June 2005
NOTES FROM THE ACADEMIC SENATE CHAIR
GEORGE BLUMENTHAL
Dear Colleagues,
Please join me in congratulating members of the Academic Assembly for a job well done! In spite of an unusually full agenda of potentially controversial issues, the Assembly successfully completed its business in two teleconference meetings and a final face-to-face meeting, held in mid-May at the UCB campus, during which the Assembly completed six action items. Without doubt, the most historically significant item of business for the year was the Assembly’s consideration of a proposal from the UC Merced faculty to establish a Merced Division of the Academic Senate. By a unanimous vote at its May 11 meeting, the Assembly approved the birth of this division once the Academic Council certifies that there is a plan in place to adequately fund the UCM division. (See our featured article.) We look forward to welcoming our UCM colleagues as equal partners in the work of the Senate.
Except for a change in title, I am pleased to report that the Assembly adopted the Resolution on Research Funding Sources, which was approved by the Academic Council in April 2005. This concludes an almost two-year long engagement with the issue of restrictions on research awards. The Assembly resolution clarifies that no unit within the University may deny, based solely upon the source of funding, a faculty member’s right to accept a research award. Only The Board of Regents has the authority to establish policies on the acceptance of research funding. I have asked President Dynes to distribute the resolution to campus chancellors and forward it, as an informational item, to The Regents.
There has been considerable interest on the part of state legislators for UC to facilitate the transfer process for community college students and to make the process more transparent. At the May meeting, the Assembly approved two major pieces of legislation intended to do just that.
Currently, each UC campus must individually determine whether every California Community College (CCC) course can be articulated (accepted for transfer credit) for a major. Senate Regulation 477 is a new regulation, which stipulates that when four or more UC Senate Divisions articulate a course or lower division sequence of courses for major preparation, those course(s) will be automatically articulated at all other UC campuses, unless a department specifically elects to opt out of the agreement. This regulation will lessen the burden on departments willing to accept the articulation agreements worked out by similar departments at other UC campuses and will hopefully simplify the transfer process for students coming to UC. I should note that this legislation in no way requires departments to align their lower division requirements with those of other UC campuses since there are educationally sound reasons why some majors and their requirements vary from campus to campus.
In a second action, the Assembly amended Senate Regulation 478, which currently allows junior transfers to satisfy any UC general education requirement by taking a set of community college courses called the Intersegmental General Education Transfer Curriculum (IGETC). This amendment allows students in the physical and biological sciences, with their heavier lower division major course load, to defer two of their IGETC courses until after transfer, something that is currently permitted only in hardship cases. Because campuses will need to provide additional counseling services to successfully implement the amendment, the Academic Council approved this proposal only after receiving assurances from the Provost that funds for the additional counseling would be available. Beginning with students transferring to UC in Fall 2006, science students should find it easier to complete their lower division major courses prior to transfer. The program could have the added benefit of helping UC reach its ambitious goal of producing 1,000 science and math teachers annually by the year 2010 through its new California Science and Math Initiative, which will be launched this fall.
The modified IGETC regulation is just one result of an on-going effort by faculty from the three segments of the California public higher education system to facilitate student transfer. This year, the Intersegmental Committee of Academic Senates (ICAS) undertook a review, from a purely faculty perspective, of all intersegmental transfer programs to evaluate their effectiveness and identify areas needing better coordination. The resulting report, “A Transfer Discussion Document,” was just released. ICAS hopes to produce an annual faculty study of transfer issues in the future.
Something you will be hearing more about in coming months is a proposal from the Committee on Information Technology & Telecommunications Policy (ITTP) and the University Committee on Educational Policy (UCEP) for a University minor in Information Technology Fluency and Impact. The idea of a University minor is an exciting new concept that has the potential to be a key advance in how we offer instruction at UC. The Academic Council gave the two committees the go ahead in May to begin developing their proposal.
You may be aware of a recent allegation by a publisher’s organization that the UC library’s electronic reserves policy violates federal copyright law. The University Librarians have prepared a message to faculty on UC’s e-reserves policy that you can access by clicking here.
At their May meeting, The Board of Regents voted to submit a proposal to the Department of Energy to continue managing the Los Alamos National Lab (LANL) in partnership with Bechtel Corporation, along with a team of other companies and universities. The Regents also voted to appoint Michael Anastasio (currently the director of Lawrence Livermore National Labs), as director of LANL contingent on the UC/Bechtel team winning the contract. During the past several months, the Academic Council Special Committee on the National Labs (ACSCONL) has met regularly with lab management and recently with President Dynes to discuss these decisions in advance.
The Regents also appointed UC Vice President for Health Affairs Michael Drake as the UC Irvine chancellor. As one of the five Senate members on the UCI chancellor search committee, I would like to extend my congratulations and best wishes to Dr. Drake.
My term as Senate Chair ends on August 31, but I will be providing you with a year-end wrap up of our accomplishments in the next issue of The Senate Source, which will be distributed at the end of August. In the meantime, have a productive and enjoyable summer.
--George Blumenthal