Academic Affairs Commissioner. (1984-85) ... Letter to the Citizens of the State of California. Introduction to the ....
The Ignored Undergraduate:
A Student’s Perspective
by Swati Adarkar
Dean Florez
Academic Affairs Commissioner
Academic Affairs Commissioner (1985-1986)
(1984-85)
UCLA Student Body President (1986-1987)
Table of Contents Letter to the Chancellor of the University of California, Los Angeles Letter to the Citizens of the State of California Introduction to the Student Perspective
1
National Consensus
3
Birth of a Conference
8
Conference Recommendations Quality of Teaching
10
“Change the Reward Structure” Liberal Arts
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“Establish a Core Curriculum” Skills and Proficiencies
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“Develop Basic Intellectual Competencies” Learning Environment
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“Promote a Positive Intellectual Climate” Student Responsibility
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Quality and Access
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Conclusion: the Time is Now
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Appendices A: Acknowledgments
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B: Participants - 1985 UCLA Conference on Undergraduate Education
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C: Address: UCLA Undergraduate Student Body President, 1984-1985
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D: Address: UCLA Executive Vice Chancellor
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E: Recommendations - 1985 Conference on Undergraduate Education
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F: The Nine Experiences
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May 22, 1986 Charles E. Young Chancellor, University of California, Los Angeles 2147 Murphy Hall Los Angeles, CA Dear Chancellor Young: On May 10-11, 1985 Executive Vice Chancellor William D. Schaefer sponsored a conference at UCLA. Its purpose was to respond to the three national reports issued last year on the deplorable state of undergraduate education throughout the nation and to propose recommendations aimed at improving the situation at UCLA. Administrators, faculty, staff, and students from across campus participated in this event. The success of the conference was due to the diverse nature of the participants and the interaction that took place. There was a consensus that the results of the conference should be documented, to maintain the momentum generated by the conference. As the present and past Commissioners of Academic Affairs for undergraduate students and creators of the conference, we felt it appropriate to undertake this responsibility. One year has gone by since the 1985 UCLA Conference on Undergraduate Education was held, and the University has still not effectively responded to the recommendations that were made. In light of the national reports, the U.C. Regent’s request for campus responses to these reports, and the review of the California Master Plan for Higher Education, we thought a report on the May conference would be extremely helpful. This report not only provides an account and explanation of the conference but draws your attention to a critical condition….undergraduates feel ignored. What is missing in each of the national reports that we have read on undergraduate education, is what students think and how they feel about their education. We have done a great deal of reading, discussing, and debating on this topic. We hope that this report provides insight into the undergraduate experience. It relays the countless frustrations and hopes we have heard from our fellow undergraduates. We offer you the miss link.The Student Perspective. Respectfully,
Swati Adarkar
Dean Florez
Academic Affairs Commissioner
Academic Affairs Commissioner (1985-1986)
(1984-85)
UCLA Student Body President (1986-1987)
May 22, 1986 Dear Citizens of California: As taxpayers in the state of California it is your financial support that enables us to maintain an elaborate system of higher education in our state. Our three part system includes community colleges, state colleges, and universities. The University of California, in particular, is well known and respected across the country and around the world. Its educational responsibility is to the brightest minds in the state of California: the upper 12.5% of graduating seniors. The University of California holds the most valuable resource we possess as a state. This resource is the human potential of each generation. We have placed an enormous amount of trust in this system to develop and further this potential. We rely on the University of California to educate and enlighten this special group of young adults to be the future leaders and citizens of this community. We are troubled. Three very distressing national reports were issued last year warning us about the deplorable state of undergraduate education across the nation. We find that the criticisms made about undergraduate education in general apply to the UCLA campus and the University of California system in particular. What is more disturbing is that these are the same problems that have plagued the UC system for years. The University of California is highly ranked for its research and graduate education. But these gains have been accomplished by neglecting its other equally important mission, undergraduate education. As a result, undergraduates feel ignored. Students at UCLA strongly agree that undergraduate education is not given the same attention and priority as research and graduate education. But, while students individual voice their concerns and frustrations, there has not been any means to collectively communicate them. It is for this reason that we have written the following report. As parents, taxpayers, and citizens in this state, you have a stake in what is going on in this all important area. We call upon you to urge the California State Legislature and the University of California Regents to push for reforms which are long overdue. Now is crucial time for you input. It is our belief that with your help, undergraduate education at the University of California can realize it’s full potential to educate tomorrow’s leaders and citizens. Thank you. Sincerely,
Introduction to the Students Perspective Swati Adarkar was elected and served as Academic Affairs Commissioner for 1984-85. Dean Florez succeeded her and served as Academic Affairs Commissioner for 1985-1986. Florez is currently UCLA’s Student Body President for 1986-1987. As the undergraduate Academic Affairs Commissioners our responsibilities included participation in academic and administrative meetings as spokespersons for UCLA's 22,000 undergraduates. Adequate preparation for these meetings required a great deal of historical background reading and discussions with several sections of the university community. While most undergraduates have no understanding of academic decision making we were elected to learn these issues and processes and interact with Provosts, Deans, Vice Chancellors, and Academic Senate Chairs. Thus the Academic Affairs Commission provides a forum from which we voice the concerns of our student constituency. As our terms progressed and as we read report after report, and statistic after statistic, we began evaluating the quality of our own education. We found a great discrepancy between what the faculty and administration thought to be the critical educational issues and the difficulties we were experiencing. Although the intellectual debate among the faculty and administration appeared to be getting to the heart of the issues: it was from their perspective. They were really out of touch with student frustrations and concerns. Was our experience unique? Did others share the same concerns and frustrations? The search began with those who knew best…. the students. We began talking with other students, some of whom we knew well and others who brought their concerns to the commission. We started to see one theme emerging from the complaints and frustrations of many undergraduates regardless of major or discipline. From chemistry to philosophy, from freshman to senior, from lower division to upper division, the message rang loud and clear: Undergraduate students felt ignored. We arrived at UCLA with hopes of becoming immersed in a particular subject or subjects. We expected opportunities to interact with the faculty members who authored the books from which we would study. Instead of interacting with faculty, we found ourselves too often in classes with 400 other students in a theatre type setting where the professor is like an actor or actress on the stage. We became educational observers not participants in our own learning. We remember sitting in our seats and crazily taking notes wondering if this was what a university education was about. We looked at other students around us. When would we be called upon to think? When would we be challenged? How could we possibly be developing analytical and critical thinking skills in this type of environment? The multiple choice exams simply required us to regurgitate memorized information. Were we really learning?
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Coming to UCLA was our chance to attend a school that was ranked fifth in the nation. But the reality was soon to sink in. This top five university was so ranked only on an assessment of faculty research and graduate programs, not on the quality of undergraduate education. The majority of the students with whom we spoke did not understand this distinction. In fact, almost all came to UCLA thinking that they would receive the kind of attention given at similarly ranked schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford. The University California draws the brightest young minds in the state of California: The upper 12.5% of graduating high school seniors. As a public university UCLA has an obligation to nurture this potential by offering the kind of education these students deserve. To accomplish this, change is imperative. In order to facilitate the discussion we offer you...The Student Perspective.
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National Consensus While students were echoing their dissatisfaction with the university, a similar message was being delivered on the national level. Within the last year and a half three national reports, To Reclaim a Legacy: Text of the Report on the Humanities in Education; Integrity in the College Curriculum; and Involvement in Learning: Realizing the Potential of American Higher Education were issued drawing attention to the declining quality of undergraduate education across the country. Each report confirmed the experiences and problems undergraduates at UCLA were confronting and provided the impetus for discussion of educational reform at UCLA. Students were now in a position to communicate their concerns to the faculty and administration. To insure student credibility we explored in depth each of the reports to determine whether or not the problems found on the national level were indeed relevant to our own education at UCLA. As indicated below the answer is a definitive yes. "To Reclaim a Legacy" was written by U.S. Secretary of Education William J. Bennett, based on the findings of a study group on the State of Learning in the Humanities in Higher Education. Among other things, the report dealt with how the humanities have lost their central place in the undergraduate curriculum. This report raised certain issues and made recommendations which we found applicable to the UCLA campus, including:
• College and University presidents should take responsibility for the educational
needs of all students in their institutions by making plain what the institution stands for.
As students we have certain expectations when entering the university. Most of us enter with the belief that we will receive both commitment and attention from the University. We soon discover that the institution's primary function is research. Many discover that their most valuable teacher-student learning experiences are provided by lecturers and teaching assistants who are not consulted about the curriculum or the educational process. We believe students and teaching faculty should be invited into discussions on university standards and should actively participate in communicating these standards to all incoming students. We argue that the University has a dual mission: teaching and research. The research efforts of the University have been furthered at the expense of the teaching function. Although many argue that research is an element that improves the quality of teaching, undergraduates are rarely the recipients of this knowledge, and faculty research pursuits are often so specialized that they compromise the definition of a liberal arts education. Other
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research institutions maintain prestigious reputations without ignoring the character and quality of an undergraduate education. Why can't we achieve this at UCLA?
• The sole acquaintance with the humanities for many undergraduates comes during their first two years of college, often in ways that discourage further study.
The majority of students who are in the College of Letters and Science are only advised about the minimum requirements necessary to fulfill both general education and major requirements.The general education requirements at UCLA could be an opportunity for students to cohesively explore subjects outside of their majors. Instead advisors recommend randomly selected but convenient courses to be "gotten out of the way" during a student's first two years. As a result, the university is discouraging students from pursuing knowledge for it's own sake. Until the university expects students to strive for breadth throughout their undergraduate tenure, students will continue to graduate with only a limited understanding of the humanities, other disciplines, and interdisciplinary connections.
• The nation's colleges and universities must reshape their undergraduate curricula based on a clear vision of what constitutes an educated person, regardless of major, and on the study of history, philosophy, languages, and literature.
Students and the university suffer because the purpose of an undergraduate education has never been articulated. As a result students lack an understanding of what a Bachelor's of Arts or Science degree means beyond a series of completed courses and units. Students should know when they enter the university what defines an educated person. They should not be left to guess. A great deal is sacrificed when students at the outset of their college career go through their four or five year journey without realizing where they are going and why. The second report, "Integrity in the College Curriculum" was written by a committee of the Association of American Colleges chaired by Mark Curtis. The report addresses the crisis in American education as it is revealed in the decay of the college course of study and in the role of college faculties in creating and nurturing that decay. Major findings stated:
• The undergraduate major everywhere dominates, but the nature and degree of
that concentration varies widely and irrationally from college to college. The curriculum requires structure, a framework sturdier than simply a major and general distribution requirements.
Course selection for undergraduates at UCLA can be likened to selecting different foods in a cafeteria. There are so many courses to pick from and no apparent rationale as to why certain courses fulfill some requirements and not others. We need to abandon this cafeteria style method of course selection. It is time for the university to put forth a core curriculum. This will
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provide the structure that is now lacking. It will also force the university to tackle questions such as what is worth knowing and insure that students will graduate with a strong foundation in the liberal arts.
• Professors offer in their courses exquisite examples of specialized learning. But, research and specialization, which are what graduate schools are all about, are not what undergraduate colleges are about.
Undergraduates are told that they are lucky to be at UCLA because they are surrounded by professors who are at the cutting edge of their research. We disagree. A liberal arts education is by its nature not specialized. We therefore fail to see the connection between a professor's specialized knowledge and undergraduate learning. As UCLA is currently structured, it is the emphasis on a professor's research responsibility that ultimately keeps him or her from meaningful interaction with undergraduates. This explains why undergraduate teaching is often thrust upon untrained teaching assistants. Therefore, students do not have the opportunity to interact with ladder faculty, much less benefit from their specialized knowledge. Again, we urge UCLA to to take note of other fine research institutions who have compatibly coupled their research responsibilities with an understanding of and commitment to a liberal arts undergraduate education.
• One of the most remarkable and scandalous aspects of American Higher
education is the absence of traditions, practices, and methods of institutional and social accountability.
Until the entire University community takes responsibility for its participation in and influence on our education, there will continue to be an erosion of the role of tradition and social accountability in our education. We must stop avoiding the issues by pointing fingers at one another for the deplorable state of undergraduate education. We urge the faculty, administration, U.C. Regents and the State Legislature to make clear distinctions outlining their responsibilities. Ultimately, it will take an integrated effort by everyone involved. Not until then will we be able to insure both the students and the taxpayers of California of some accountability in the area of undergraduate education .
• Writing as an undergraduate experience, as an exploration of both communication and style, is widely neglected.
We are deeply concerned that as students we can graduate from the university without being able to communicate effectively through both written and oral expression. Far too many courses do not provide an opportunity for students to develop their communications skills. A good example of this is the number of multiple choice exams administered at the undergraduate level. Students need to be given more practice writing and rewriting. A certain level of competency should be reached in both oral and written communication before a student graduates. 5
The last report, "Involvement in Learning: Realizing the Potential of American Higher Education" is a report of the National Institute of Education study group chaired by Kenneth Mortimer on the Conditions of Excellence in American Higher Education. This study found three critical conditions for undergraduate excellence: student involvement; high expectations, and assessment and feedback. The report urged that:
• College administrators should reallocate faculty and other institutional resources toward increased service to first and second year undergraduate students.
