Introduction: Context and Contents for the Institutional Presentation
Following is an introduction describing the Institutional Presentation Contents.
INTRODUCTION: CONTEXT AND CONTENTS
The University of California, Merced, is the tenth campus of the University of California and the first new UC campus to be opened since 1965. As part of the University of California, UC Merced shares the University's 137-year tradition of distinguished teaching, research and service. The new campus benefits from being governed by a host of Universitywide policies, procedures and practices that fully meet many expectations in the WASC Standards for Accreditation. At the same time, UC Merced faces the daunting challenge of translating the rich UC inheritance in order to build its own character and capacity as a unique place for higher education. The development of a new campus has stimulated the UC community as a whole to assess the University's history and tradition, to probe what has succeeded and what could be improved. This is both an advantage and a test for a new campus: how can lessons learned about effective institution-building at other UC campuses—and around the country—invigorate planning for educational effectiveness at a university that is being built from the ground up?
Context for UC Merced Planning
Planning for UC Merced began in 1988, when the UC Board of Regents authorized President David Gardner to plan up to three new campuses to help accommodate predicted growth in student demand for enrollment. Undergraduate enrollment is governed by the California Master Plan for Higher Education [http://www.ucop.edu/acadinit/mastplan/mp.htm], which specifies that the University of California will select its undergraduates from the top 12.5% of the California high school graduates. By policy, UC has assured that all eligible students who apply will be offered a place somewhere in UC, though not necessarily at the applicant's campus of choice. Thus, University enrollment planning has a strong demographic driver. The Master Plan also designates UC as the State's primary public institution for research and doctoral education, with certain professions reserved exclusively to the University. Admission to UC graduate and professional programs is highly selective, and planning for such programs proceeds in tandem with undergraduate enrollment planning. Because the research and graduate education missions in UC are inseparably intertwined, UC has set a long-range target of 20% graduate students for its campuses.
While the Master Plan established a 12.5% statewide proportion for admission of California high school graduates, actual participation in UC varies by region. Each campus draws students from throughout California but also exerts a strong draw from its broad geographical region. In determining where to locate the tenth UC campus, the Regents considered that the San Joaquin Valley, one of the fastest growing regions of the State, has had an undergraduate participation rate that is about half the statewide average. In 1990, the Regents approved a site search in the San Joaquin Valley, with an academic goal of building a campus that would help improve Valley participation in UC. This goal is expected to be achieved in two ways. UC Merced itself will add the convenience of a regional location, bringing a UC education closer to home for prospective Valley students. At the same time, since a student who attains eligibility for admission to UC Merced is also eligible for admission to any UC campus, other UC campuses should ultimately see an increase in Valley student enrollments. Student eligibility, that is, the measure of how many California high school graduates have satisfied UC entrance requirements, is another key concern with regard to the San Joaquin Valley. As with participation, Valley student eligibility for admission to UC is about half that of the State as a whole. Since 1986, UC has sponsored a number of recruitment, admission and outreach programs to support better preparation and increased eligibility among Valley students.
Based on a multi-year, multi-step analysis of over 80 potential University sites in the San Joaquin Valley, the Regents acted in 1995 to select a site located about six miles to the northeast of the City of Merced, donated by the Virginia Smith Educational Trust, which was established to give college scholarships to Merced high school graduates. At the time of final site selection, UC was beginning to recover from California's severe budgetary shortfalls of the early 1990's. Vigorous campus planning commenced in earnest in 1999, with appointment of Carol Tomlinson-Keasey as the Founding Chancellor.
Building a new public university campus in California means negotiating two intersecting and complex bureaucratic webs. The first consists of statewide requirements for new campus approval, including endorsement by the California Postsecondary Education Commission; in addition, the State capital and operating budget approval processes require negotiation. The second consists of the University's own highly detailed policies and processes, which implicitly assume a pre-existing infrastructure to carry them out. While one promise of a new institution is to see how those policies and procedures might be streamlined and applied more effectively, there are limitations in how much streamlining is possible. Even with the extra planning year afforded by Legislative postponement of UC Merced's opening from 2004 to 2005, the campus is under on-going construction, both literally, as the first three academic buildings are being finished during UC Merced's opening months and preparation is in progress for adding new buildings; and metaphorically, as basic campus policies, procedures and programs continue to be planned and put into place. Even as some parts of the new buildings continue to be "off limits" while finishing work is done, some policies and procedures presented in this application will be marked "draft" or "interim," slated for additional construction during the first years of campus life.
Academic planning, at the heart of a new university, has been particularly affected by the conundrum at the intersection of State and University policies. The UC Regents have entrusted UC faculty with primary responsibility for the interconnected issues of curriculum development and advising on faculty recruitment and budget planning. The faculty have organized a Universitywide Academic Senate, with Divisions on each campus, to carry out their responsibilities. However, the lead time needed for new campus approval by the State and, particularly, for initiation of the capital budget, creates a planning dilemma. The California Postsecondary Education Commission expects an academic plan as a key part of a proposal for a new campus. New building proposals represent the physical means to carry out the academic plan. Yet to receive State funding to hire the faculty who will be responsible for the academic plan, the new campus and building proposals must be approved at least 4-5 years before the campus will open. Because the majority of the faculty cannot be hired until the campus opening date is near, most will arrive with the academic plan for which they are responsible already well-advanced. Substantial reorientation of the plan by in-coming faculty will necessarily be the result.
The early academic planning for UC Merced has relied on a series of ad hoc UC faculty committees, and on a formally established Senate Task Force on UC Merced, intended to act as a surrogate faculty in advising the new campus administration and taking action on those issues requiring faculty advice and involvement, including initial curriculum development, faculty hiring, campus budgets and academic building plans. The generosity of hundreds of UC faculty with their time, wisdom and ideas has been enormous, starting with the first faculty consultative group on academic planning appointed in the early 1990's. Nevertheless, all these faculty groups have had a degree of diffidence about their various charges, given their knowledge that not they, but the UC Merced faculty itself, would shape and put into effect the actual academic plan for the campus. As the second consultative faculty group in the mid-1990's observed in their final report, "Hiring a stellar faculty is the best academic plan."
The analysis of UC's own new campus history from the 1960's led to a series of conclusions, reaffirmed by multiple faculty advisory groups on academic planning.
The Senate Task Force on UC Merced chose UC San Diego as a model for both strategic academic development and delivery of general education. UCSD was gifted with the opportunity to build a full-service university around a long-lived and distinguished research and graduate education entity, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. As early as the deliberations of the first faculty consultative group for the tenth UC campus, there was a proposal for a "Scripps of the Land," a research and graduate education entity that would be attentive to the San Joaquin Valley's continuing need for problem-based research on soil, water and air. Also adopted was UC San Diego's strategy to build the curriculum in depth, a few fields at a time, until the full array of core science, social science, humanities and arts fields were in place. Finally, the UC San Diego solution to "make the big university small" through a residential college system responsible for general education was strongly advocated by the Senate Task Force on UC Merced.
The college agreement, however, was leavened by recognition that as successful as the residential college system has been at UC San Diego in supporting lower division student success and careful faculty attention to general education, it has not been as successful in incorporating transfer students into the culture of the university. UC Merced's planning for a college system has diverged in certain ways from the UC San Diego model, including its strong emphasis on finding ways to support transfer students in participating fully in the unique academic experience at UC Merced.
Additional trends in UC gave shape to the early outline of a tenth campus academic plan. For example, the engineering and computer science fields have taken their place as part of the core academic program array in UC. These fields also make vital contributions to regional economic development, an important role that the tenth UC campus has been expected to play over the long run in the San Joaquin Valley. At UC Merced, a special goal was set to link engineering more closely with the traditional letters and sciences fields in the delivery of all facets of undergraduate education.
In order to select the first academic fields to be built in depth, campus planners asked the other campuses which majors were in high demand, leading to the necessity to restrict access. As a campus of UC, UC Merced had the potential to play an important statewide role in increasing access to high demand majors. From this inquiry, three impacted fields emerged as special candidates for early development: biological sciences, computer science and psychology; in addition, management/economics was observed to be a high-interest undergraduate field across UC.
Graduate education planning was also influenced by systemwide trends, particularly the growth in interdisciplinary research, a recognition that the world's compelling and interesting questions increasingly require the combined expertise of multiple disciplines. While the initial undergraduate program featured familiar fields—of special importance in recruiting first-generation college-goers from the San Joaquin Valley and elsewhere in California—graduate programs were slated to have a strong interdisciplinary emphasis, in keeping with the interdisciplinary character of leading-edge research. UC Davis's extensive experience with offering graduate education through interdisciplinary graduate groups supplied the model that UC Merced planners have used.
Without being able to replicate Scripps's long history, UC Merced planners nevertheless benefited from the creative thinking of a multi-campus faculty group who created a prospectus for a signature research enterprise, the Sierra Nevada Research Institute (SNRI). The purpose was to perform research on the constituent natural resources—earth, water and air--of the vast and varied region that comprehends the San Joaquin Valley and adjacent Coast Ranges and Sierra Nevada. Further, the SNRI would focus on issues of growth and sustainability, including policy and other social science issues. In the view of the proposing faculty, the SNRI would fill a UC gap. These faculty laid further groundwork that has allowed the SNRI to engage in a highly productive research and education relationship with the nearby Yosemite and Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Parks. Among the first programs under SNRI auspices were summer environmental academies in Yosemite and Sequoia, planned to encourage talented high school students in Merced and Parlier to prepare themselves for UC and for majors in the sciences.
A second signature research institute, proposed by faculty in the social sciences and humanities, was intended to take advantage of UC Merced's San Joaquin Valley location with its wealth of diverse cultures and traditions; thus, a special emphasis on cultural preservation and cultural intersections was proposed. The concept has evolved into the World Cultures Institute. The UC Merced Library's projects to create digital access to unique cultural resources, including the digitizing of the Ruth and Sherman Lee Collection of Japanese Art in the Valley town of Hanford, as well as planned projects with the National Parks, will enhance future research and education at the World Cultures Institute.
First Semester Profile of UC Merced
UC Merced opened its doors on September 6, 2005. The first class includes 706 headcount freshmen, 132 transfers and 37 graduate students. (Because a small graduate class had been admitted and enrolled in 2004-05, 13 graduate students are entering their second year at UC Merced.) The student population is almost evenly divided between men and women. Among undergraduates, almost half are the first in their families to attend college; and 33% come from the eight-county San Joaquin Valley region. Ethnic origins include 6.3% African American, 25% Hispanic, 25% Asian, 8% Filipino, and almost 1% American Indian/Alaskan native. By virtue of meeting federal criteria for ethnic background and income, UC Merced has become the first UC campus recognized by the federal government as a Hispanic Serving Institution. Only two other U.S. research universities—University of Miami and University of New Mexico—have received this distinction.
UC Merced offers nine baccalaureate programs through three Schools—Engineering, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts; this number is increasing to 14 in 2006-07. General Education is under the authority of College One and all faculty and students are affiliated. The Graduate Division offers an Individual Graduate Program, leading to the master's and doctorate. Five faculty Graduate Groups, drawn from the three Schools, offer emphases within the umbrella program. The first UC Merced bachelor's degree is expected to be conferred in May, 2006; two master's candidates will tentatively finish their programs by Fall, 2006. The first full transfer class will graduate in May, 2007.
The campus opens with 57 Senate faculty, approximately evenly divided between tenured and non-tenured. Roughly two-thirds are men, one-third women. Among those reporting ethnic background, one is American Indian, 6 Asian and 9 Hispanic. Faculty numbers are augmented by 4 adjunct professors; and 24 lecturers, 15 full-time and nine part-time.
