursue strong undergraduate research. Physics 7 was designed by three faculty members from the Physics Department in the early 1990s. A gateway course in high demand by pre-med students, Physics 7 often proved to be a stumbling block that prevented students from further pursuit of a science major. Professors Potter, De Leone, and Coleman believed that if the course were restructured, it could maintain its rigor without deterring so many bright students. As they note in "Radically Restructured Introductory Physics Course at a Large Research University": Physics education research consistently demonstrates the need for students to actively construct new models of physical phenomena if learning with understanding is to take place. Some of the activities that are most conducive to this type of learning include engaging the student in dialogues which expose their previously held views and allowing students to construct new models to replace their old views. However, a large lecture format is not conducive to an active learning approach. While change from the traditional lecture/lab style of teaching may be desirable, there are typically many structural barriers to creating an active learning environment in physics courses. Many large research universities teach upwards of 1000 students a year in these introductory courses, making reform difficult. In this project, our goal is to address both of these problems by developing and fully implementing a new large introductory physics course that facilitates, rather than hinders, students' construction of physics knowledge, yet works within the constraints of a research university. In 4.6 we are asked to demonstrate that leadership at all levels is committed to improvement based on the results of inquiry and assessments of the campus environment in support of academic and co-curricular objectives. We want to discuss how various offices of the University have been called upon to support Physics 7. The initial funding for Physics 7 came from the National Science Foundation, the Office of the Vice Provost--Undergraduate Studies, and the Dean of the Division of Math and Physical Sciences (MPS). The latter two offices routinely make investments to continue support for the course. The Physics Department itself has made an enormous investment in the course, and as noted above, it is a course for non-majors. Physics 7 requires more TAs and a very different kind of lab configuration. In spite of the space constraints described in Standard 3, we have always managed to find more space for Physics 7 as the enrollment has grown. Physics 7 was one of the first courses on campus to move to weekend lab times. Even before the Legislature requested that the University make more of its courses available in the summer, the Physics Department worked with the Summer Sessions Office to offer Physics 7 in the summer. This required extensive negotiation because the Physics 7 labs are quite expensive and Summer Session courses needed to be self-supporting at that time. Both the Physics Department and the Summer Sessions office had to invest to make Physics 7 affordable in the summer. As the need for lab space grew, the Office of Resource Management and Planning worked with the department to identify and rehabilitate space for labs. Funds for modifying this space came from the Office of the Provost and the Dean of MPS. Even though the course is about 10 years old, the Physics 7 faculty continue to refine the course and its labs. Evidence demonstrates that the students have met or exceeded the pass rate on the MCATS. Thus Physics 7 and other courses that so thoroughly embody our educational objectives will continue to receive full campus support and encouragement. The faculty in Chemistry have taken a different approach. As they anticipated the impact of the enrollment growth on the Chemistry 2 series, they realized that they were likely to run out of space in the teaching laboratories. New teaching laboratories are quite expensive; we know this from the costs associated with the new Biological Sciences laboratories being constructed at this time. The discussions about how to prepare for this eventuality in Chemistry coincided with an increased understanding of the benefits of adopting certain components of educational technology. In 1999, the Dean of Mathematical and Physical Sciences proposed that our Chemistry faculty work with the staffs of the Teaching Resources Center and Mediaworks to develop on-line modules for the pre and post sections of the laboratory courses. Such modules would have several benefits. First, they allow us to shorten the duration of time a student must spend "at the bench". Part of the lab time would be at their own computer terminals or ones available throughout the campus. As the document attached to the on-line portfolio indicates, the faculty and the staff of Mediaworks were interested in pursuing this change only if it had pedagogical merit. The following 5 principles guided their efforts:
While the Chemistry Department, MPS, and Mediaworks were the core working group on this effort, it did require the kind of cross-campus cooperation and support intrinsic in 4.6. Both the former and present Executive Vice Chancellor/Provosts were involved in the allocation of resources. The Office of Resource Management and Planning was key in identifying revenue streams and the Vice Provosts of Undergraduate Studies and Information and Educational Technology and their staffs were involved in the effort to keep the project moving. Since it also speaks to our Educational Effectiveness review, we will offer a more nuanced commentary on it in the next phase of our WASC review. Our Institutional Proposal states that we are particularly interested in developing educational objectives for the integration of teaching, learning, and research and that given the enrollment growth and faculty turnover we anticipate, we are eager to develop strategies to consistently communicate our campus priorities. We have made some considerable progress toward these goals. We discovered that we had no formal, documented educational objectives and that our Academic Senate committee organization and program review criteria were not optimally organized to address and promote overall policy in undergraduate education. We now have a new Academic Senate Undergraduate Council, and educational objectives have been adopted. These are important steps forward, but it is interesting to note that the educational objectives are framed at a level on which a statement of student involvement in research does not easily fit. Nevertheless, the task of making the objectives operational still lies before us, and student involvement in the research life of the university can very effectively foster all of the stated educational objectives. Thus it is possible to speculate that in the implementation of the objectives, research will have a central role. Reflections
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