Current university priorities are detrimental to first and second year undergraduates. When a student is a freshman or sophomore, he/she is generally enrolled in three or four courses averaging close to three hundred students each. During a student's junior and senior year, the courses become much smaller (around 40 to 50 people) and minimal interaction between the professor and student becomes possible. At the graduate level there is one-toone contact with a professor. In fact, the professor becomes almost a mentor to the graduate student. But we would ask, which student really needs that one-to-one attention? First and second year undergraduates have historically been neglected. They are subjected to large courses and treated impersonally. Ironically, these are the very students who have the lowest retention rates at the university. Meaningful interaction with faculty is what often influences a student's choice of major, profession, or graduate school. This is the kind of interaction that is needed at UCLA particularly for first and second year students. Some students do occasionally experience a meaningful relationship with a faculty member the results of which are often the inspired pursuit of a previously unanticipated goal, career, or research project. We ask why is this the exception? Why can't all students point to several important academic experiences? The university must make a commitment to add incentives that emphasize increased service to lower division students. The first year experience should provide adequate opportunities for interaction between professors and students. At least one small seminar course of about twenty students during the first year could provide this valuable experience. Also, tenured faculty should be encouraged and rewarded for teaching lower division courses. This will give lower division students an early opportunity to develop a rapport with a tenured faculty member. These actions, we feel, will result in less alienation and hence lower attrition rates.
• All colleges should offer a systematic program of guidance and advisement that
involves students from matriculation through graduation. Student affairs personnel, peer counselors, faculty, and administrators should all participate in this system on a continuing basis.
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The counseling system that exists at UCLA is not adequate. Eleven full-time counselors and 27 counseling assistants are responsible for the general academic advising of 19,000 undergraduates. We need to devise a system that is both more accessible and personalized. The currently fragmented system sends a student to one office for general academic counseling, another for departmental counseling, another for career counseling, and another for honors counseling. Academic advising should go beyond instructing students on the courses needed for graduation. Students should have the chance to discuss their academic course selection and career interests with someone who is ac essible, knowledgeable, and concerned. The potential role that counseling could play in the development of a student during his/her undergraduate years has gone unrealized. If there is one thing that undergraduates complain about most, it would be counseling. If we are ever to significantly improve the present system, students, faculty, and administrators must begin playing an active role in counseling.
• College officials directly responsible for faculty personnel decisions should increase the
weight given to teaching in the process of hiring and determining retention, tenure, promotion, and compensation.
We firmly believe that the University reward structure must give equal importance and emphasis to both teaching and research. The time has come for the University to strictly follow its own personnel manual which stresses that teaching, scholarly research, and university service, shall be weighted equally in terms of advancement, promotion, and retention. UCLA bases faculty promotion and retention decisions almost exclusively on research ignoring poor teaching."Teacher of the Year" awards are merely symbolic gestures. Until quality teaching becomes truly rewarded at the University (with tenure, advancement, etc..) professors will continue to ignore their teaching responsibilities. After reading these national reports and comparing them to our research and our experiences we had found a consensus. The dissatisfaction that students were experiencing at UCLA echoed what educational reformers were highlighting as the critical problems plaguing undergraduate education throughout the nation. The question we had to ask ourselves was how could this message be heard at UCLA? Would change be initiated by the faculty? Administration? The U.C. Regents? The legislature? Or, could students themselves be the initiators? Could we afford to keep putting the responsibility for change in the very hands which created the problem in the first place? Given that the message had not changed in 20 years, it seemed futile to once again place the trust of 22,000 undergraduates in these same hands. The time had come for the undergraduates to take a stand and be heard.
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Birth of a Conference We decided to initiate a conference to address our concerns. The purpose of the conference was to develop and discuss recommendations aimed at improving the quality of undergraduate education at UCLA. A conference was an ideal way to accomplish many goals simultaneously. It would allow us to bring the different segments of the campus community together and to do so in equal numbers. Now not just one student would be expected to speak for 22,000 undergraduates, but a number of fellow students would be able to voice their own concerns. Representation at the conference was an important aspect of the design. In addition to undergraduate students, we included graduate students, teaching assistants, lecturers, tenured faculty members, staff, and administrators. This insured that the many campus constituencies would be represented and the many divergent viewpoints would be heard. We saw a joint effort as a necessary step toward effective change. The idea of a conference was presented to UCLA's Executive Vice Chancellor, William D. Schaefer who decided to sponsor and fund the project A planning committee which included students, faculty, and administrators was formed to organize the conference. We identified many crucial issues that were central to improving undergraduate education at UCLA. After much input, debate, and deliberation, we narrowed the number of topics to be discussed at the conference to four: the Quality of Teaching; Liberal Arts Education; Skills, Proficiencies and Intellectual Competencies; and the Learning Environment. These topics were meant to facilitate discussion and debate which hopefully would lead to innovative solutions. Teaching is at the heart of an undergraduate education. This topic area was developed to address the concern that undergraduate teaching is not valued at the university and that students indicated inadequacy in both faculty-student relationships and in the quality of instruction. While lecturers are increasingly responsible for undergraduate teaching, their role in the University is largely ignored and needs to be addressed and evaluated. Also, the role and training of teaching assistants needs exploration. While tenured faculty could play a central role in an undergraduate's career, contact is at most minimal. Addressing these issues are the key to improving undergraduate education at UCLA. The liberal arts topic area was developed to address concerns that students are graduating without a strong foundation in the liberal arts. The breadth requirement system at UCLA is so broad and flexible that it cannot insure an education firmly grounded in the subjects at the heart of a liberal arts education. Students are being denied an education which is both
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integrated and well-rounded because faculty and administration are more concerned with the impact of enrollment on departmental budgets and teaching specializations than they are with the development of a cohesive, meaningful, and historically proven core liberal arts curriculum. There is an urgent need to re-evaluate the value of a liberal arts education at the undergraduate level. Our third topic was created in order to arrive at some consensus on what intellectual skills and proficiencies students should have by the time they graduate from the university. Many students are graduating without the ability to write, read, speak, and listen critically and effectively. In addition, many students never reach a level of proficiency in mathematics and other quantitative areas. Students are not encouraged to develop the ability to read, write, and converse in a foreign language. Changes in the curriculum have to be addressed in order to insure that undergraduates attain competency in these areas. Our fourth concern was the learning environment. The UCLA campus is both huge and intimidating, particularly for incoming freshmen. We saw a need to create a more personal and supportive atmosphere. For too long, counseling and other support services have been viewed as peripheral to the educational process. Numerous experts have suggested the integral role these services play in a student's development. There is a strong consensus among the students that changes need to be made in the learning environment at UCLA. Four committees were formed to address each of these major issues. Each committee was co-chaired by one faculty member and one undergraduate. The committees were provided with guidance questions which outlined the relevant issues. Committee meetings were held prior to the conference to discuss each committee's charge, the relevance of national reports, and to draft initial recommendations. At the conference, committee recommendations were presented to the participants. Over a two day period, conference participants discussed and debated both the committee charges and recommendations. Because the conference was an innovative undertaking, we were unable to anticipate a potential shortcoming. The committees, who worked with industriousness and commitment were not always able to stay focused on the broad and ranging charge as designed by the students. Thus the recommendations, in some cases, proved not central to the issues discussed at the conference and in previous and subsequent student forums. In addition recommendations tended to emphasize faculty and/or administrative perspective. Therefore we have chosen to present each topic area in the following format: Topic area title; committee charge; summary of committee recommendations [for full text see appendix E], and the student perspective on the topic..
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Conference Recommendations Quality of Teaching Committee Charge: What concrete actions could UCLA take to demonstrate that it truly values teaching? How can we insure the highest quality of teaching in our undergraduate classrooms? How can we get students more actively participating in learning rather than just passively receiving class lectures? Are there real rewards and incentives for quality teaching? To what extents teaching considered in the hiring, tenure, and promotion process? What improvements are needed in the instructional assessment (instructor and course evaluation) process? Should departments be required to introduce a system of in-service training, so that faculty members could improve their teaching skills? How can we affirm our commitment to excellence in teaching without detracting from our commitment to research? Are undergraduates allowed enough opportunities to take courses from UCLA’s most distinguished faculty? What role do lecturers play in undergraduate education? Should we give security of employment to instructors who are excellent teachers? What role do teaching assistants play in the learning process? How should T.A.s be selected and trained? What can be done about the significant number of T.A.s who lack adequate communication skills in the English language? How can we insure quality instruction by T.A.s? What mechanisms should departments use to monitor their performance?
Quality of Teaching Committee Recommendations:
• The Chancellor, Deans and Department Chairs should join CAP in insisting upon
undergraduate teaching excellence as a standard requirement, at least as important as scholarly-research for the hiring, promotion, and retention of all faculty of UCLA.
• Departments whose members win Distinguished Teaching, Distinguished Teaching
Assistants, and Distinguished Lecturer Awards should be rewarded. Distinguished Teaching should be made more rewarding with accelerated promotions, and public attention should be called to regular celebrations of teaching at UCLA, such as that which was inaugurated on Teaching Day, May 21, 1985.
• The academic Senate should set up mechanisms for the regular review of the teaching in every department. We urge that every department at UCLA appoint its own Teaching Committee.
• We recommend the inauguration of a campus-wide Teaching Techniques Program for all new faculty.
• All faculty should be obliged to circulate evaluation forms for every course at least once each year.
• As long as lecturers continue to teach a large number of undergraduate courses, certain reforms in lecturer status are required. We urge that lecturers be give more 10
encouragement, more meaningful rewards, and professionalized status. We also propose that lecturers be given greater continuity of service and be encouraged to participate fully in all aspects of university life.
• More qualified people should be chosen as T.A.s and they should be better trained. • We urge the Academic Affairs Commission to monitor the implementation of each of the above recommendations.
The Student Perspective on Teaching: “Change the Reward Structure” Until the reward system at UCLA gives teaching and research equal weight in the determination of retention, promotion, tenure, and compensation, all efforts to improve quality teaching will be to no avail. UCLA must follow its own academic personnel manual which states that teaching, scholarly research, and university service should all be weighted equally. Although many claim that these are given equal emphasis, many undergraduates and faculty feel that what counts at the university is research publications. We are told that teaching is taken seriously and valued at the University; however facts speak louder than words. Too many distinguished teachers are denied promotion while too many poor and neglectful teachers are promoted and advanced early. No wonder the faculty believe and perpetuate the idea that teaching is secondary at the university. What more evidence is needed than the young assistant professor who requested that the Academic Senate Teaching Committee not select him for the Distinguished Teaching Award because he feared it would be detrimental to his opportunity for tenure. The 1983-84 University of California Faculty Time-Use Study, which had an astonishing 91.4% return rate, indicated that ladder faculty spent 18 hours per week on research, an increase in UC sponsored research time over each of the preceding five years. But, the time devoted to teaching has declined for the third year in a row. Regular faculty spent an average of 5.1 hours per week on scheduled course instruction on undergraduate and graduate teaching, down from 5.7 in 1981-82 and 5.5 in 1982-83. The case is even more alarming when considering only undergraduate instruction. The self reported time spent on total undergraduate course instruction is 3.2 hours per week, the lowest in six years. A mere 1.1 contact hours are spent with lower division students. Time devoted to undergraduate independent studies has not exceeded 0.1 % and in the last two years this figure decreased to 0.0%. Since faculty are spending less and less time on instruction, who is teaching undergraduates? Lecturers are teaching the majority of the lower division students in the University. They are given no security of employment, are paid significantly less than ladder rank faculty, and are
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excluded from academic decision making. The message is clear. Undergraduate teaching is not rewarded at the University. It is no wonder that undergraduates feel that they are not a priority. This neglect continues at the teaching assistant level. In large lecture courses the only opportunity students have for discussion and interaction are in sections lead by TAs. But, while teaching assistants may be quite knowledgeable about a specific area of study, UCLA has no way of assuring that they are good teachers. Many undergraduates encounter teaching assistants who cannot effectively communicate in the English language. This shows the institution's disregard for the undergraduate experience and denies students their only chance for interactive learning. UCLA cannot keep turning away from the TA problem. The university must stop exploiting graduate students by expecting them to carry the teaching responsibilities of tenured professors. We cannot afford to continue entrusting undergraduate students to people who have not proven they are good teachers. We must not single out teaching assistants as the only instructors who have not been formally taught how to teach. The problem runs much deeper. The very nature of graduate school plays an important role not only in terms of teaching assistants, but in the training of future faculty. Graduate schools place a strong emphasis on the development of specialized research skills while failing to instruct Ph.D. candidates on how to teach. As the "Integrity" report states "only in higher education is it generally assumed that teachers need no preparation, no supervision, no introduction to teaching … if professional preparation of doctors were as minimal as that of college teachers, the United States would have more funeral directors than lawyers." What is unsettling is that the major career choice for most Ph.D. recipients is full-time teaching at the University level. A Ph.D. recipient must understand the art and science of teaching and the responsibility that comes with it. Many believe that quality teaching is too subjective to be defined and evaluated. But, there are ways to evaluate good teaching. Although publications are easier to evaluate and document, we argue that there are equally effective ways to evaluate and assess good teaching. Student evaluations play an important role in the assessment of good teaching. Departments should more actively and accurately seek out student opinion in evaluating a professor's teaching abilities. In addition to quantitative surveys of teaching effectiveness departments should mandate qualitative evaluations by students. Students must be encouraged to write honest and documented accounts of the quality of each instructional experience. Current quantitative surveys are both poorly constructed and not seriously considered in academic decision making. This explains why more students do not take them seriously. Faculty members must collegially assess their own teaching abilities. Peer reviews, videotaping class lectures, syllabi and examination analysis, periodic written evaluations, and group interviews are a few of the ways faculty members may receive feedback. Once the 12
university takes its teaching responsibility seriously, institutionalizing evaluation and feedback methodology will become a priority. During an undergraduate's educational experience, there is nothing more significant or influential than the interaction between a professor and a student. As Henry Adams once said, "A teacher affects eternity; he never can tell where his influence stops." We strongly commend and echo the recommendations put forth by the teaching committee. If the university were to adopt these recommendations, we could significantly improve the quality of undergraduate teaching at UCLA. We strongly believe that if there is one central factor to improving an undergraduate's education, it is quality teaching.
Liberal Arts Community Charge: What are major arguments for having a liberal arts education? What are the major arguments against it? What is wort knowing and why? How would the ideal educational experience be designed? What improvement should be made? What are the attitudinal and structural barriers that prevent undergraduates from having this ideal educational experience? Is our recently adopted set of general education requirements the best approach to insuring breadth? What about a core curriculum? What direction should the university take in the area of interdisciplinary studies? How can we insure that interdisciplinary connections will be encouraged and promoted within a course and across courses in a particular major? Should there be more interdepartmental degree programs and interdisciplinary courses? For example, would it be useful to require all freshmen to enroll in an interdisciplinary seminar, team taught by faculty from numerous departments?
Quality of Teaching Committee Recommendations:
• A vital part of any liberal arts education is writing. Students should have ample opportunities to write and rewrite. Written assignments should replace passive examinations wherever possible.
• We recommend the institution of a minor or “emphasis” program at UCLA • All incoming freshmen should be required to take a seminar course in which there are no more
than 15 students. These seminars should be taught by ladder rank faculty or gifted and advanced T.A.s who have demonstrated exceptional teaching skill.
• Catalogue course descriptions should be reviewed for accuracy by each department.
The Student Perspective on Liberal Arts: “Establish a core curriculum” The philosophical questions at the heart of the discussion of a liberal arts education were never answered. Issues such as what is worth knowing and why, and what direction the university should take in the area of interdisciplinary studies were not addressed. What is an 13
educated person? What should an educated person know? These are the questions that must be tackled in order to create a meaningful curriculum. At the Chancellor's Conference on Undergraduate Education in 1979, Dr. William David Schaefer stated the problem well: We cannot, I am suggesting, address the means until we can agree on the end...We sorely need that definition. What do we think is the mark of a UCLA graduate, or put another way, what is the least we should expect a UCLA graduate to have attained in the way of knowledge and skills. What is our definition of a "gentle man," of an educated person? That's the hard question, and what I suggest is that if and when we answer it---and believe that answer--the rest will be relatively easy. The answers to these questions provide the basis for a core curriculum. Adopting a core curriculum will give undergraduate education at UCLA the coherence and structure that it now lacks. Our current general education requirements lack this philosophical justification. In our opinion, an ideal model for a core curriculum was set forth in the report "Integrity in the College Curriculum," which sought to identify the elements of an educated person. The report recommended nine educational experiences that should be part of a core curriculum [see appendix F for a more thorough explanation].
• • • • • • • • •
Inquiry, abstract logical thinking, and critical analysis Literacy: writing, reading, speaking, listening Understanding numerical data Historical consciousness Science Values Art International and multicultural experiences Study in depth
These nine experiences will insure that students graduate from the university with a strong foundation in the liberal arts. The current system of General Education Requirements allow for too much flexibility in course selection. In the humanities for example, a science or social science student could meet requirements by taking two of over one hundred and fifty course choices. Thus by taking the Survey of Medieval Greek Culture and the Development of Jazz, this student has fulfilled the UCLA breadth requirement in the humanities. Even though these are interesting and important courses, they are randomly selected and do not cohesively define an introduction to the humanities. Students should have some flexibility in choosing their courses, but it is the role of the university to articulate to students what subject areas must be studied by all undergraduates. A core curriculum would provide students with a common language. What is absent from an undergraduate's first two years is a shared educational experience. As it now stands, first and
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second year students choose courses randomly without any justification for why certain courses are selected over others. For example, an engineering major and a political science major will not have an opportunity to exchange ideas about what they are learning because they have no shared curricular experience. If the university is to create an intellectual climate, and wants its students to discuss what they are learning with each other, the institution must provide a common language, a ore curriculum. Beyond a core curriculum, interdisciplinary studies should be encouraged at the undergraduate level. Currently, there is no administrative structure which supports interdisciplinary studies. In an attempt to provide a functional structure at the university we have unfortunately created a campus consisting of isolated units and departments that have no apparent connections. Incentives are needed to promote interdisciplinary studies. Departments must reward faculty who teach courses not only within their department but also in related disciplines. If the university fails to place an emphasis on interdisciplinary studies both the students and faculty will be shortchanged. They will be prevented from understanding and discovering some of the most exciting fields which are created when two or more disciplines are fused together. In addition more resources need to be made available to promote interdisciplinary programs. As the world changes and new and different subjects for study emerge, today's interdisciplinary programs may be tomorrow's departments. Ethnic cultural studies and biogenetics offer ready and diverse examples. Undergraduate student interest in interdisciplinary studies is evident. At UCLA, the interdisciplinary Communication Studies Program is limited in size and can only admit 14% of the annual applicants. Interdisciplinary studies should be offered to all students. We recognize that for high achieving students, interdisciplinary courses are available through the Honors College. By offering interdisciplinary studies to our very brightest students at UCLA, in many respects the university has already acknowledged its importance in an undergraduate education. However, it is the university's responsibility as a public institution, to offer every student this type of educational experience. When students select a major they should have an understanding of how that subject relates to other disciplines. Strict departmentalism inhibits students from making these connections. Undergraduates complain that their studies are too theoretical and have no practical application to the real world. Given that the world is not made up of isolated units and departments, but rather encompasses areas that overlap and interrelate, these complaints may be well founded. An interdisciplinary approach to learning would allow students to make connections between disciplines and provide a more holistic picture of the world. The university must make a commitment to interdisciplinary studies for all undergraduates. Department chairpersons are in an ideal position to initiate this change. Interdisciplinary seminars, team-taught by faculty from different departments, is one method of
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implementation. Bringing different departments together will inspire the development of new and innovative courses never before offered at UCLA. It is this kind of innovation that is needed if UCLA is to create an undergraduate curriculum which provides coherence, structure, and a strong foundation in the liberal arts. At UCLA, student life is now a series of isolated academic experiences. Both a core curriculum and increased emphasis on interdisciplinary studies would insure that students graduate from UCLA with a strong foundation in the liberal arts.
Skills and Proficiencies Community Charge: Should we test the skills and proficiencies of all newly entering students in order to determine the appropriate level of their instructional needs? What is the most effective mode for teaching skills and proficiencies identified as essential Should the university adopt a proficiency requirement for communication skills in the areas of reading, writing, speaking, and listening to compliment the existing Subject A requirement? What level of competency should a student reach in a foreign language? Will the reinstitution of the foreign language requirement insure proficiency in reading, writing, and speaking? Will mathematics, statistics, and logic courses, which can be used to satisfy the new Quantitative Reasoning requirement, be sufficient for the development of quantitative and analytical skills? Are there other skills an undergraduate should master before graduation? Do changes need to be made in the curriculum to insure that these skills and proficiencies are being reinforced in other courses after the basic requirement has been satisfied? If so, how can this be done?
Skills and Proficiencies Committee Recommendations:
• • • • •
Encourage active reading and writing. Make learning objectives more explicit. Provide in-coming students with an intellectual map of the university. Required a freshman seminar. Introduce students to the methods of particular disciplines (e.g., historiography, literary criticism) early within the major.
• Encourage language departments to describe the competencies expected.
The Student Perspective on Skills and Proficiencies: “Develop Basic Intellectual Competencies” We recommend that the university determine what skills and proficiencies students should develop during their undergraduate years in order to best utilize a theoretical and liberal arts education. We support the Nine Experiences presented in the Curtis Report [Appendix F] as
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the fundamental intellectual competencies that UCLA undergraduates should develop. However we would argue that more emphasis is needed at UCLA in the following areas: written and oral communication, quantitative skills, and foreign language proficiency. Students graduate from UCLA every year with B averages and above, yet they can not proficiently communicate through written expression. Students should be able to produce cohesive essays with intelligent content and sound structure and grammar with relative ease. Why is this not the case? As undergraduates we are given few opportunities to practice our writing skills. We take multiple choice exams. Teachers complain that they do not have enough time to read and give feedback on essays and not enough money to hire readers. The only way students will become proficient writers is to have practice writing and rewriting with feedback on their work. No matter how much knowledge we as students are acquiring during our tenure at the university, it is all useless unless we are able to communicate this knowledge through written and oral communication. Courses in oral communication need to be required in order for students to develop critical, intellectual, and ethical competencies as both speakers and listeners. Too many undergraduates are uncomfortable expressing their ideas and opinions in group and even face to face communication. Developing good oral communication skills are important in learning to order and manage ideas and arguments, use effective and precise language, and articulate spontaneously. Much of our success as professionals and citizens will depend upon our oral communication skills. Unfortunately, thousands of UCLA students are turned away each year because there are so few courses offered in oral communication. As our society manages information in more sophisticated ways using more abundant methodologies and technologies, a mandate for a quantitative skills requirement emerges. Students must be required to take a course or courses which insure their abilities to develop and interpret quantitative data. Alternatives include computer science, statistics, and mathematics. Explaining the value and use of these skills will encourage students to explore the research value of quantified methodologies as more and more information is expressed numerically. Students should know how to write, read, and converse in at least one language other than in English before leaving the university. It is a tragedy that while America is a leader in so many areas we are perhaps one of the most backward countries with respect to educating ourselves about the world beyond the United States of America. The ignorance and insensitivity this breeds is evident not only at UCLA with the increasing racial tension, but throughout our country. Our state is rapidly changing and diversifying in ethnicity, culture, and language. It is time to stop ignoring these changes. The university must adapt by making changes in the curriculum and in the skills required for a UCLA student to graduate. As long as UCLA perpetuates an
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ethnocentric outlook, students will continue to graduate unprepared to face the challenges of living in a multicultural society. UCLA should monitor students abilities to express their learning by developing effective ways for getting feedback and assessment. We recommend that the American College Testing Outcome Measures Program be implemented. This test, taken first as a freshman and then again as a senior, will measure the effect of skills, proficiencies, and general education on students' ability to analyze writing, use science and technology, and understand the workings of social institutions. The benefits are abundant. Such testing will allow us to see what "value is added" to the students from our instructional programs. In addition it will help the university to better advise and counsel students. Testing will provide a way to monitor students progress beyond merely computing minimum unit requirements. It will be a more substantive indicator of both student progress and student learning. Using value-added testing will allow the university to deal with the broad range of competency levels and abilities of an increasingly diverse entering class. Too often, we ignore the fact that all students do not enter the university with the same level of preparation. We feel an effective mode of testing and feedback will help to meet the demands of assessing an increasingly diverse student body. The sooner UCLA adjusts its expectations, goals, and teaching methods to this reality, the greater the likelihood that all students will reach their potential. Undergraduates could assess their own intellectual growth. Many recent graduates of UCLA are not sure what they actually learned during their four or five years at the university. Undergraduates want a concrete measure of their educational achievements. The purpose and use of these exams should be clearly articulated to students so that they can use these exams to monitor their progress. By developing an effective and constructive method of assessment and feedback, students will have a greater chance of succeeding and thus maximizing their college education. Testing and assessment methods will not only be beneficial to students, but also to faculty and administration. Value-added testing can be used primarily as a tool for measuring and improving the effectiveness of the curriculum. Thus, faculty will gain a better understanding of how to structure their courses and what to demand and expect from students. Today, few faculty members design educational objectives for their courses or grade papers or exams. Therefore, they have no intellectual evidence of their teaching effectiveness. Mandatory written and oral communication, foreign language, and quantitative skill requirements will give students the ability to make use of a liberal arts education. Valueadded testing will insure that students develop these necessary skills and proficiencies.
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Learning Environment Community Charge: How can we better inform students of the support services offered, and encourage students to take advantage of them? How strong of a factor does counseling, campus housing, and a large commuter population play on undergraduate learning? Is there a lack of accessible and personalized counseling? Will decentralization, an increase in the number of, and better training for, counselors provide a better learning environment? Given the isolated nature of UCLA’s campus housing, what can we do to promote a more intellectual climate and thus bridge the gap between in the classroom and out of the classroom learning? How can we increase the large number of commuter students who rarely participate in cocurricular activities? Could we improve the quality of the undergraduate experience outside of the classroom? Should we assign a counselor or mentor to every new student to provide personalized attention throughout a student’s first year? Should we provide this type of counseling throughout a student’s undergraduate tenure? Who could provide this type of assistance? What aspects of the educational experience are the students themselves responsible for, and how can they make the most of the opportunities at UCLA? Could this involvement improve the quality of their undergraduate education?
Skills and Proficiencies Committee Recommendations:
• Every student should be required to take three small seminars of no more than 15 students in the first or second year of his or her college career.
• Each seminar should be taught be a talented ladder faculty member with a zest for teaching or by an advanced graduate student of unusual learning distinction.
• We propose a seminar elective for freshmen that will introduce undergraduate students to the research function of the university.
• We propose the implementation of undergraduate field classes of no more than 15 students.
The Student Perspective on the Learning Experience: “Promote a Positive Intellectual Climate” When students enter UCLA they encounter a campus that is huge, impersonal, and overwhelming. In such a large institution it is important that undergraduates experience meaningful relationships with faculty, advisors, and other students. Small seminars requiring daily classroom interaction and regular written assignments would provide the supportive and personalized learning environment that a student needs during his/her first year to further faculty student contact. Establishing this type of contact early will insure a higher retention rate among entering students. It is most often the impersonal nature of the university accompanied by a sense of alienation that cause students to drop out, rather than academic difficulty. 19
Thus, we strongly endorse the committee's idea of seminars particularly for first year students. Seminars will increase the likelihood that students will develop confidence in communicating with professors. Often freshman students become intimidated by professors because the only environment in which they are seen is on a stage in front of four hundred people. Undergraduates can easily forget that professors are there to help students learn. Interaction with a professor during a student's first year will instill the confidence undergraduates need to maximize their university experience. More importantly, small seminars will encourage a more active education. Learning does not have to be confined to the classroom. The best teachers are those who can generate a dialogue that will continue among students not only during the class hours. Small seminars provide an environment where active modes of teaching stimulate student creativity. When the university shows students how stimulating and exciting learning can be, they will be more likely to become involved in their own education and make the most of what the university offers. Implementing mandatory freshmen seminars could significantly enhance both in the classroom and out of the classroom learning. In a 1983 study based on student surveys, UCLA Professor Emeritus Robert C. Pace of the Graduate School of Education, demonstrated that students at UCLA are more isolated from the faculty than are students at selected liberal arts colleges. For example, 77% of the students at liberal arts colleges talked frequently to faculty, while only 43% of UCLA students had this interaction. Similarly, 46% of the liberal arts students claimed to have visited faculty frequently, yet only 26% did so at UCLA. Lastly, while 42% of liberal arts students sought out faculty members in discussing ideas for term papers, only 19% reported doing so at UCLA. These statistics paint a dismal picture. How do we bridge the gap between students and faculty at UCLA? One idea is to have faculty play a role in advising. This could dramatically change the present advising system as well as bridge the gap between faculty and students. The important role that faculty could play as advisors cannot be over-emphasized. For example, according to the 1983-84 Faculty Time Use Study, faculty at the University advise students an average total of 3.2 hours per week. This statistic is probably misleading since it includes both graduate and undergraduate advising. Since graduate students characteristically receive significantly more faculty attention, the advising time for undergraduates is probably insignificant to non-existent. There is a need for increased student-faculty interaction. Campus housing can influence the learning environment in ways which have not yet been realized. We feel more on-campus housing could create the intellectual climate that is now lacking at UCLA by providing a surrounding which promotes learning, fosters intellectual debate, and encourages the exchange of ideas.
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The shortage of campus housing has long been a problem at UCLA, but we encourage UCLA to continue its efforts to build and provide more affordable housing on and near campus. We applaud UCLA's newly formed Student Housing Master Plan Committee who have proposed a plan to house approximately 50 percent of the campus enrollment or 15,986 students, as opposed to the current 5,600 students presently able to be accommodated in either university housing or off-campus housing complexes. The Housing Plan promises to provide housing for all freshmen, sophomores, and transfer students upon request by the year 2000. By focusing on new freshmen and transfer students, the university demonstrates its understanding of the unique needs of newly entering students, thus recognizing the important role that housing has on a student's learning environment. A new student encounters many unique problems. He/she has to adjust to a new campus, people, classes, and way of life. It takes time to comprehend how to succeed at the university and this is why support structures are very crucial for incoming students. This gesture demonstrates the institution's sensitivity to the unique needs of newly entering students and shows an understanding of how campus housing plays an integral role in the educational process. In the past academic year, there were two co-curricular educational experiences which occurred that in some way touched the entire campus. These events demonstrated how the intellectual and social climate of the campus could also significantly effect the nature of undergraduate learning. The divestment protests opposing college investments in companies doing business in South Africa brought an unique educational experience to the university. The issue brought many different students together through discussion, education, and social action. In fact, through sit-ins, teach-ins, and sleep-ins, UCLA students educated each other on the evils of apartheid. While the divestment issue brought students of all races together, another event occurred on our campus which divided these very same people. A party was given by one fraternity that broke a moratorium prohibiting theme parties based on race, ethnicity, or gender. MEChA, a Chicano/Latino student organization, demonstrated outside the fraternity house which was throwing this party. A week long sleep-in occurred protesting the cultural insensitivity of this fraternity's theme, attire, and demeanor. This event polarized the campus along racial lines. We feel the tension that developed on campus had a decidedly adverse effect on UCLA's intellectual and social climate. In fact, both the divestment and the MEChA protests show how the intellectual climate can positively or negatively effect the learning environment. These events demonstrate why the learning environment should not be viewed as peripheral to the educational process. Faculty and administrators should deal with the increasing racial tensions on campus as an educational responsibility. 21
Student activism continues to add to the intellectual climate of universities around the country. In fact, the coming years could prove to be the most active in this past decade. In addition to divestment, issues such affirmative action policy, University based "Star War" (SDI) research, the United States involvement in Nicaragua, and nuclear energy and nuclear weapons are issues which will influence the intellectual climate at UCLA. Depending upon the learning environment created at UCLA, these issues could either present dire consequences or provide platforms for educational discussions
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Student Responsibility As students we are demonstrating our desire to be involved in our own education by raising an active voice as a declaration of our responsibility. Our responsibility as students is to make the most of our undergraduate experience at UCLA. Although the University has an obligation to provide a quality education, ultimately students are responsible for their own learning. To a large extent, the quality of our education is determined by what we are willing to contribute. We agree with the recommendations put forth in the previously referenced "Involvement in Learning" report on how students can get involved in their own education:
• Seek out a faculty member who can be an intellectual mentor, an advisor, • • • • •
and a friend. If a faculty member is involved in research or public service projects, get yourself involved in one or more of them. Take particular advantage of the advising and counseling services during your first two years of college. Make every effort to involve yourself in some campus activity, club, or organization that will require you to draw upon what you have learned in your course work. · Give some thought to how you can contribute to the life of the campus. Make sure that you take at least one independent study course and one internship during your college career.
We insist that UCLA provide these opportunities and that UCLA consult with students in making provisions for all academic decisions relevant to our education. Students must demonstrate a sincere commitment to achieving excellence in undergraduate education both on an individual and group level before faculty and administrators are moved to action. The May 1985 conference and this report demonstrate an important level of commitment from undergraduates toward this end. Administrators and faculty must take seriously the students' interest in the quality of their education and their enthusiasm for working to attain it. And, as students we must be persistent and diligent in our attempts to generate change.
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Quality and Access One of the major problems in talking about increasing quality in the university is the inherent assumption that we all share the same definition of quality. At the May 1985 conference, we talked about quality in the curriculum, quality teaching, and quality in the learning environment. What we did not address in our discussions was how ethnic diversity contributes to the quality of our campus.While Los Angeles becomes increasingly diverse in its ethnic complexion, UCLA as a public university must also respond to this diversity in its own student population. Quality cannot be measured by SAT examination scores, the beauty of the campus, athletics, library collections, resources, reputation and rankings alone. The ethnic diversity that exists at UCLA provides students with the invaluable experience of being exposed to people of all religions, backgrounds, and cultures. This diversity must be included in our definition of what constitutes a "quality" education at the university. Educators have long viewed the concepts of quality and access in higher education as detracting from one another. In fact, many tend to look at quality on the one hand, and how to deal with ethnic minorities, on the other. Students will never receive a quality undergraduate education at UCLA if educators keep failing to see the relationship between quality and access at the university. The University of California is a public institution and therefore has a responsibility not only to its students but also to the citizens of the State of California. A crucial issue in the coming decades, will be whether the University will be able to fulfill its institutional obligation by responding to the rapidly changing demographics in our state. In 1970, only 27% of California's school age population were ethnic minorities and in 1980 this number increased to 42%. It is projected that in the year 2000, 52% of our school age population will be ethnic. Is the University adequately prepared to respond to these changes? In 1984, only 19% of UCLA students, and only 12% of the students in the University of California were ethnic minorities. Given these statistics, we doubt that the University is committed to educating those students who have traditionally been excluded from higher education. Affirmative action goes beyond equal opportunity. We would not need an affirmative action plan if all students had an equal chance to get into the University of California. The Master Plan has mandated that only the top 12.5% of all high school graduates are eligible for entrance into the U.C. system. The reality is that ethnic minorities have historically been excluded by a standard that was written in the 1960's, at a time when very few Chicanos, Blacks, Asians and American Indians were involved in higher education. Today, affirmative 24
action is essential in allowing ethnic minorities an opportunity to overcome this outdated barrier. Although many at the university feel that UCLA has already demonstrated a commitment to access through its current Affirmative Action Five-Year Plan, the philosophy behind this plan has never been articulated to the campus community. Many people on our campus understand affirmative action as no more than admissions, outreach, and support services. This narrow view has created many misperceptions and in many cases has undermined efforts made in this area. The campus community must have a common understanding of the history, rationale, and goals behind affirmative action before we can demonstrate true commitment. Affirmative action takes an integrated effort. Undergraduate, graduate, faculty, and staff affirmative action must be consolidated into one single, coherent, and effective plan since each will inherently effect the other. Our current system fragments each group as though each were unique and unrelated to the other. For this reason we recommend that UCLA create an Office of Affirmative Action whose responsibility would be to oversee, organize, and coordinate all affirmative action efforts on our campus. More importantly, a single office would provide an aspect of accountability which has long been a major concern of the California State Legislature and the U.C. Board of Regents. The University of California must not only demonstrate its commitment to affirmative action, but also recognize the importance of the cultural and historical aspects of these ethnic and racial groups through its curriculum. In 1983-84, there were 629 course offerings in the U .C. system which both provided a focus on ethnic groups (i.e. Chicano, Afro-American, Asian, and American Indians) and which also satisfied breadth requirements. Our own campus offered 94 ethnically based courses that year. In that same year the College of Letters and Science instituted new general education requirements [effective Fall 1983] which were "intended to define, in a more structural way than the previous breadth requirements, a 'core' of knowledge necessary to a liberal arts education." But while formulating this "core" only 15 ethnically based courses were deemed important enough to be counted as general education requirements. These statistics can lead us to one conclusion: ethnic studies are not a priority at UCLA. The University has a responsibility to educate its students so that they go into the world as culturally aware and sensitive human beings: Today students can graduate from UCLA without ever taking an ethnic studies course. Is it right that undergraduates can receive a bachelor's degree without ever knowing the contributions made by Emilio Zapata? Studying the history of American Indians? or reading books such as Richard Wright's Native Son and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man?
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There is clearly a void in our curriculum. We believe that UCLA should follow the lead of her sister campus U.C. Santa Cruz, and adopt a mandatory lower division ethnic studies requirement. Ethnic studies courses would cultivate an understanding and an appreciation of each ethnic group and their unique contributions to society. With the rapidly changing demographics in California, the university has a responsibility to educate its students so they may live harmoniously in a multi-racial and multi-cultural society. Racial prejudice has historically stemmed from misunderstanding and from a lack of knowledge of other peoples. On our own campus this ignorance was exhibited by an annually held "Viva Zapata" fraternity theme party which has since been cancelled due to the derogatory and blatant depiction of Chicano culture. It is this type of misunderstanding which tends to promote existing misconceptions and stereotypical characterizations of ethnic groups, which in turn lead to future patterns of discrimination. Individual faculty members should take it upon themselves to integrate culturally diverse material into their own curriculum. The mere fact that an undergraduate must take a Chicano literature course in order to learn about the Chicano influence on American literature is a sad and embarrassing statement about the lack of integration of California's multi-ethnic and multi-racial qualities into the educational process. An ethnic studies requirement is merely the first step. Not until individual faculty members take the initiative to restructure their courses to include the contributions of ethnic minorities will the university be transformed into a multi-cultural institution. When UCLA views the diversification of the student body as an asset, and not a "problem," than it will stop dealing with the issues of quality and access as conflicting forces. The institution can then focus its attention on diversifying the curriculum and increasing access to higher education for underrepresented ethnic minorities, hence fulfilling its responsibility as a public university.
