Vice Provost for Teaching & Learning

Back towards the end of March, it was announced that Erin Sanders O'Leary would become vice provost for teaching and learning at UCLA. The announcement: [excerpt]

Erin Sanders O’Leary, a UCLA alumna and former UCLA faculty member, has been named UCLA’s inaugural vice provost for teaching and learning. In the newly created role, O’Leary will lead the new UCLA Teaching and Learning Center and drive innovation and collaboration in teaching across the institution. She will begin the new position on Aug. 16.

“Given Professor O’Leary’s UCLA roots, coupled with her administrative experience and compelling vision for inclusive and innovative education, Chancellor Block and I are confident that she will be an extraordinary addition to our campus leadership team,” Darnell Hunt, UCLA’s executive vice chancellor and provost, said in an email to faculty.

Currently, O’Leary is the executive director of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching Excellence at the University of Illinois Chicago, where she is also associate professor of biological sciences in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and an associate adjunct professor in microbiology and immunology in the College of Medicine. Prior to joining UIC, O’Leary spent 15 years at UCLA, beginning in 2005 as a lecturer and faculty advisor for training teaching assistants in the department of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics; she later joined the department’s faculty as an associate adjunct professor. She was the founding director of UCLA’s Center for Education Innovation and Learning in the Sciences, known as CEILS, and continued to teach classes through Life Sciences Core Education. She also earned her doctorate at UCLA, in biological chemistry...

Full story at https://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/erin-sanders-oleary-vice-provost-teaching-learning.

The Bruin is running an interview with Prof. O'Leary: [excerpt]

...Bruin: What projects are you excited about working on at the UCLA Teaching and Learning Center and in your new role as vice provost?

O'Leary: The office itself has three components to it. There’s the campuswide Teaching and Learning Center that supports a lot of the core services that faculty and instructors need to support their teaching. … Then, connected to this, there are these discipline-specific teaching and learning centers scattered around campus. … And CEILS (Center for Education Innovation and Learning in the Sciences) that I founded in the science is one example. So those are, in some ways, those same kinds of support and services for faculty, but they’re embedded in the disciplines. … But those (centers) collectively are not reporting to – but are very much interrelated and interfacing very closely with – the campuswide center. The third piece is the pedagogical research area. This is an area I’m particularly interested in because it’s new. … So now, we have an office where you can really bring people together and think about bigger questions impacting teaching and learning. … It creates an opportunity for UCLA to really kind of be this beacon of innovation...

Full interview at https://dailybruin.com/2023/04/19/qa-erin-sanders-oleary-talks-new-role-as-vice-provost-for-teaching-and-learning.

Getting Everyone On Board With Higher Ed Policy Also Matters

Pat Brown signs law implementing
Master Plan for Higher Education (1960)

A long time ago in a state quite different in many respects from today, California Governor Pat Brown signed the Donahue Act into law implementing the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education. The Plan provided for distinct roles for the three segments of public higher education: UC, what were then called the state colleges (now CSU), and the junior (now community) colleges.

Prior to the Master Plan, it was unclear what the roles of the different segments were supposed to be. Since all three were public institutions, it was deemed important that an acceptable political consensus should exist about those roles.

As we have noted from time to time on this blog, CSUs would like to expand more into graduate (PhD) education. Community colleges would like to offer bachelors degrees. From time to time, someone goes to the legislature and gets incremental permission to deviate from the old Master Plan (which in fact expired in 1975).

UCLA's Civil Rights Project has come out with a report arguing that community colleges should generally offer bachelors degrees.* UCLA is apparently OK with the idea since a recent UCLA Newsroom release touts the report.** (Note that community college enrollment has declined and that the competitive effect of community colleges offering bachelors degrees would mainly fall on CSU.)

What is missing is a process to develop a new Master Plan rather than the kind of ongoing incremental erosion of the old one that has been happening. For community colleges to go fully in the 4-year degree business would require a lot of new resources. Is the legislature prepared for the budget implications? Is the governor? It has been noted that the existing community colleges seem to vary considerably in their ability to prepare students to transfer to UC or CSU. How will the lower-performing community colleges be brought up to speed sufficiently to offer 4-year degrees when they have problems in getting students through the first two years? What about the vocational tracks in those colleges? Will resources be taken out of those programs to fund the expansion into 4-year education? Would that be a Good Thing? Are there enough faculty available? Will there still be associate degrees? 

There needs to be a process involving all stakeholders and political leaders. Otherwise we will continue to get ad hoc programs on a whim. We already had a taste of whim-policy when then-Governor Jerry Brown decided an online community college would be a good idea and had one created. Governor Newsom sought to prescribe UCLA transfer policy in his January budget proposal. We'll soon see if that idea remains in the May Revise budget proposal. But whatever Newsom does, is that really how higher ed policy in California should be made?

Bottom line: At this stage, get a process in place. Worry about the process before envisioning the ends.

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*The report is at https://civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/college-access/underrepresented-students/the-potential-of-californias-community-college-baccalaureate-for-closing-racial-equity-gaps/CCB-CRP-FINAL-REPORT-033023-modified-post-release.pdf.

**https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/california-community-college-baccalaureate-degree-programs.

Likely DACA

We have noted that in the public comment periods of various UC Regents meetings, there have been arguments that UC could offer employment opportunities to DACA students. Yesterday, the Regents held a closed-door meeting to explore "Legal Issues Related to Equitable Student Employment Opportunities." That topic looks suspiciously like a discussion of what the legal issues would be in offering such employment. See below:

NOTICE OF SPECIAL MEETING

THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

Date: April 17, 2023

Time: 10:30 a.m.

