MINUTES
ACADEMIC PLANNING COMMITTEE
Meeting of December 10,
2002
The
Academic Planning committee met on Tuesday, December 10, at 9:30 am in room 481
McHenry Library.
Present: George Brown (Chair), Dave Kliger, Ed Houghton, Martin Chemers, Wlad Godzich, Steve Kang, Frank Talamantes, Carol Freeman (CEP), Bruce Schumm (GC), Steve Thorsett (COR), Kathleen Dettman and Betsy Moses (staff).
Absent: Bob Miller, Lynda Goff, Jennie McDade (CPB) and Jamus Lin.
Guests: Meredith Michaels and Galen Jarvinen.
1. Chair’s announcements
A
pilot program to upgrade academic home department web pages has been launched
for two departments: EE Biology and MCD Biology. Centrally funded technical
support from CATS Instructional Technology and Instructional Computing offices
will collaborate with the Natural Sciences Division computing staff to develop
a prototype departmental home page. The goal is to complete the work by March
1, so the site can inform prospective fall 2003 admitted students. The pending
Health Sciences B.S. major is expected to be a highly attractive to prospective
students. The long-range goal is to develop reasonable standardization of
campus academic department home pages, supported by efficient technological
resources.
2. Approval of October 8
Minutes
The
draft minutes of October 8 were approved without amendment.
3. Instructional Workload
Policy
Vice
Chancellor Meredith Michaels introduced the topic of statewide faculty workload.
She distributed background information describing legislative and partnership
language related to faculty instructional activities and a section from the
state audit that addressed workload accounting. The audit expressed concern
over ladder faculty courseload accounting, one of the primary metrics of the
partnership agreement that influences state funding. The UC Office of the
President has established a systemwide task force on faculty instructional
activities to develop workload measures and recommend communication strategies.
Campus Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor John Simpson is a task force
member.
Historically,
the state legislature has equated faculty courseload with faculty workload.
This model ignores course credit hours, undergraduate advising, independent
studies, graduate student advising, public service, and other valid teaching
efforts.
The
task force is collecting current campus policies. Standardized UC policies for
specific disciplines across campuses may be a possible outcome. New
methodologies might include a ‘token’ economy, based on outcomes such as number
of students graduating; different workload pathways for faculty at different
stages in their careers; student credit hours in place of simple course counts,
etc. There is some indication that
ladder faculty courseload has declined in the past ten years. University
vagueness in defining regularly scheduled courses vs. independent study courses exacerbates the problem. Part of the
immediate problem is the 2-3 year lag in faculty hiring relative to new
enrollments, driving up teaching loads of temporary academic staff.
Agreement
between the University and state on the goals to be measured would facilitate
developing a more complex but more meaningful accounting system. Beyond this,
the university must stress the importance of research to the economic well
being of the state. Finally, the university must engender public confidence
that UC is accountable to the legislature’s goals. V.C. Michaels will provide
updates on the task force progress throughout the coming year.
4. Enrollment Planning to
2015
President
Atkinson’s call for revised campus 2015 enrollment projections will help focus
UCSC’s attention on long-range goals and on the consequences of growth. Each
campus is asked to provide detailed responses by March 14. The existing Long
Range Development Plan limits on-campus student enrollments to 15,000 students.
The campus response requires broad faculty consultation and detailed cost analysis.
Chair
Brown presented the total enrollment vs.
graduate enrollment ratios of eleven AAU public universities (without medical
schools). UC Santa Cruz had significantly lower total enrollments (a proxy for
number of faculty members) and graduate enrollments. The AAU chart suggests
that overall campus size is a necessary (but not sufficient condition) to
achieve AAU membership.
Plans
for campus growth beyond the 1988 LRDP must address impacts on the city and
county of Santa Cruz. The campus must decide among basically three scenarios:
1) no growth; 2) very modest, incremental growth; and 3) significant,
qualitative increase in campus size. Whatever the outcome, the campus response
must be contingent upon the availability of sufficient resources to sustain
quality and to achieve programmatic goals.
Off-campus
sites, hosting primarily graduate and professional schools, will likely generate
relatively small enrollments. In the long run, successful professional schools
may produce excess fees and generous alumni, but in the short run may be a net
drain on the campus resources. Faculty should be encouraged, via central incentives, to develop professional
school concepts for both on and off campus programs. Programmatic direction
from the central administration would be valuable.
If
the senior campus leadership decides to propose major, qualitative campus
growth, the faculty, staff, and community will need to be persuaded that growth
is the right thing to do. At the moment the campus community is feeling the
stress of enrollment pressures, in the context of lagging faculty recruitment,
lagging capital construction, and ominous budget messages from the state. The
senior leadership must engage its constituencies quickly and persuasively if
significant growth is to be proposed.
APC
will likely continue this discussion at the January 14 meeting.
5. Member’s Items
None
Attest: George Brown, Chair