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Conclusion: The Time is Now Every year over 5,000 students graduate feeling ignored. Most leave the university without having made a meaningful contact with a professor. They graduate without ever experiencing what a quality undergraduate education could be. Yet, UCLA refuses to make meaningful changes. At whose expense? · The ideas we have advocated are not revolutionary. Placing equal emphasis on teaching and research, instituting small seminar courses, mandating a core curriculum, and requiring course work in fundamental intellectual skills are not new concepts. What is holding up the change? Is it the Master Plan? Is the issue really one of resources? Or is it a question of commitment? We contend that the answer lies in accountability. The time has come for the University to be held accountable to students, parents, and the taxpayers. If the University of California has no intention of making undergraduate education a priority, then we should stop misleading our entering students and the citizens of the State of California about the mission of the University. The California Legislature, U.C. Regents, faculty, administration, staff, and students must have clearly defined and articulated areas of responsibility. These parties must be held accountable if changes are ever to be made. This fall, the entering freshmen class will arrive with the same hopes and aspirations that previous classes have held. Sadly enough, they will soon experience repeated frustrations as their aspirations in no way meet their expectations. Who will take responsibility for the future? As students we have few options in attempting to influence change. We talked to the people who had power to make changes, but no one seemed to listen. Lines of responsibility were in confusion and frustration ensued. We realized that the university was caught up in a numbers and image game. As long as UCLA was ranked as a top 5 university the chances for change in undergraduate education would be slim. We felt that UCLA would not move toward meaningful change until the various responsible parties began worrying about more than public image. The May 1985 UCLA Conference on Undergraduate Education was not the first conference aimed at improving the quality of undergraduate education at UCLA and we know it won't be the last. What made this conference unique was that it was student initiated. The campus community is realizing that students are willing to be more than advocates for reform at the undergraduate level. Students are ready to play an integral role in bringing about change.
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The conference provided an ideal meeting ground for groups within the university community. It was the first time that many students had the chance to meaningfully interact with faculty and administrators. We strongly believe that if this kind of student thinking and expression took place in the classroom as it did in the two days of the conference, UCLA's undergraduate education would both be improved and transformed. Undergraduates are ready to hold the faculty, administration, U.C. Regents, and the Legislature accountable for offering the kind of education UCLA and the University of California are capable of delivering. As the future leaders of this State, we are ready to demand that the University improve the dismal state of undergraduate education. The time is now. Three distressing national reports have been issued on the declining quality of undergraduate education; the U.C. President has asked the Academic Senate and the nine U.C. Chancellors for a campus response to these reports; the Master Plan for Higher Education is being reviewed; the U.C. Board of Regents have already expressed their concern in this area and so has the California State Legislature. This coupled with a new wave of student activism make us more hopeful for educational reform at UCLA. Cooperation is the key. Meaningful change will only come about through an integrated effort. Each of us has a role to play: UCLA students, staff, faculty, administrators, U.C. President David P. Gardner, the U.C. Board of Regents, and the California State Legislature. As students speak in unison, the call grows louder and stronger: undergraduates feel ignored. It is time for the University to stop ignoring undergraduates and begin caring. We must invest the attention, resources, and commitment needed to educate tomorrow's leaders. There is no better time than the present.
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Appendix A Acknowledgments We thank our Executive Vice Chancellor William D. Schaefer for his contributions to the conference and we are grateful to Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs, Winston Doby, for his support in allowing us to create this report. We owe a great deal of thanks to the students, staff, faculty, and administrators who participated in the 1985 UCLA Conference on Undergraduate Education. Without eat of you we would not have had the quality of interaction and representation that we did. In particular, we commend Dr. Alexander Astin for your thoughtful input and Tim Fulkerson, Jill Jones, and Ivy Sheldon for the long hours of work and dedication each of you put into making the conference a reality. You should realize that you have truly contributed something and left a mark at UCLA.
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Appendix B Participants - 1985 UCLA Conference on Undergraduate Education Marilyn Adams Professor of Philosophy Faculty Chair-Skills and Proficiencies Committee
Lucy Blackmar Staff College of letters and Science
Swati Adarkar Undergraduate Student Academic Affairs Commissioner 1984-85 Conference Chair
Judy Broad Undergraduate Student Skills and Proficiencies Committee Tammy Broxton Undergraduate Student Academic Affairs Commission
Andy Africk Undergraduate Student Academic Affairs Commission
Robert Byrnes Counseling Assistant/Graduate Student Learning Environment Committee
Andrea Akita Undergraduate Student Student Chair-learning Environment Committee Rogers Albritton Professor of Philosophy liberal Arts Committee
Caryl Carothers Chairperson of Advisory Board College of Letters and Science
Jeffrey Alexander Professor of Sociology Faculty Chair-learning Environment Committee
Wonkoo Chang Undergraduate Student Academic Affairs Commission
Michael Allen Professor of English/CMRS Faculty Chair-liberal Arts Committee
Ken Chawkins Undergraduate Student Mary Colb Administrative Assistant Academic Senate Office
Rick Anderson Graduate Student Graduate Academic Affairs Commissioner 1984-85
Geoffrey Cowan Lecturer in Communication Studies Quality of Teaching Committee
Sylvia Arguetta Undergraduate Student Skills and Proficiencies Committee
Jill D'Angenica Undergraduate Student
Alexander Astin Professor of Higher Education Conference Planning Committee
Robert Dallek Professor of History
Gail Becker Undergraduate Student liberal Arts Committee
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Robert Delavalle Undergraduate Student Liberal Arts Committee
Donald Hartsock Ombudsman Learning Environment Committee
Winston Doby Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Administrator-Learning Environment Committee
Carol Hartzog Director of Writing Programs Skills and Proficiencies Committee David Hoffman Undergraduate Student Academic Affairs Commission
Dean Florez Undergraduate Student Quality of Teaching Committee Academic Affairs Commissioner 1985-86
Claude D. Hulet Professor of Spanish and Portuguese
Bernard Frischer Chairman, Classics Department Skills and Proficiencies Committee
Jill Ann Jones Undergraduate Student Student Chair-Quality of Teaching Committee Conference Planning Committee
Tim Fulkerson Undergraduate Student Learning Environment Committee Conference Planning Committee
Dan Jordan Undergraduate Student Student Chair-Skills and Proficiencies Committee
Ed Gargone Undergraduate Student
David Kaplan Professor of Philosophy
Ker Gibbs Undergraduate Student Quality of Teaching Committee
Gerald Kissler Vice Provost, College of Letters and Science Administrator-Liberal Arts Committee Conference Planning Committee
Jim Gilbert Undergraduate Student Skills and Proficiencies Committee
Seth Knoepler Teaching Assistant in Sociology
Andrea Grannan Undergraduate Student Quality of Teaching Committee
Kathleen Komar Assistant Professor of German/Comparative Literature Skills and Proficiencies Committee
Marde Gregory Lecturer In Speech
Peter Ladefoged Professor of Linguistics Quality of Teaching Committee
Natalie Hale Undergraduate Student Student Body Presidents Office
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Juan Lara Dean of Academic Inter-institutional Programs Administrator-Skills and Proficiencies Committee
Everett Olsen Professor Emeritus of Biology Liberal Arts Committee
Thomas E. Lifka Assistant Vice Chancellor, Registrar Learning Environment Committee
Raymond L Orbach Provost, College of Letters and Science Robert C. Pace Professor Emeritus of Education
Gwyn Lurie Undergraduate Student Student Body President 1984-85
Gary Pearl Undergraduate Student Academic Affairs Commission
Ken Macrorie Key Note Speaker Professor of English, Western Michigan University Author of Twenty Teachers
Waldo Phelps Professor of Rhetoric
Karen Marmion Undergraduate Student Skills and Proficiencies Committee
Mark Plant Assistant Professor of Economics Quality of Teaching Committee
John Miller Undergraduate Student Academic Affairs Commission
Oscar Porter Assistant to the Director of Preparatory Programs
Thomas Heinkel Miller Director of Forensics Division of Honors Conference Planning Committee
Andy Raikes Undergraduate Student Learning Environment Committee
Darren Mitchell Undergraduate Student Academic Affairs Commission
Andrea Rich Assistant Vice Chancellor, Office of Instructional Development Administrator-Quality of Teaching Committee Conference Planning Committee
Mylene Miyakoda Undergraduate Student Liberal Arts Committee Herbert Morris Dean of Humanities
John C. Ries Professor of Political Science Liberal Arts Committee
Karla Mulry Undergraduate Student
Paul Rosenthal Associate Professor of Communication Studies
Gary Nash Professor of History Liberal Arts Committee
Karen Rowe Associate Professor of English
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Charles Taylor Associate Professor of Biology
Christopher Kit Salter Associate Professor of Geography Learning Environment Committee
Ron Taylor Undergraduate Student Student Body President 1985-86
William D. Schaefer Executive Vice Chancellor Conference Planning Committee
Lee Travish Undergraduate Student Student Chair-Liberal Arts Committee
Van Scott Undergraduate Student Black Student Alliance Chair
Kenneth Trueblood Professor of Chemistry/Biochemistry Skills and Proficiencies Committee
Dov Seidman Undergraduate Student Student Body President’s Office
Under Venis Lecturer in English Quality of Teaching Committee
Nadia Shalauta Undergraduate Student Liberal Arts Committee
Jennifer Wilson Assistant Dean of Honors Learning Environment Committee
Ivy Sheldon Undergraduate Student Academic Affairs Commission Conference Planning Committee
Tami Wingard Undergraduate Student Student Body President's Office
Diane Sherman Undergraduate Student Learning Environment Committee
Stanley Wolpert Professor of History Faculty Chair-Quality of Teaching Committee
Steven Shiffrin Professor of Law
Jules Zentner Assistant Dean, College of Letters and Science Adjunct Lecturer of Scandinavian Languages
Kelly Sorensen Undergraduate Student Academic Affairs Commission Marla Stevens Undergraduate Student Academic Affairs Commission Twyla Stewart Office of Academic Inter-institutional Programs Skills and Proficiencies Committee
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Appendix C Address: Gwyn Lurie 1984-85 Undergraduate Student Body President As a so called "lame duck" president, I have had some occasion to reflect on my experiences over the past four years at UCLA. I feel that it is particularly fitting that I use this forum to reminisce a bit, as for the past four years of my involvement in the university I have placed particular emphasis on the issue of the quality of undergraduate education. In fact, the most significant advantage I think I have had as student body president, if indeed it's possible to have an advantage as student body president, was the two years that I spent as Academic Affairs Commissioner. I, as well as many of my friends and colleagues, have learned a great deal about education in the university. We have read more than our share of reports, statistics, and articles. We have sat through more than our share committee meetings. I feel proud and somewhat privileged to be among the lucky few who have had access to this information, and a forum to discuss and debate the merits. But, awareness is only the first step. Awareness must be followed by action. I entered the university four years ago at the tail end of a public relations crisis for UCLA. At a time when, despite four years at UCLA, ex-football star Billy Don Jackson was proven illiterate. This brings to mind the famous last words of a criminal entering New Gate prison in 18th century England..."My mistake was not in stealing," he said,"but rather in getting caught" In this case, what was UCLA's mistake? Four years later the desperate voice of undergraduate education is calling out as loudly as ever. As I'm sure we are all painfully aware, three telling and somewhat alarming national reports have been released, the Bennett report, the Mortimer report, and the Curtis report. Each of these depicts a grave crisis in the state of this country's baccalaureate education. Here at UCLA in particular, I see things that I believe we are extremely hard pressed to ignore.
• • • • •
Affirmative action without institutional curricular supplements. The number of hours teachers spend teaching have gone down. There is increasing evidence of racial tension as well as cultural ignorance. The quarter system versus semester issue was debated on the number of air conditioning units, accommodating calendars, and financial implications. I rarely heard the issue of giving credit for English 1discussed on a pedagogical level, but rather on a political level.
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And then, there are the ongoing problems with undergraduate education. There is little student interaction with faculty. As Dr. Kissler stated, people have a lot to say through the research process, but this process is not being carried over in the teaching. More contact is desperately needed. Students' biggest complaint is with the lack of time spent with faculty. The two programs that have attempted to increase faculty/student interaction, Peer Group Learning and Student Forum, were both borne out of student government There are no real incentives for teaching. Professors say," I would love to spend more time teaching, provided that I don't have to take it out of my research time.”
• We are taught by teaching assistants and have very little contact with senior teachers. • Students are not given input in questions of tenure and promotion. • And then, there is academic counseling. Counselors need more space and computerization.