Location: Teleconference meeting conducted in accordance with California Government Code §§11133

Agenda – Closed Session

B1(X) Discussion Legal Issues Related to Equitable Student Employment Opportunities

Closed Session Statute Citation: Litigation [Education Code §92032(b)(5)]

Source: https://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/april23/boardx4.17.23.pdf.

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Of course, there is no way of knowing at this point if the DACA/employment issue was in fact the subject of the meeting. So far, no announcement has been made. Perhaps something will be said at the May regents meetings.

No Triggers: The Empire Strikes Back - Part 2

We noted on Friday that there seems to be push-back developing in higher ed, and maybe in the New York Times, regarding speech limitations. The "saga" - as the poster image says - seems to be continuing.* Excerpts from a column by David French in the NY Times: 

...Let’s take Stanford University, for example. In the days and weeks since law students shouted down and disrupted a speech by a federal judge, the center has taken a stand. The dean of Stanford Law School, Jenny Martinez, penned a powerful, 10-page memorandum that mandated a half-day of instruction on free speech and legal norms, [and] reaffirmed the school’s dedication to the Stanford Statement on Academic Freedom...

Then there’s Cornell University. In March, the school’s undergraduate student assembly unanimously approved a resolution calling for trigger warnings in syllabuses to warn students of “graphic traumatic content” in course content. Cornell’s president, Martha E. Pollack, promptly vetoed it...

The faculty at Harvard University is also stepping up. In an opinion essay in The Boston Globe, Harvard’s Steven Pinker and Bertha Madras announced the creation of the Council on Academic Freedom, a coalition of 50 faculty members and several other Harvard employees “devoted to free inquiry, intellectual diversity and civil discourse.” ...

Vanderbilt University will announce the expansion of the American branch of the Future of Free Speech Project, an initiative run by the Danish think tank Justitia, which will include an international focus on free expression...

And we cannot forget the University of Chicago. Since 2014, it’s arguably been the single most influential academic institution in the United States supporting academic freedom. Its statement on free speech declares the “university’s fundamental commitment is to the principle that debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the university community to be offensive, unwise, immoral or wrongheaded.” A version of the Chicago statement has been adopted by almost 100 colleges, universities and state university systems, including Princeton University, Johns Hopkins University and the North Carolina and Wisconsin state university systems...

Full column at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/16/opinion/free-speech-campus-universities-promising-news.html.

At least some of this interest in speech and academic freedom seems to be a reaction of university leadership to political antipathy towards higher ed that has developed in some states and more general skepticism about the value of college degrees.

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*http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/04/no-triggers-empire-strikes-back.html.

You might want to ask him about the topic. Just saying...

I know its not the thing now to censor commencement speakers. But you might want to ask about the topic in this case. See image. From the Bruin:

Graduating Bruins will hear from UCLA alumnus and famous actor and director Randall Park at the UCLA College commencement on June 16, UCLA announced Wednesday. Park will deliver a keynote address at all three commencement ceremonies for the college, scheduled for 11 a.m., 3 p.m., and 7 p.m. in Pauley Pavilion. The former Bruin grew up in Los Angeles and earned his bachelor’s degree in English with a minor in Asian American studies in 1997, and concluded his studies at the university with a master’s degree in Asian American studies in 1999...

Full story at https://dailybruin.com/2023/04/13/randall-park-to-deliver-keynote-address-at-ucla-college-commencement-ceremonies.

The Click of the Brave New World

The Bruin reports that UCLA students will soon have free use of the iClicker app, smartphone apps that allow in-class polling. There may also be discounts on physical iClickers. Excerpt:

The iClicker program subscription will be free for students and instructors beginning June 20, the Bruin Learn Center of Excellence announced March 28. iClickers are an interactive polling tool utilized in many UCLA classrooms. UCLA spokesperson Ricardo Vazquez said in a written statement that more than 10,000 students utilized the tool last year, and an average of 160 courses use the tool for instruction. iClicker usage is expected to increase when the free version of the tool is made available, he added. The mobile app version currently costs between $15.99 and $49.99, depending on the length of the subscription, while one version of the physical remote costs $27.99.

Instructors encouraged the university to provide an equitable solution to the lack of free iClicker tools on campus, Vazquez said in the written statement. He added that the Bruin Learn Center of Excellence funded the program, costing the university less than $2 per student. Some students have had issues purchasing the iClicker program in the past. UCLA’s Financial Support Commission created the iClicker loan program in 2015 with funding from the Undergraduate Students Association Council to provide physical iClickers for students to rent out if they could not afford the $50 purchase.

The digital iClicker program subscription will be free for all students by creating a student account, Vazquez said. He added that while some professors may still require a physical remote, the university is working on creating a program to reduce these prices as well...

Full story at https://dailybruin.com/2023/04/13/iclicker-subscriptions-to-be-free-for-ucla-students-starting-summer-2023.

Of course, it used to be possible to poll students by asking them to raise their hands. No subscription was required. But that approach is not sufficient for the Brave New World, apparently.

Still in the Range

Our weekly look at new California weekly claims for unemployment insurance show claims popping up - maybe all those tech layoffs are finally showing up - but overall claims remain in the pre-pandemic (boom) levels. So, we don't see a recession in the numbers. Not yet, anyway.

As always, the latest new claims data are at https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf.