General Education, College or House Systems, Residential life, advising, intra-mural and intercollegiate sports, health care and counseling, dining and housing, musical and drama groups and other extracurricular activities all powerfully shape the University experience and make it something more than 180 units. The tendency in the modern university is to organize these experiences into many competing and (to the student) incomprehensible fiefdoms. The faculty has also tended to disengage from these non-classroom oriented activities as time has gone on. The purpose of this report is to suggest ways in which the undergraduate experience, particularly the non-classroom part of the experience, can be maximized. It is my strong belief that this requires the attention of the faculty.

To understand my approach to these issues, there are four important background subjects: The Universities experience with transfer students, styles of general education, balkanization of services, and the San Diego College system. The information on transfers comes from my participation in the Memorandum of Understanding Task Force, while the information on UCSD is the minutes of UCEP on a visit to UCSD. Perhaps the other item that colors my thinking is the organization of my own campus and most particularly the difficulty students have in understanding and working that system.

The challenge is how to have an organization that keeps faculty involved, makes the campus have a human scale, and doesn't relegate transfer students to a third class status.

Under the Master Plan the University agrees to accept a considerable number of junior college transfer students. UC has a memorandum of understanding with the Community College system, which specifies that we will increase the number of JC transfers that we take. For a number of reasons, it is not easy to do so. To begin with there is a great difference in the two cultures. UC expects students to be full time and to make rapid progress to completion. The CC system expects students to be part time and expects a great majority of its students not to have transfer as a goal, much less actually transfer. The major academic impediment to transfer is probably mathematics. It is reported that students cannot pass a transferable math class even after taking it more than once. The CC curriculum in math goes back to about 6^th grade. Financial aid is also perceived as a barrier. Students are not advised to take loans at CC and our packages include loan. Students at CC work and we count their last years work as income, which reduces their aid. These problems are systemwide and are being worked on. On the purely academic side, CC students prepare themselves for general education by taking one of the CSU pattern (the dominant answer), the specific GE pattern for a UC, or the IGETC pattern. Colleges at the University are required to accept IGETC for breadth or general education, but not for pre-technical requirements. Engineering schools, business schools, and certain of the UCSD colleges do not accept IGETC, relying upon this interpretation. IGETC does not work for students in the biological sciences, because they have too many pre-major requirements to be able to do all their breadth and all their pre-major work before transfer. IGETC must be completed before transfer. Transfer students do not necessarily take all their pre-major requirements before transferring. Since these students may not know which programs they will be accepted into and each campus has slightly different requirements for the same major, there ought be no surprise here. Finally, transfer students mostly have to move. They lose their support network, job, place to live, and so on. Against these pretty long odds, the transfer students do amazingly well. They take fractionally longer to graduate and have slightly lower GPA’s than native students who attained Junior status in exactly two years. That is, they are just like those of our native students who never failed courses, had serious illnesses, family problems, etc. Faculty do not perceive it this way. For example Ms. M. came to Berkeley this year after three years at a CC. She took pre-calculus (a harder course than the easy calculus course at Berkeley), freshman economics, and two upper division courses. One instructor, me, spent more time on her than I spent on all other students combined. Her lack of training was appalling. At the end of the class she was in the top half and had an astounding 3.5 UC GPA (campus average is more like 3.1). Thus the Faculty perception that the CC transfers are a disaster and the statistics that say otherwise.

Some believe that there is an advantage to having a coordinated curriculum, many classes at the lower division level that have a common theme. For example, a social science and chemistry class both focusing on problems of the environment. Faculty in the sciences are not generally enthusiastic about this idea, though an examination of the biology curriculum will show that it is tightly coordinated and all consuming. UCLA’s cluster courses are the best example in our system of coordinated curricula. A major part of GE can be accomplished in a sequence of classes on the same topic. The courses are expensive to teach, because the coordinator needs to be given release time to keep them coordinated. The sequences keep the same students (about 200 of them) in the same classes, so they serve the social purpose of creating a manageable community. Our system also has examples of the lasses faire style, where students are required to take a few courses from each of the divisions of the campus (social science, humanities, biology, physical science.) and examples of a tight set of requirements, where specific courses are required. Most professional schools fit the latter mold.

There is no evidence that any form of education has a lasting benefit or detriment. The tapes of the UCSD graduates who came from all different styles of education provide evidence of success, even breadth, independent of the style of GE adopted..

Students in trouble, which usually means both academic and emotional trouble, are provided with a vast array of services on the typical campus. Berkeley provides an excellent example of a Balkanized model of service delivery. Academic counseling (which can be had by making an appointment this week if you call at the right times for next week) is delivered by professional staff in the Colleges. Secondary academic counseling is also provided in the dormitories and the student learning center. Though these locales are more accessible, they have no authority to make decisions about equivalences, accept reduced loads, etc. Assistance with the subject matter of courses is provided by the learning center (a student affairs operation not reporting to the Provost, much less in touch with the college.) Psychological counseling is to be found at the health service. Residence hall assistants are also available for help with problem resolution. Athletes and disabled students have yet another network of providers. The problem with Balkanization is that the providers do not communicate and that the student in trouble is unlikely to be able to negotiate the whole maze. The SD system is more akin to what is called a multi-disciplinary clinic in the medical community. Most of the services are located in the College and the Provost of the College acts as the clinic coordinator, able to arrange counseling, academic relief, and tutoring and to assure that the providers are all acquainted with each others view of the problems.. (Thanks to Professor Ann Middleton for pointing this out to me.)

The major goals for undergraduate organization at UCM ought to be: 1. Multiplicity of GE styles and requirements. 2. Small scale within a large university. 3. Multidisciplinary services delivery (no balkanization.) 4. Integration of transfer students.

It is easiest to start at the end of the list, though what we need not do to transfers is perhaps as important as what we do for them. Overloaded curricula drive students to take longer to graduate. Our transfer students are probably those who can least afford that luxury, partially because they have already taken close to three years to achieve junior status and transfer. Biology students and Engineering students, university wide, take far more than 180 units to get degrees. With Engineering, recognition that this is a professional degree has lead to a movement to make engineering a BS/MS five years master's program. Biology should be considered in the same light and from the beginning. At Merced most majors should be limited to a doable four year program while the better students should be permitted to stay another year or so and receive an MA. (Systemwide there is a smaller percentage of transfers majoring in biology than one would expect and I believe the extensive nature of the curriculum is to blame.) More generally, the number of campus requirements plus the number of major requirements that we expect students to take in the upper division must be reasonable. For instance, SD and Berkeley both have majors that take about 12 quarters, leaving 12 quarters for upper division electives and unfinished major prep and GE requirements. In so far as UCM is to have campus requirements (or upper division college requirements) they should be subtracted from these 12 quarters. More GE expectation for the upper division must equal smaller majors. It is only the total load that matters here.

In the same way that the system trusts its CC partners to provide the courses that make up IGETC, UCM needs to trust its CC partners for lower division GE. UCM should accept both IGETC and the CSU pattern of GE as fulfilling its GE/breadth requirements in all colleges. (That is not the same as requiring calculus for engineering, a pre major requirement)

UCM should strive to improve the level of GE in its feeder CC's. Each GE track should have at least one coordinated sequence that it shares with the CC system. Curriculum, materials, and even some lectures via technology could be shared. The GE Institute should see this curriculum development and sharing as a major part of its charge. Students taking a shared course sequence will feel most at home at UCM

1. There is no right pattern of GE, though there are appreciable subsets of the faculty that will argue strenuously for one or another of the models. The university is best served if the various styles are all represented and the faculty that believe in that style are responsible for carrying out that type of program. Similarly, there are students who want to double major and graduate in three years and there are students who want to sample a great many fields, though in little depth. They should all be accommodated. This means that from the beginning there will need to be at least two GE styles: one focused on a subject (like the ethnic diversity in the Great Valley after the vision in the Simons report) and one of a conventional sort (you gotta take something other than math and engineering)

2. Scale. There needs to be one individual responsible for the delivery of critical services for each 2500 or less undergraduates. The scale also needs to be small enough so that the associated 100 or so faculty members can make a difference in curriculum and policy. The experience at Berkeley is that the smaller colleges often have larger faculty turnouts than does L&S. (13 out of approximately 800 members voted on the issue of late drops in L&S.). Small scale makes participation meaningful.

3. A system in which the service delivery is broken between student affairs and academic does not work for the student and should not be tolerated.

Departments provide courses and belong to Divisions. The divisional dean is responsible for the graduate education within his division, subject only to the authority of the graduate council. One day we may need more of a graduate division, but I don't see where we need to begin with a dean for graduate students.

The Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs (VCSA) is directly responsible for all student affairs and student academic services that cannot be decentralized. Admissions and intercollegiate sports are two good examples.

The working end of student services are the Colleges, headed by an X (since we can't agree on the name).

A college has responsibility for specifying the lower division curriculum for its students. The SD model shows how this can be taught without FTE or bloat. In so far as it mounts special courses or sequences, it has the obligation to share them with our feeder schools. The GE institute would provide technical and academic support for the development and spreading of this curriculum.

A college also has a precinct of dorms and the X of the college is responsible for the (probably freshman) program that is put on in those dorms. The RA's report to him. Physical housing and dining is the problem of the VCSA. There is no need for classroom space in the dorm nor for each college to have its own dining operation.

The X of the College is the official who decides probation, dismissal, withdrawal, and recommends exceptions for students in the college. I can't see why the X isn't also responsible for disciplinary issues as well, but I am sure the lawyers will weigh in favor of centralization for that.

There is counseling and academic assistance available within the college. This makes it straightforward to fund the learning center type activities for freshman.

The college has a common room, bicycle park, and lockers for its commuters, transfers, etc. Preferably on campus. We charge a college fee to cover this.

The college mounts a program of interest to upper division students. In the case of a college organized around the diversity of the valley, a series of field trips to appropriate valley sites, would be a good example. So would coordination with Anthropology to offer the appropriate upper division courses.

At least one college should have a service requirement. (Though by 2004, I suspect that it will be something else that seems very important.)

Students can be in any college and take any major.

The X of the college reports to the Executive Vice Chancellor. The X must work closely with the VCSA on whom the College will likely depend for some of its funding and personnel (like psychologists.)

The VCSA and EVC have the unenviable task of making sure that majors and extracurricular activities allocate a fair share of all slots to transfer students.

The VCSA and at least one of the X's of the Colleges need to be part of the Dean's council. Undergrad issues can easily not be heard without their voices.

The Senate centrally (CEP at SD; Undergraduate Council at LA) holds authority for majors and GE. It enforces the adding up constraint (GE + Major + Freedom + Slack = 180.)

It would be better to have 2 or more colleges from the very beginning. That doesn't mean that we need to have 2 or more bureaucrats. At the beginning, there could be one VCSA and one other human who wears 3 hats: Chair of the GE inst. X of College 1 and X of College 2. We need the two curricula, not the two dorms or two humans.

Given the work that the LA group took to assemble their coordinated sequences, each sequence required a half time person for coordination. That chews up a lot more FTE than a straightforward two colleges.

The alternative to Colleges is a separate transfer center, freshman program, counseling center, learning center, coordinated curriculum program, academic advising center, etc. This is a horizontal division and I don't see where after all the directors' salaries anything is going to be saved. It also guarantees that transfers are a group by themselves.