The University of Oregon Process for Change
DISCUSSION DRAFT April 17, 1998
Introduction
For the past year, members of the University of Oregon community -- faculty, staff, students, and administrators -- have been engaged in an examination of what our University can and will become, a process for change intended to transform our University into an institution in which research and teaching, discovery and communication, will be integrated anew for the benefit of our students and our community. The challenge we face is not to seek change just for the sake of change. Our challenge is to change to meet new expectations among our stakeholders and new opportunities in the marketplace of ideas and education. We will pursue change out of our enduring strengths and our commitment to academic excellence.
The centerpiece of this process for change is the renewal of our commitment to students -- to become a student-centered University. Where we have kept the focus of our endeavors in research and teaching on students, we will continue and strengthen those efforts. Where we see opportunities to improve the experiences our students undergo -- academic and other -- we will invest our best efforts to improve. A student -centered University will increase its accessibility; prepare students for later life; tie more closely together student need to university resources; ensure high-quality interactions between students, staff, and faculty; foster the integration of students' social and intellectual development, integrating residence life with academic life; increase the diversity of faculty and student communities; --all of this making a UO degree one with increased respect
We commit to this process for change as a University community. As faculty, we have initiated the process to forward our academic ambitions for our students and for our collective intellectual development. As students, we will renew our commitment to learning, to the disciplined discovery and examination of the best ideas we can discover or create. As professional staff, we will create a secure and welcoming environment in which all of us can succeed. As administrators, we will support and stimulate creativity in all quarters of the University community. Together the various constituencies of the University will strive to establish a setting in which our first aim -- academic excellence -- is fully integrated with the rest our activities -- athletic, social, and community-- to ensure that our students flourish.
The process for change has been underway for most of this academic year. During the Fall Term, working teams of faculty, students, staff, and administrators identified critical issues for the University's future across a wide array of problem areas. During the Winter Term, new working teams were assembled to draft solutions for these issues. Reports were produced by some 20 teams, including the Faculty Advisory Committee and the Senate Executive Committee. These solution team reports were culled by the council academic teams to distill central themes and solutions proposed. Though all particular ideas and solutions have been retained for consideration, this document conveys the most general and best of those ideas and, when produced in an expanded form over the next week or so, will represent our current blueprint for change.
As the process for change continues, we look forward to be implementation of ideas from the solution teams. Some of these ideas can be implemented quickly, requiring only the investment of time and energy from specific segments of the University community. Other ideas, those promising the most pervasive or significant changes for the University, will require considerable consultation and considerable effort on our part to implement in an effective and timely fashion. We solicit your thoughtful reactions to this draft; your reactions, criticisms, suggestions, objections, and considered opinions are critical to insuring that the process for change leads to a new and renewed University Oregon.
The remainder of this report presents the central issues and proposed solutions that have emerged from the discussions and hard work of more than 200 of our colleagues from the entire university community.
1. TRANSFORMING GENERAL EDUCATION AND THE LOWER-DIVISION CURRICULUM THROUGH A UNIVERSITY COLLEGE
Beginning students are best introduced to the university-level education through opportunities for inter-disciplinary learning and intensive studies, while maintaining options for individuality and early major focus. The experience of the first year, especially, plays a major role in shaping a student's potential for future success within the university.
"University College" will transform the general education/lower division experience by
- bringing students to a common level of competence in writing, mathematics and
foreign language
- providing a broader exposure to the range of areas of study
- offering an integrated lower-division experience designed outside of departmental
and college structures, independent of standard time schedules, credit
allocation, and grade structure
- delivering curriculum as a two-year long critical core of knowledge and skills
organized in a year-long "block" of 9-12 credits per term in the first year,
and 6 credits per term in the sophomore year
- assuring students opportunities for learning a core of life-long learning skills as well as an opportunity for apprentice-like training in one area
- offering differential emphases or "tracks" for students to select in consultation
with a faculty adviser or mentor
- constructing close student-faculty connections through teaching and advising
- providing opportunities for true team teaching
- offering lower division curriculum through a clear and separate administrative
structure
- integrating learning in a small group focus that does not exclude big
lecture presentations
- expanding honors and honors track opportunities
- adding flexible tracks to accommodate transfer students
- dividing students into residential colleges
- changing admission standards - raising them or focusing them more on individual
students
- assessing student progress more rigorously
- enrolling students in a full-year of coursework, with provisions for changes
RELATED COMPONENTS TO THE "UNIVERSITY COLLEGE" EXPERIENCE WILL INCLUDE:
- reforming the general education concept
with a more coherent set of educational experiences
- enhancing the advising experience
integrated advising for the lower-division;
a spring "advising week"; enrollment of courses for a full year
pay faculty for advising, perhaps through the ASA accounts
- adding September Experience - a resident experience for all new students prior to
the beginning of fall term - with classes, a planned set of non-academic
experiences and academic advising
enriching major programs
including capstone projects or experiences in the senior years in the majors
equiring declaration of major before junior status is awarded
developing student portfolios or other means of demonstrating
skills/knowledge
- providing year-round opportunities and a flexible academic calendar
a true fourth quarter in summer
five-week teaching course modules, allowing for short courses and
courses extended to fifteen weeks
- enhancing education through applied and participatory learning
practica and internships, locally and elsewhere, with credit
expanding study abroad, community service, leadership, and team building
experiences
- opening the door to degree options
particular attention to non-traditional students - state-wide and locally
