This document reflects an experiment, jointly undertaken by WASC and UCSC, to re-invent certain aspects of the accreditation process. The shared intention of the two institutions has been to increase the weight assigned to the goals of assessment and self-improvement relative to the objective of certification. In the spirit of self-study, thus conceived, this campus has already identified and taken steps to address a number of issues that were identified over the past year. A few words on each may help demonstrate how, even in advance of the external review team's visit, accreditation has begun to influence policy and practice at UCSC.
The Steering Committee's examination of statistics relating to undergraduate student diversity revealed that, despite this campus's relatively heavy reliance on special admissions of students (many from underrepresented groups), the form in which data are recorded makes it difficult to track this population in a systematic fashion. Specifically, this has meant that academic progress and outcomes cannot be compared with appropriate reference groups over time. In response to this oversight, a proposal was drafted in the spring of 1993 requesting funds from the Office of the President for the development of a long-range tracking system for all undergraduate students that would make it possible to monitor the progress of special admit students over the course of their entire UCSC careers. The funds, which have now been approved for this project, will also be used to add student-level information to the data set on curricula that is planned as part of the "data warehouse," an integrated system that will assemble statistics on most aspects of the campus's organization.
The Steering Committee's efforts to understand retention and career development, particularly among women and minority faculty, revealed that data are typically unavailable except by reading individual files. A new tracking system has been developed that will use payroll status to monitor the progress of all faculty in the aggregate, including the number of years spent at each step and rank.
In addition to the categories of research organizations recognized campuswide and systemwide (e.g., FRAs, ORAs, ORUs, and MRUs), the research section of the self-study unearthed several others whose activities and constitution were less clearly delineated. The General Catalog lists them under such titles as "programs," "centers," "facilities," and "FRGs" (Focused Research Groups). Although a number of these appear to represent productive and creative ad hoc arrangements among faculty, the informal appropriation of titles has produced a bewildering array of loosely defined entities. In some cases, formal titles are being inappropriately used for informal arrangements. In many instances, reporting relationships and mechanisms of accountability are left unspecified. The connection of such groups to the campus's academic and research objectives often remains ambiguous. The campus administration proposes to address these issues over time by using campus and external review procedures to clarify the role of such informal groupings and to guide them, where appropriate, in the direction of the recognized categories of research activity.
The Committee on Educational Policy (CEP), which has authority over the content of the undergraduate curriculum, reviewed an early draft of the general education section of this self-study. Its discussion of that document led to a call for further analysis of how students are satisfying their general educational requirements. As a by-product of this discussion and inquiry, during the fall quarter of 1993 the CEP established a subcommittee which will provide regular and ongoing oversight of issues of general education. It will review general education courses with the largest enrollments and those few that satisfy three GE requirements.
The self-study process indicated that, despite the questions raised at the time of the 1986 WASC review, the UCSC General Catalog still contained several misleading or ambiguous statements. This situation resulted in part from the mixed objectives which the catalog serves as an instrument of outreach to the general public, as a source of information for members of the UCSC community, and as a document of record. In a time of budgetary stringency, the problem of providing accurate and up-to-date information becomes both more critical and more difficult. As a result, a new procedure for the review of all catalog copy was developed. It provides for meetings among representatives from the Office of Public Information, the Office of the Registrar, and the Office of Planning and Budget. Their responsibility is to scrutinize all contents, verify their accuracy and candor, and resolve differences of interpretation among the many units across this campus which participate in the creation of this document. The result of the deliberations of this group is then submitted to the Associate Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate Affairs who has final authority in case of disagreements. The process worked well enough in its first year of implementation that there has been some thought of extending it to other campus publications.
This campus applauds WASC for its openness to change and renewal within the accreditation process. Although direct comparisons with previous reviews are problematic (and though it will always remain difficult, irrespective of the procedure, to motivate most members of a university community to take a direct and vital interest in this time-consuming activity of self-examination), this study's focus on issues that are widely seen as being of moment for this campus at this juncture in its development has clearly increased the legitimacy of the eight-year review. The UCSC experience, nonetheless, suggests two points which WASC may wish to consider as it contemplates the possibility of further modifications in its practices:
Despite such qualifications, UCSC's investment in the process of self-study has already begun to pay returns in the form of the kinds of changes outlined above. We are confident in the expectation that these will be compounded through the on-campus debate over the draft self-study, the visit of the distinguished external review team that WASC has recruited, and the formal accreditation report that will culminate this process. This institution is proud of the cooperative and productive relationship it has forged with the Western Association of Schools and Colleges and looks forward to seeing this collaborative experiment to advance the goals of higher education brought to a successful conclusion.