During the first semester all instruction is taking place in the Kolligian Library, commons room in student housing and UC Merced's Castle building in Atwater. By the Spring, 2006 semester, all instruction will be on campus, as the Classroom building and Engineering/Science building open their doors.
As the UC Merced faculty have taken up the reins of campus planning, the scope of inquiry on planning models, both inside and outside UC, has broadened from the models foregrounded by the predecessor planning groups. For example, elements of all three UC campuses opened in the 1960's have been adapted, particularly given the similarity in student profile with UC Santa Cruz and UC Irvine — that is, a large new undergraduate population, much smaller graduate population. The concept of a college system to take responsibility for general education has been influenced by UC Santa Cruz, as well as UC San Diego, particularly in the planning of the signature Core Course sequence. In addition to the three campuses opened in the 1960's, UC Merced has had the benefit of the six other UC campuses for academic models, particularly in developing policies and procedures. Importantly, these models are selectively used tools to expedite establishment of the academic policy infrastructure. UC Merced faculty have risen to the UC challenge that each campus push the boundaries of knowledge and learning through innovation in curriculum and research. They are making the campus academic plan their own, revising earlier work and pioneering programming that has no precedent on any other campus. This creative process is on-going as new faculty arrive and new re-visioning of the academic life of UC Merced takes place.
UC Merced's Case for Candidacy: Overview of Preparatory Review Report Contents
The Western Association of Schools and Colleges Senior Commission particularly asks, how has an institution built a culture of evidence in support of educational effectiveness and continuous improvement? As the UC Merced Institutional Portfolio will show, a culture of evidence is the essence of the University of California as a research university. The nature of the intertwined research and graduate education enterprise is to produce and evaluate evidence as it leads to the creation of new knowledge. Undergraduate degree programs introduce students to the ways in which the broad disciplinary realms define a problem, then collect and test evidence to grapple with the problem. In the student's chosen major, he or she learns those disciplinary tools in depth both through studying and applying them. Reliance on extensive evidence permeates the primary academic decision-making processes. For example, the faculty personnel process—hiring, promotion and merit increases—is based on extensive evidence of accomplishments in all three areas of faculty responsibility: teaching, research and service. New program reviews require detailed indicators of strength and likely success (including, in the case of graduate programs, confidential reviews by field experts outside UC). Once established, programs undergo periodic review based on multiple measures and external review team assessment, leading to improvement plans and follow-up reviews. UC Merced's Institutional Portfolio includes documentation of systemwide rules and procedures for gathering evidence and evaluating results to assure on-going improvement; and UC Merced's own practices and policies to assure the highest level of educational effectiveness and continuous improvement.
This application will focus on UC Merced's capacity for meeting all parts of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges Standards for Accreditation. For each Standard and criterion, with associated guidelines, this application will present at least one supporting document as part of the Institutional Portfolio. In most cases, multiple documents will be brought to bear in showing UC Merced's progress in meeting the expectations embodied in each Standard. A data profile of the campus will be followed by a series of reflective essays, discussing the documentary evidence being presented to demonstrate compliance with the letter and spirit of the Standards. The Data Displays, Institutional Portfolio and Additional Stipulated Policies sections are a repository that will live, change and grow as the campus matures. The UC Merced Accreditation website containing these documents is conceived as a permanent reference bank for people inside and outside UC Merced who want to understand the campus in all its aspects. Section 5 of the application offers responses to issues raised by the Commission's Eligibility review, pointing to the documentary evidence within the application that demonstrates UC Merced's solutions. Appendix I is an annotated list of Stipulated Policies, connected to the document or documents that fulfill the requirement.
As a new university being built from the ground up, UC Merced represents a host of hopes and aspirations for what the outstanding student-centered research university of the 21st century can be. The campus community looks forward to the part that the Western Association of Schools and Colleges Candidacy and Initial Accreditation reviews will play in assuring that UC Merced is meeting the highest expectations for educational effectiveness in all its endeavors.