UCLA is number 5 in the nation. In some regards, I imagine it is. But, it is no secret that this statistic is mutually exclusive from any ranking on the quality of ,undergraduate education. It is time to take a serious look, and to make some drastic changes. Certainly, we have the resources. Between the quality of our faculty, staff, administration, graduate students, and undergraduates we have an incredible team. We just need to change the game plan. Let me try to bring this a little bit closer to home. UCLA FOOTBALL ... When you are ahead in the game, you don't take chances. You don't pass unnecessarily. You don't need to go deep. However, when you're a few points behind, and the clock's running out; it's a completely different game. Sometimes you've got to pass. You've got to go deep. And, certainly, you've got to take chances. I submit to you for your consideration that we're playing defensively, and we're losing. We've got to bring in the f:rrst string. We've got to take a chance. In fact, if Terry Donahue were here, I'm sure he'd agree. Right now, the surge of energy on this campus is tremendous. The issue of divestment has motivated students, look at Nelson Mandela Quad and the number of students who have been sleeping there night after night. Faculty have been doing Teach-ins to educate us about what is happening in South Africa. Another example is this conference. I commend Swati and the countless others who spent so much time. Certainly, there is no better, more relevant, and crucial issue to get excited about than the quality of undergraduate education. Let’s divest from South Africa, but invest in undergraduate education. And, so I leave UCLA hoping that this concern and interest that has manifested itself, at least in part, in the shape of this conference will continue to grow and shape the possibilities of a university such as UCLA.
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The possibilities are endless. Clearly, there are people, significant individuals who believe that change is imperative. We can make these changes. Unlike Gerry Kissler, I am not, at this time an advocate of the status quo. Let's get to the Rose Bowl of undergraduate education, and when we get there, let's already have won.
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Appendix D Address: William D. Schaefer UCLA Executive Vice-Chancellor My last remark is simply, again, something we've already done and said, but this is an important conference. It's an important moment in the history of UCLA. The sun is setting in the west, the buses are waiting outside. I think this has been a superb conference, and I hope that we will see this as the first annual conference of its kind, bringing together precisely this mix of students, faculty, and administrators to address problems that are not going to go away as a result of our efforts this year or next year or the year after, but that will, I think, continue to be of deep concern to anyone who is concerned about the quality of education. I think the resolutions that have been presented here this evening are all swell, and if anything I should say would imply anything to the contrary or a negative impression, I assure you it's intentional. Where do we go from here? We are planning, I am planning, Chancellor Young is planning to make 1985-86 school year in which we take a very, very hard look at the questions that have been raised at this conference. I don't know if you all of you know this, but I'm delighted that Carol Hartzog is going to be joining me in the Chancellor's office, and is going to be assuming primary responsibility for helping me worry about the academic mission of the university, but particularly in arranging a program for 1985-86 on this particular topic. We've already reserved the Arrowhead Conference center for a three day conference in early fall, and in the nine months that follow that, I hope very much that we'll be able to develop a concerned faculty for education and continue to rely on the support of the students because students are not only our most important product-our only product--but I think they are our best ally in being able to bring about meaningful change within the university. We've also scheduled dates for an Arrowhead conference in May of 1986 at the end of the 1985-86 academic year, so we've got sort of bookends looking at what we might be able to realistically develop out of the discussions that have gone on here in the past two days. I do not have high hopes. Universities do many things extremely well, but one of the things they do best is to resist change. And our university does that about as well as any. It's not the administration that resists change. Administrators love change. To a certain extent, it's the students who are reactionary, and I'm afraid, the faculty. But I think that if the students
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and the administration can combine to put a pincher movement on the faculty, we might indeed be able to do something constructive in these next years. I think we need to be realistic in our proposals for significant change, and I would gladly sell out for four or five realistic proposals that would make a difference in this next year and see whether or not we couldn't concentrate on those and implement them in our programs. When I say realistic proposals I'd like to just clarify some of the problems that you might have in what has been the overwhelming proposal at this conference--the idea of adding courses, seminars or otherwise, to the curriculum. We are a state university and although we take great pride in the amount of money that we are able to raise from federal agencies for research--157 million last year, or private funding-the instruction at the University of California campuses is provided by the legislature, and it's done in a very simple formula. For every 17.5 full time equivalent students, we get one faculty position. That's not head count; that's not bodies. That's student credit hours. And a student credit hour means a student who takes 15 credit hours each quarter, or 45 each year; under the semester system, 30 semester quarters. And they add that up and multiply and divide, and that's how many positions you get. And whether you use them for visiting lecturers doesn't matter; it comes down to 1,500 (approximately) faculty positions for the general campus. And that isn't going to increase. If anything, it's going to decrease because I think we're overenrolled by about 2-3000 students at the undergraduate level. So we're being naive if we think we're going to get additional faculty positions, be they lecturers or full professors, from state funding. How, then, can we possibly have additional courses? The obvious solution is for the ladder faculty to increase their teaching loads. And I'm afraid that'll be a cold day in hell. I think one of the great obscenities of this campus is the fact that my colleagues in the English department teach four courses. I think that's wrong, but who am I to say? These things are delegated by the Regents to the Senate and to the faculty, and unless and until the faculty is willing to stand up and say we want to do something about this, we want to teach a different teaching load, we're going to be facing a very real problem in being able to staff these additional courses that we would all like to have. Another solution, of course, is to alter the curriculum. And that's a very, very, difficult thing to do because faculties resist change, the university resists change. One of the things that I hope we'll be talking about in this coming year is the possibility of maybe altering our concept of the number of courses for graduation. We now have what I think is a rather heavy load of courses for graduation, 45 courses. It doesn't need to be that way. We could go to a five-unit base and still have 180 units to graduate and have a 36 course load. If faculty were to retain their present teaching loads, but if each course represented 1/36th instead of 1/45th of an undergraduate degree, it might have some interesting implications. I'm not sure what they would be, I don't know how it would work. But I think it's one of the things that we're going to be talking about in the coming year. 38
Apparently, both the undergraduate students, by a huge 72 percent majority, and the faculty, by a 62 percent majority, have rejected the idea of changing to a semester calendar. Only the graduate students have revealed their innate wisdom by going 62 percent for semester, so I think it's unlikely that we're going to change our calendar in the foreseeable future. What we can do in working with the abomination of a quarter calendar, I'm not prejudiced on this issue-! have no strong feelings either way--but what we can do is another issue altogether. I hope, however, that in talking about this basic problem of student-faculty interaction, we will keep in mind the comments made earlier this morning by one of the three Andreas, who was talking about the opportunities that are currently available through a variety of means, including office hours. I was one of those faculty members who used to plead with my students to come and see me. I'd come in with tears in my eyes and say, "I sat there alone for two hours, and nobody came. What can you possibly do about it?" Or Tammy's comments about the residential halls this morning and the participation that goes on there. I have a Cross ballpoint pen that I've treasured, not because it's a particularly good pen--it isn't--but it was given to me over 20 years ago by a group of students on the seventh floor of Reiber Hall, where every Wednesday night I went over and talked with them and became a very living part of that educational experience in both directions. These things exist. I think we want to bear in mind Gary Nash's comments about his problem in filling the CED courses and the freshman-sophomore programs before we rush off into new requirements. And I hope we'll remember the 1960's when the key word was to solve all of our problems through an innovative interdisciplinary freshman seminar. Those years when all of the English composition courses turned into seminars in some various form of literature--no papers required, indeed, no writing required. The grass-ass generation, as I used to call it, because those classes were so frequently held on the lawn, and you'd come away having to brush yourself off. You see, many of those students graduated and now look back in anger at what they did not learn as a result of that experience. There are some of us, and very bright students, who absolutely loathe discussion courses because we want to learn from the professor, not the egomaniac jerk who sits next to us saying dumb things while we have to put up with it, realizing that the professor is available if we only knock on the door and come to him with an intelligent question. Well, these aren't really reservations, people, but I just hope we'll keep them in mind as we go down that trail.
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I have just two things I'd like to say to you. I hope that whatever we do next year, my suggestion of a structural reorganization of the college will be considered seriously. The word turns, and I'm not sure that we are turning with it. I think we ought to give serious thought to a reorganization of the college. I think history is a humanistic discipline, and I think we're in trouble if we don't recognize it. I think there are strange things happening in the sciences--biological chemistry; chemistry biology--these things are tripping over each other, and I think we ought to take a fresh look at just how we have organized ourselves. And if we do that, and if then we ask what these disciplines mean in terms of an undergraduate education, I think we might get some interesting answers, and I think we might get some interesting approaches to improving an undergraduate education. Finally, I hope that we will stop this nonsense of trying to see a teacher and a researcher as different creatures. The difference between a teacher in a research university and one in a liberal arts college or a state college is not a difference of quality teaching, it's a difference of kind, because the UCLA professor not only teaches a local audience in the classroom, but through publications and through papers at conferences, teaches a national, international audience of his or her peers. In everything that I write or publish, I consider myself a teacher. I am teaching people whom I've never seen and never will see to read this particular work more sensitively, to have a better understanding of what so-and-so was trying to do at this particular point in time and space. In everything I do and say, I am a teacher, or I am nothing. Gladly would he learn, and I'm a student too. And gladly teach. ·
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Appendix E Recommendations - 1985 Conference on Undergraduate Education
Quality of Teaching Committee Recommendations I.
We urge public reaffirmation by the Chancellor, Chairman of the Academic Senate, and CAP of the importance of undergraduate teaching in all faculty appointments and promotions, believing as we do that high quality teaching is, or at least should be, as essential as excellence in scholarly-research, and that both forms of faculty communication are often mutually beneficial.
II.
We urge that departments whose members win Distinguished Teaching, Distinguished TA, and Distinguished Lecturer awards be rewarded with a sum equal to each of those awards, to be used for further improving the quality of teaching in those departments, for specific purposes to be decided by each department's teaching committee.
III. We urge the inauguration of a Student-Teacher Week at UCLA, to be organized in conjunction with the Academic Affairs Commission, to help stimulate more empathetic interaction between undergraduate students and their teachers. We would urge all faculty teaching undergraduate courses to participate in this weeklong venture in better communication, allowing students to join faculty in their labs, offices, or committees, as well as classrooms, to help give students greater insight into the pressures and constraints on faculty time. We hope, moreover, that faculty will take the "Open Week" opportunity to audit several colleague's large lecture courses, affording more peer feedback concerning teaching, and reminding all of our faculty of just how "lost" or "impersonal" students often feel in large lecture halls. IV. We urge that every department at UCLA appoint its own Teaching Committee, and that the Office of Instructional Development should be encouraged to launch continuing Quality of Teaching Seminars or Teaching Round Tables to be led by distinguished teacher volunteers, as an option open to attendance by any or all faculty. We further propose the inauguration of a campus wide Teaching Techniques Program for all new faculty. We also urge the Academic Senate to set up mechanisms for the regular review of the teaching of every department, and we urge Deans to obtain evidence that each department has an active committee to review its faculty teaching methods on a continuing basis. Deans and Department Chairs should join CAP in insisting upon undergraduate teaching excellence as a standard requirement, at least as important as scholaryresearch for the hiring, promotion, and retention of all faculty at UCLA. All faculty should be obliged to circulate evaluation forms for every course at least once each year, and any faculty member who receives evaluation ratings consistently lower
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than departmental averages should be called in by Department Chairs to seek effective remedies, whether by use of better teaching tools or methods, or adoption of more positive attitudes toward classroom instruction. Distinguished Teaching should be made more rewarding with accelerated promotions, and public attention should be called to regular celebrations of teaching at UCLA, such as that which was inaugurated on Teaching Day, May 21, 1985. V.
Lecturers: We urge that Deans and Department Chairs encourage all regular ladder faculty to take greater initiative in the teaching of lower division courses, and we further urge the State of California and Regents of the University of California to provide adequate funding to permit UCLA to hire enough regular ladder faculty to teach all lower division courses. We believe, however, that as long as lecturers will, in fact, continue to teach a large number of undergraduate courses, certain reforms in lecturer status are required. Many students feel that their best educational experiences have been in courses taught by lecturers. We urge that lecturers be given more encouragement, more meaningful rewards, and professionalized status. We also propose that lecturers be given greater continuity of service and be encouraged to participate full in all aspects of University life.
VI. Role of T.A.s and Readers: We are most concerned about several very serious T.A. problems that have come to our attention, including charges of inability to speak English, improper selection and use of some T.A.s who should in fact be hired as R.A.s, and inadequate preparation of many T.A.s. We therefore urge that more qualified people be chosen as T.A.s, and that any student who confronts what he or she considers TA incompetence should write directly and immediately to Professors, Chairs, Deans, or all three, so that appropriate action may be taken as quickly as possible to rectify unprofessional conduct. T.A.s should be better trained by their mentors, should be thoroughly knowledgeable in all general lectures, and make themselves as accessible as possible to students, at least once a week. T.A.s should also monitor their performance, and encourage midterm student evaluations. Professors should be urged to do as much independent grading of blue books and papers as possible, and all readers should be graduate students, or at least tested for competence in the material they are asked to grade. We also raised the question of possibly initiating a campus-wide Teacher-training Program for all graduate students, but did not have time to probe that question properly. Finally, we propose that a Senate Committee review the current hiring training, and professional qualifications of all apprentice personnel. VII. We urge the Academic Affairs Commission to monitor the implementation of each of the above recommendations.
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Liberal Arts Committee Recommendations I. A vital part of any liberal arts education is writing. Writing is not merely an important skill that one ought to master, but a means of understanding, expressing, and even having certain ideas. Writing often clarifies previously confused notions, and on occasion, reveals comfortable bits of so-called knowledge to be revised and given further contemplation. In short, writing is both a start and an end of the liberal arts. It is therefore crucial that UCLA offer its students the greatest possible opportunities to practice improving their writing skills and experience. To this end we recognize the following: A. Faculty should be advised to pay closer attention to the writing abilities of their students. Too often when queried about grading procedures, an instructor will respond that "writing doesn't count." Such a response is detrimental to the cause of improving undergraduate writing abilities, as well as absurd in light of the inseparable connection between rhetoric and substance. B.
Writing assignments should be substituted, whenever suitable and practical, in place of more passive forms of examination.
C. More emphasis should be placed on revision. Too often papers are returned to students after the class is over, or after their grades on the assignments have already been decided. This robs students of the benefits of revision, and lessens the impact of critical comments and suggestions made by the grader. A way of mitigating this shortcoming is to offer credit for revising papers, perhaps even making one or two such courses mandatory. D. Encourage writing in the sophomore, junior, and senior years. As things are now, many students are required to take only one writing course (English 3), often completing it during their freshman year. All too often this is the first and last writing course that students take while at UCLA. To encourage continued development and experience, students should be required to take an additional writing course by their junior year. Students should also be encouraged by counselors and concerned faculty to sample from the array of courses currently available through the English Department (This would be further encouraged by an increase in the number of courses designated specifically for non-majors). E.
Student course evaluation forms should include questions pertaining to the writing workload. This would give faculty and administrators feedback on the amount and quality of writing assignments.
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ll. The institution of a minor or "emphasis" program at UCLA. · The purpose of the minor program would be to allow the student to pursue in greater depth, and with the proper recognition, another field of interest. The guidelines for the "minors" could be implemented along the same lines as the present "Specialization in Business and Administration." Each department, where the program is feasible, could be responsible for developing a standardized list of existing courses, about ten for example, in the field, which are felt to give a broad overview of that particular subject. The optional minors should in no way interfere with the requirements for majors, and would merely be taken in addition to all requirements demanded of the student's actual major. The advantages of implementing a "minor" or "emphasis" program here are great. The minors would place UCLA on a competitive level with schools nationwide who already do have minors as an integral part of their curriculum. Most of the top graduate schools prefer students with a varied background of knowledge and interests. Furthermore, for those who wish to acquire teaching credentials, an additional area of emphasis would enable them to teach another subject at the elementary through high school levels. Finally, minors would challenge students to take classes in a field in which they show obvious interest One criticism of a liberal arts education is that it is too general. Minors would not only provide specialization in a secondary field, but would also provide the "breadth of knowledge" expected of a university for students of all majors. III. All incoming freshmen should be required to take a seminar course in which there are no more than 15 students. These seminars should be taught by ladder faculty or gifted and advanced graduate students who have demonstrated exceptional teaching skills. This course should be mandatory for freshmen in their first quarter. In preparation for this freshman seminar, students will be sent a list of the world's greatest books to read over the summer. The seminar course will integrate these readings through class discussions and writing assignments. IV. Catalogue course descriptions should be reviewed for accuracy by each department Many course descriptions are not consistent with the actual contents of the courses. Updated course descriptions would allow for a re-evaluation of the appropriateness of specific courses under the rubric of GE courses. The focus should be on lower division courses since they make up the vast majority of GE options.
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A.
One of the questions raised was whether a pre-major course posing as a breadth requirement is appropriate. We felt that some were inappropriate because they are too specific and give little indication of the practical application of the field.
B.
Each department would be held accountable and the students would evaluate the classes' adherence to set criteria. This could be accomplished by having students evaluate the content of the class on the existing course evaluation forms. Another suggestion would be to provide a class appraisal form in each student's registration packet The purpose would be to allow students to formally analyze only the contents of a course.
C.
Discrepancies found between classes and descriptions need to be brought for remediation. The CUCC (Committee on Undergraduate Courses and Curricula) could address such problems when they arise. Another proposal would be to have a student advocate working through the Ombudsman's office.
Skills and Proficiencies Committee Recommendations I. Encourage active reading and writing.
• Send out with orientation materials the recommendation that students should read, for example, Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book before coming to UCLA
• Institute a pro-seminar on how to read, as we suggested in our original proposal.
Emphasize how this course deals with the skills needed for the entire undergraduate career.
• Highlight for students the lower division courses which already teach analytical
reading and writing: e.g., English 3 and 4; Humanities 1 and 2; lower division Philosophy courses.
• Encourage the use of English 100W where available. • Encourage peer review of ideas and written work. • Encourage teachers to allow revision of papers.
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II. State very clearly what we expect to happen in our courses and then ask students whether in their judgement the learning we expected has occurred.
• Continue to review and modify course descriptions. • Encourage instructors to state at the beginning of each course the skills and
proficiencies that will be stressed--presupposed on the one hand and intended for development on the other--in the course. Students should then be asked for feedback as to whether such skill development occurred.
III. Provide in-coming students with an intellectual map of the university.
• Proposal 1: A required freshman seminar which would familiarize students with the
intellectual map of the university (the relations among the disciplines, what questions are asked by each discipline and sub-discipline, the language of each). Seminars would be organized around a timely theme--pollution, world hunger, nuclear war. Students would be divided into teams (about 5 each) and commissioned to investigate the problem from the perspective of a given discipline (e.g. economics, biology, chemistry, ethics). They would be required (1) to meet and work out the limits of their various assignments (an active way of familiarizing themselves with the scope of various disciplines), (2) to write up their results, as well as (3) to present them orally to members of the seminar. (This course would encourage active reading, writing, and research, as well as group work and communication).
• Proposal 2: A large lecture course designed to acquaint students with the map of
the university, thematically organized as above. Such a course would be teamtaught, so that professors of the respective disciplines could present their approach to the assigned theme. Discussion sections led by more talented TA's--or ladder faculty--could replicate some of the benefits of the above seminar format. That is, Proposal 2 could incorporate some of the advantages of Proposal 1: large lectures for overall perspective could be combined with a seminar or discussion section with faculty or advanced TAs.
IV. Introduce students to the methods of particular disciplines (e.g.,historiography, literary criticism) early within the major. V.
Encourage language departments to describe the competency expected at the end of a three to five quarter program with respect to understanding, reading, speaking and writing. Some method should be devised for determining whether students have accomplished that level of competency.
Learning Environment Committee Recommendations I. Every student should be required to take three small seminars in the first one or two years of his or her college career. Each seminar should have no more than15 students. Each
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should be taught by a talented ladder faculty member with a zest for teaching or by an advanced graduate student of unusual learning and distinction. The topic of these seminars should be exciting and accessible. They should be neither general education courses or esoterica. A new status could be created for graduate students who are both distinguished teachers and researchers. After they finish regular TA-ships, they could be invited to teach these small seminars. II. We propose a seminar elective for freshmen that will introduce undergraduate students to the research nature of the university. Throughout the quarter, presentations will be made by professors from several different departments on the importance and purpose of their research. This type of seminar will help bring the undergraduate learning environment into alignment with the university's research environment. . III. We propose the implementation of undergraduate field classes of no more than 15 students.This would allow for the translation of a theoretical question to a real world problem. The location of the expression of this question would be in the local scene and the design would allow for class discussion of the field activities each day.
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Appendix F The Nine Experiences The Excerpts from the report by the Association of American Colleges Integrity in the College Curriculum: Redefining the Meaning and Purpose of Baccalaureate Degree
1. Inquiry, abstract logical thinking, critical analysis. How do we know? Why do we believe? What is the evidence? Here, whatever the subject matter, we are at the heart of the intellectual process, concerned with the phenomenon of humans thinking, the processes whereby they establish a fact, put two or more of them together, come to conclusions as to their meaning, and perhaps even soar with some leap of imagination to a thought before. To reason well, to recognize when reason and evidence are not enough, to discover the legitimacy of intuition, to subject inert data to the probing analysis of the mind--these are the primary experiences required of the undergraduate course of study. There is not a subject taught nor a discipline entrenched in the curriculum that should fail to provide students with a continuing practice in thinking of the kind we here discuss. Probably most of us, inside and outside the academic community assume that if anything is paid attention to in our colleges and universities, thinking must be it. Unfortunately, thinking can be lazy. It can be sloppy. It can be reactive rather than active. It can be inert. It can be fooled, misled, bullied. In colleges and universities it is all of these things, as well as perceptive, deep, imaginative, careful, quick, and clever. Students possess great untrained and untapped capacities for logical thinking, critical analysis, and inquiry, but these are capacities that are not spontaneous; they grow out of wise instruction, experience, encouragement, correction, and constant use.
2. Literacy: writing, reading, speaking, listening. Literacy is a heavy word, a concept so full of meaning that it is often misused to mean more and less than it does. For us, writing, as literacy means being in possession of language, knowing its shapes and possibilities, being so accustomed to its grammar and rules that the why is unnecessary, always aware that writing is an expression of thinking, a give-away of how we think and feel and judge. Writing can be effusive, stiff, controlled, explosive; it is always revealing of what lies behind it. Since a baccalaureate education is intended to lead young men and women to a satisfying possession of themselves, then writing should lead them there. Clarity, directness, simplicity even in the ordering of complicated ideas, originality, and playful fun in the use of words-these are some of the goals that should guide students in their experience with writing as an exercise in literacy.
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Reading is for finding out, for discovering the fun of thinking, analysis, and inquiry. All reading in college and university courses is not like that: all cannot be, but more must be . Indeed, we urge our colleagues to allow for more active reading, those structured invitations to contemplation and self-education that characterize memorable undergraduate courses, and fewer lectures, those invitations to passivity and pencil-pushing that are generally, although certainly not always, educationally counter-productive. Speaking is another aspect of literacy. We are a century and more away from the time when going to college meant instruction in oratory, stage presence, debate, and the arts of oral persuasion. Television talk shows, political campaigns, and news broadcasts have taken their place. They are miserable examples and worse teachers. In the meantime, speeches have to be given, memoranda written, directions understood. The world's work needs to be done, and as it becomes more complex, it needs to be conveyed and described and comprehended in language that is clear, simple, and to-the-point. Listening itself is a function of literacy. Students should become adept at listening creatively, recognizing the uses to which language should is put, anticipating the drift of a speaker's thought, identifying the vacuous and the perceptive. Television is so much a part of our lives that it is foolish simply to deplore its weaknesses and its bad habits. Students need to learn how to look at and listen to their television sets critically, with as much focused intellectual energy as they are expected to apply to other experiences that call on their ability to listen and see intelligently. Not every word or combination of words, whether read or written or spoken, can be expressions of unassailable style, models of taste and beauty that will endure. Some of us are better at these things than others, but none of us should be given up for lost. There are pleasures in sharing human excellence, even while trying and failing to be the best. A bachelor's degree should mean that it's holders can read, write, and speak at levels of distinction and have been given many opportunities to learn how. It also should mean that many of them do so with style.
3. Understanding numerical data. We have become a society bombarded by numbers. We are threatened by them. We are intimated by them. We are lied to with their help. We are comforted by them and seduced by them. They tell us our chances of getting cancer if we smoke. They tell us who we are going to vote for and why. They tell us whether we are rich or poor, whether to carry our umbrellas, how to invest. The interpretation of numerical data requires a sophisticated level of understanding and there is no reason to expect that the situation will become any less pressing. We are not here proposing a new subject for the curriculum, but we are arguing for a recognition throughout the course of study of the necessity for sharpening the ability of students to understand numerical data, to recognize their misuse, the multiple interpretations they often permit, and the ways that they can be manipulated to mislead.
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4. Historical consciousness. We carry within ourselves the seeds of historical consciousness and experience: we grow older and know that we were younger; we have a history. So does everyone and everything else. The more refined our historical understanding, the better prepared we are to recognize complexity, ambiguity, and uncertainty as intractable conditions of human society. The student with a sharply honed historical consciousness knows that everything is not what is seems to be, that what should be a simple solution to a simple problem will not work because unexpressed historical forces and traditions lie just beneath the surface waiting to be awakened. Such a student does not believe everything read, becomes a cautious skeptic, learns to recognize that events occur sequentially, and that the sequence matters. A consciousness of history allows us to impose some intellectual order on the disorder of random facts. It invites the application of abstract logical thinking, critical analysis, and inquiry to the past, but it also requires imagination and intuition if the past is going to make sense. Facts do not speak for themselves: meaning must be drawn from them by minds soundly trained, nurtured to recognize their opportunities, experienced in making the connections and grasping the complexities that history piles up around us. Historical consciousness helps make the world comprehensible. If everyone and everything has a history, then the opportunities for nurturing historical consciousness in a baccalaureate program are manifestly unlimited. That does not mean, however, that historical consciousness just comes naturally, nor that it can be delivered on order by the history department in large survey courses or in textbook assignments in narrative histories. History is all over the course of study--in the languages, art, music, literature, social studies, the sciences, and in history itself. The best way to develop historical consciousness is to study historical situations in depth, whether the situation in depth, whether the situation is the emergence of a school of painting, the outbreak of a war, the critical reception of a major writer, the adoption of certain economic policies, the appearance of a new educational movement, or the evolution of a new scientific insight deepening our views of man's place in the universe. The use of primary materials--the documents, the letters, diaries, contemporary accounts, visual remains, biographies, the scores of places where history resides---will disabuse any student of the harmful notion that life is a simple process of cause and effect. To exercise historical consciousness is to stretch the mind and to avoid the pitfalls of oversimplification, shallowness, and unexamined and unchallenged evidence.
5. Science In his celebrated effort to make the world comprehensible and manageable, Henry Adams turned his autobiographical wanderings The Education of Henry Adams, into an intellectual tour of the nineteenth century. Acknowledging that science had unleashed great energies that man showed little readiness or ability to understand or to control, he concluded that what was needed was nothing less than a new self-conscious intellectual style that was equal
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to the challenges that he located symbolically in the dynamos that captured his imagination at the great expositions in Chicago in 1893 and Paris in 1900. "Thus far," Adams concluded, "since five or ten thousand years, the mind had successfully reacted, and nothing yet proved that it would fail to react--but it would need to jump." Adams equipped for himself a mind that jumped, fashioning tools of analysis and attitudes of mind--observation, intuition, skepticism, a sense of proportion, even beauty and value--into a most remarkable instrument for analyzing his world. He was not a scientist, but he understood the scientist's style. We are now more than half a century from Adams' troubled observation that humanity little understood or controlled the energies that science had unleashed. In the meantime those energies have leveled Hiroshima, given us acid rain, and placed men on the moon and a personal computer on every desk. The energies accelerate, the understanding and control lag. If it is not possible to be altogether comfortable in the contemporary world, surely the world is less bewildering to someone who understands the nature of science, its methods, its reliability, and its limitations. Scientific truths are as vulnerable to revision as any other truths, but the scientist's way of reaching truths consists of methods that lead from truth to truth, with yesterday's truth discarded as no longer valid where new knowledge and understandings lead. The person who understands what science is recognizes that scientific concepts are created by acts of human intelligence and imagination; comprehends the distinction between observation and inference and between the occasional role of accidental discovery. in scientific investigation and the deliberate strategy of forming and testing hypotheses; understands how theories are formed, tested, validated, and accorded provisional acceptance; and discriminates between conclusions that rest on unverified assertion and those that are developed application of scientific reasoning. To be intellectually at ease with science is to understand, too, the limitations that are inherent in scientific inquiry, the kinds of questions that science neither asks nor answers. A comprehensive understanding of science also requires awareness of the ways in which scientific knowledge has had direct impact on intellectual history and on one's view of the universe and of the human condition, as well as awareness of how certain modes of thought in natural science—forming concepts, testing hypotheses, discriminating between observation and inference, constructing models-- inform such disciplines as history, economics, sociology, and political science. The kind of understanding that is here described has thus far eluded most Americans, including holders of the bachelor's degree. A student can best take possession of science and its methods not in a broad course about science but in a course where the subject matter is highly circumscribed, even narrow. With skillful teaching, in discussions of primary research papers on a single problem in a subdivision of science, students can be led to examine skeptically the relationships asserted between data and conclusions, to suggest alternatives hypotheses, and to design new laboratory procedures that may test further the conclusions drawn. Considerations of such 51
methodological problems can in turn be used to raise philosophical questions about the nature of science and the influence of political values or social setting on scientific research. One promising approach to the study of science is interdisciplinary. Properly structured and taught, interdisciplinary science courses would focus on concepts and enigmas, provide introductory training for students intending to concentrate in the scientific disciplines, satisfy the need of all bachelor's candidates for scientific understanding, and thus permit revolution in the standard pre-medical science requirements. The kind of experience with science that we here describe is intended to make the American college graduate a less helpless bystander of a world made by science. By demystifying science, to some extent emphasizing the human, social and political implications of scientific research, such study should lead students to greater resiliency and a greater sense of their own capacity to play a role in how the results of science are used. A certainly in the laboratory they will learn how to observe, experiment, and infer, and catch on the importance of observation--paying attention with imagination and concentration--in the sequence of learning.
6. Values Unquestionably suspended judgement is the appropriate mode of scientific inquiry: it allows investigation to proceed and postpones decision until evidence requires it. But men and women do not live in suspension. They must make real choices, assume responsibility for their decisions, be comfortable with their decisions, be comfortable with their own behavior and know why. They must embody the values of a democratic society in order to fulfill the responsibilities of citizenship. They must be equipped to be perceptive and wise critics of that society, repositories of the values that make civilized and humane society possible. After a hundred years as capstone of the curriculum, the senior course in moral philosophy disappeared at the end of the nineteenth century. It had supplanted theology as the source and definition of values in the course of study, just as it would be supplanted by so--called value-free social science and objective science. In the moral philosophy course students investigated" the sources of moral behavior as well as the nature of virtue itself, " assured by their teachers, usually the college presidents, that reason and human nature would lead them to goodness. A remarkable and far-ranging excursion into social and individual ethics, the moral philosophy course sent young graduates into the world with a reassuring sense of their own fitness to play a role in the moral order. A dozen discrete subjects--among them sociology, psychology, economics, and political science--spilled out of the old moral philosophy course in the late nineteenth century, in effect announcing that no longer could a liberal education rest on a belief in the unity of knowledge. But more than the unity of knowledge fell out of the curriculum. While ethical concern and social responsibility inspired many of the early social science courses, questions
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of value and moral character were increasingly shunted aside, as the course of study and its professionally trained practitioners were oriented toward the values of scientific investigation. In the end, almost everywhere the only certain place in the curriculum were human values and character received attention was in the ethics course in the philosophy department, where, although rigorous analysis could lead to choice and responsibility, the experience was available for only a few students. There is no place in the course of study where the capacity to make informed and responsible moral choice cannot appropriately be nurtured. We may be wary of final answers, but we cannot avoid the necessity of choice, decision, judgment,. The curricular opportunities are legion; Abraham Lincoln willing to accept a constitutional amendment protecting slavery in the South in order to frustrate secession; Captain Vere wrestling with complex issues of innocence and justice, good and evil, in Billy Budd; the tension between neighborhood and urban renewal in the city of your choice; Who owns the Elgin marbles?; equity in the tax structure; barriers to voter registration. immigration. and imports; Vietnam, Iran, Grenada-the choices and the values; Holocaust--evil and guilt; Los Alamos--a scientific community in the real world: an inquiry into human tragedy in literature; crime and punishment. The opportunities are there, but they are seldom taken by teachers so far gone into specialization and into the scientific understanding of their specialties that the challenges of bringing students into humanistic relationship with their subjects, into the arena of values and choice and judgment, are beyond their interest and capacity. Recruiting teachers with a professional commitment to teaching may be one way to focus subject matter on life, its quality, the agonies and joys, the demand and choices of growing up.
7. Art Appreciation and experience of the fine and performing arts are as essential as any other qualities appropriate to a civilized human being and a democratic society. In 1780, in one of those quiet moments that a busy life allowed him, John Adams then engaged in a diplomatic mission in Europe, reflected; "I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, and naval architecture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain." Adams' timetable for the arrival of the arts as college studies was off by several generations. His great-grandsons (let alone his grandsons) finished their Harvard studies between 1856 and 1870 without formal expose to the arts. A century and several generations later the arts can no longer be denied access to the curriculum nor relegated to a peripheral position. They are therefore to be encouraged as providing access to realms of creativity, imagination, and feeling that explore and enlarge the meaning of what it is to be human.
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The languages of art, music, architecture, drama, and dance open up new worlds of human endeavor and communication, of truth and of representation. We find ourselves in that special environment where means and ends are the same, where sensibilities and sensitivities otherwise dormant within us are called forth, announcing their arrival with perceptions, feelings, and empathies we did not know we possessed. Without a knowledge of the language of the fine arts, we see less and hear less. Without some experience in the performing arts, we are denied the knowledge of disciplined creativity and its meaning as a bulwark of freedom and an instrument of social cohesion. Trained eyes and ears enlarge the environment, join forces with reason, intuition, and a sense of history in recognizing the ways in which the Sistine Chapel, a Wagnerian opera, a Japanese floral arrangement, a Rembrandt portrait, and break dancing are expression both of exuberant individual creativity and of the culture that nurtured them. Once more we are led to a sense of the complexities and interrelationships of human society, a sense of the values that inform artistic expression and performance. As John Adams intended, we become less barbaric, more civilized, more fit to be the standard-bearers of a vibrant democratic society.
8. International and multicultural experiences. Any subject, if presented liberally, will take students into a world beyond themselves, make them again and again outsiders, so that they may return and know themselves better. All studies intended to break down the narrow certainties and provincial vision with which we are born. In a sense, we are all form provinces including New Yorkers and Bostonians, whose view of the world can be as circumscribed as that of native Alaskans who have never left their village. To broaden the horizons of understanding for men and women, therefore, colleges must provide them with access to the diversity of cultures and experience that define American society and the contemporary world. Ethnic diversity in the United States has supported rich traditions of architecture, cuisine, humor, political allegiance, and family customs. There are class cultures, cultures of places and gender and profession--a culture of poverty, of the farm, of the rural South and the urban ghetto. Japan and China, the aspiring peoples of Africa, the troubled nations of Central and South America, Soviet Union and its satellites, and the countries of Western Europe with which we share the values and inheritance of Western Civilization--here are the resources for the study of human cultures, the differences that define particular group identities and the common experiences that make them expressions of human possibility. How should the college go about opening the eyes and minds of its students to the shrinking world in which they live and to the aspirations of women and of the ethnic minorities who are redefining American social and political reality? There are opportunities in many of the solidly entrenched disciplines of the curriculum to widen
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access to the diversity of American and world cultures. The study of foreign language and literature can be enriched by exploring the culture of which it is an artifact. In recent years, American history courses have discovered Black Americans and women and in the process made history itself more meaningful. The art and literature of Mrica and Asia are breaking into courses of study once tied almost exclusively to the Western world. Programs of study in foreign countries are increasingly popular, less because colleges are enthusiastic about them then because students sense that a term abroad offers great opportunities for intellectual growth and understanding with lifelong dividends. A comparable motivation inspired an earlier generation of young American college graduates to enter the Peace Corps and allowed upper class English families to provide their sons with an extended tour of Europe as a finishing course in their education. The fragility of the world in which we live and the volatile diversity of the population of the United States as urgency to the need for international and multi-cultural experience in the course of study. At this moment in history colleges are not being asked to produce village squires but citizens of a shrinking world and a changing America. Colleges must create a curriculum in which the insights and understandings, the lives and aspirations of the distant and foreign, the different and neglected, are more widely comprehended by their graduates.
9. Study in Depth. The minimum required curriculum that we here propose does not consist of required courses or prescribed subjects. Our concern is what happens to students when they study subjects and take courses in the various academic disciplines. Our focus is the methods and processes, the modes of access to understanding and judgment, that shape their formal undergraduate education. One experience that students should have is study in depth, concentration in a discipline or group of disciplines, that conveys both the possibilities and the limits of such study. We will express in greater detail elsewhere in this report what study in depth should and should not be. Here we want only to argue in behalf of the experience. Students bound from course to course, year to year, lecture hall to lecture hall, term paper to term paper, quiz to quiz, participating in an unending, they sometimes feel, series of discrete educational events. They are learning, for sure. Ideally, their minds are instruments of logic, critical analysis, and inquiry. They are learning to read, write, and speak with clarity and style. Numbers neither baffle nor trick them, but instead inform their understanding and enlarge the range of their minds. They know that everything has a past, including the thoughts they have just expressed. Scientific method is leading them to be better observers and more willing to acknowledge that learning involves a sequence of observations, connections, and conclusions. They are confronting their humanity in many ways--in the inescapability of moral choice and responsibility, in the joy of art both appreciated and performed, and in access to
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the diverse worlds beyond the families and neighborhoods that they know best. Education in depth, however, is an experience in learning of an different order. Depth requires sequential learning, building on blocks of knowledge that lead to more sophisticated understanding and encourage leaps of the imagination and efforts at synthesis. Depth is achieved through a variety of experiences that broaden the student's knowledge of a discipline, strengthening analytical powers while leading to a deeper, fresher, more complex perspective. Depth requires the kind of focused inquiry that takes time; it releases students to the testing of their own skills; it should not be hurried. The year-long essay, the senior thesis, the artistic project, undertaken after a sound grasp of the fundamentals of the discipline or art has been established, provides and experience in which two great lessons are learned: the joy of mastery, the thrill of moving forward in a formal body of knowledge and gaining some effective control over it, integrating it, perhaps even making some small contribution to it; and the lesson that no matter how deeply and widely student dig, no matter how much they know, they can not know enough, they cannot know everything. Depth is an enemy of arrogance.
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