Bachelor of Liberal Studies degree, more broadly defined than current
majors
General Studies Program - a long-term degree program
- expanding opportunities to cross disciplinary boundaries
new minors and certificate programs
in both traditional fields and in areas of "technical" achievement
- increasing commitment to student and faculty diversity
strengthen recruitment of international students
appoint a university committee to work toward increased diversity
of faculty/staff/students
creat partnerships with hgh school and community colleges; target
less represented groups at the high-school level
- improving the quality of life in residence halls, Greek community; dividing
students into residential colleges
2. TRANSFORMING ACCESS: EXTENDED STUDIES FOR NON-TRADITIONAL LEARNERS
The UO's educational mission must be extended to the many non-traditional learners, including transfer students, returning students, and older adults in the community, who will need educational opportunities of high quality through-out their lifetimes
Transforming Educational Services to Non-Traditional Students means
- establishing an institutional commitment to serving non-traditional students
- publicizing this commitment widely
- (possibly) creating a new organization to design, implement, market offerings
- improving access/service in Eugene, Portland, Bend, & remote sites
- providing technology supported offerings on site, off-site, and through distance
learning
- providing bridge programs for transfer students and returning learners
- offering an EXTENDED STUDIES degree
- creating stand-alone certificate programs
- offering a creative/flexible calendar...new "modules" for course delivery
- providing courses scheduled during evenings; weekends
- creating high-quality digital educational programs that other educators can buy
3. ENHANCING AND IMPROVING RESEARCH
The UO is an AAU university with a transformative mission of creating and disseminating new knowledge. This research activity must be recognized, expanded and strengthened. In addition, it must be integrated with and enrich the intellectual lives of both undergraduate and graduate students
Strengthening Research at the UO means
- strong research programs must be supported and encouraged to grow stronger
- the overall quality of research activity must be improved
- interdisciplinary research should be encouraged and facilitated
- providing time for reflection and synthesis of information being rapidly
created in an accelerated "information age"
- linking undergraduates more closely to the research enterprise
- strengthening graduate education and attracting and retaining high quality
graduate students
4. TRANSFORMING GRADUATE EDUCATION
Strong graduate programs and the students they attract will continue to play a crucial role in attracting and keeping high quality faculty. In addition, strong graduate programs will support the transformation of undergraduate education
Student-centered graduate education means
- providing graduate programs that insure graduates have the knowledge and skills
to be more productive members of society
- adjusting program policies and practices to recognize the realities of graduate
students' lives (e.g. family responsibilities)
- bringing graduate students into our comunity of scholars...with increased
opportunities for participation and decision-making
Transforming graduate education means
- supporting cross-disciplinary programs and training in all areas
- instituting two degree tracks in appropriate programs:
academic research-teaching oriented and applied-practitioner oriented
- creating greater flexibility in graduate programs...fees; terms or modules of
study; distance as well as in-residence programs
- maintaining academic and curricular freedom....avoiding undue private/corporate
influence
5. TRANSFORMING THE WORKPLACE
The transformational changes described in the sections above cannot succeed without changes in the workplace, and, at the same time, will cause changes in the workplace. We must improve our sense of community and our communication both within the community and external to it
Transformational change in our institutional climate means
- reviewing how faculty and staff are evaluated and rewarded
- providing new professional development opportunities
- raising the emphasis on undergraduate education, mentoring students,
and university service
- giving added value to advising, student retention activities, course innovation
and teaching excellence
- strengthening relationships between faculty and staff, and between staff and
students
- connecting staff to the academic experience
- removing the competitive basis for internal funding
- freeing up faculty to do what they do best
Strengthening relationships among our community means
- encouraging collaboration and innovation among faculty and between faculty and staff
- improving communication and strengthening community among central
administration, faculty, staff and students
- affirming campus traditions that bring us together...like an annual fall convocation and expanded University Day
- scheduling campus fora designed especially for students where research centers
and institutes present on-going research
- rethinking school and college organization, considering elimination of existing
academic administrative structures or allowing them to evolve by
rewarding academic initiatives outside of structural and disciplinary
boundaries
- defining administrative roles so we can all work supportively
- creating more opportunities for faculty with multiple interests to teach outside
their disciplines
Clarifying our expectations of community means
- thinking of our students, when appropriate, as our customers and our clients
- improving our customer services
- reviewing our rules, regulations, and assocaited paperwork; simplifying wherever
possible
- raising expectations for excellence, for civility, for responsibility, for
engagement and for service
- clarifying institutional expectations for student behavior and the residential
experience
Connecting to the community outside the University means
- recognizing that we are not a community in isolation
- telling our story well to all those who depend on us and on whom we depend
- informing others fully of our transformation
- improving relationships with other educators...high school counselors, community
colleges
- enhancing communications, marketing and public relations programs so that
potential students and the larger public know us
- adding new initiatives to the public relations programs we now do well - such as
a presidential lecture series, Explore Oregon, etc
- initiating a publicity drive led by the president
- publicizing our programs of nationally recognized high quality - e.g., teaching
credential program
- raising the public' expectations for higher education
6. FINANCING ACCESS TO HIGHER EDUCATION
Oregonians need access to affordable higher education that will provide them with opportunities to acquire education and skills for the future. The UO must develop financial strategies, including tuition and fee levels, that allow qualified Oregonians, as well as residents from other states, access to our educational opportunities
Financing access to higher education means
- creating a tuition credit plan
- improving our scholarship base and encouraging donors to support access
- considering providing tuition breaks for children of faculty and staff
- considering a tuition freeze
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Please address comments, suggestions & requests to:
llynch@darkwing.uoregon.edu
Lucy E. Lynch