Appendix 3: Response to Previous WASC Accreditation

This appendix focuses on several positive efforts undertaken by the campus in response to the three most salient issues raised by the last WASC Visiting Team and the Accrediting Commission in Spring 1990: a) the assessment of the undergraduate experience, b) general education, and c) the twin challenges of undergraduate education and diversity. These issues were the subject of considerable attention immediately following the visit and contributed importantly to the context and selection of topics the campus will engage in connection with the educational effectiveness self-study to follow.

A. Issue One: Assessment of the Undergraduate Experience

In writing about institutional effectiveness (Old Standard 2.C), the Visiting Team reported, "There is clearly no issue here about whether Berkeley meets the WASC minimum standards." Nevertheless, the team observed that the time seemed ripe, especially with respect to lower division experience, to put the variegated efforts of multiple units collecting data on undergraduates into a more coherent whole.

The Accrediting Commission echoed those concerns when it asserted in the summer of 1990 that the data collected about campus operations do not provide a coherent picture of the undergraduate experience, nor do they alert officials to trends that should receive their attention. It recommended that thought be given as to what questions about the undergraduate experience are most fundamental, especially with respect to the lower division experience.

Berkeley responded to the concerns of the Visiting Team and the Commission by making a series of institutional commitments to undergraduate education, developing an assessment system to provide an ongoing, cohesive review of how well these commitments are fulfilled, and establishing a plan to assess routinely the experiences of current undergraduates and recent recipients of undergraduate degrees.

1. Commitments to Undergraduate Education

In order to establish a clear statement of institutional values, the faculty and administration issued a ten-point list of priorities for undergraduate education in September 1992. The list, now expanded to thirteen, includes the following goals:

• To Strive For and Maintain Excellence in Teaching.
• To Use Student Evaluations in Course and Program Planning.
• To Provide Clear and Accurate Information About Courses, Programs, and Requirements.
• To Facilitate Timely Access to Required Courses.
• To Provide Effective Faculty Advising.
• To Enable Students to Take Small Courses Taught by Regular Senior Faculty.
• To Provide Interested Students with Opportunities to Serve and Learn Through Tutoring and Community Service.
• To Increase Undergraduate Participation in Research.
• To Provide Expanded Opportunities for Multicultural and International Education.
• To Help Students Learn, Succeed Academically, Make Timely Progress Toward Their Degree, and Graduate.
• To Actively Monitor Student Success.
• To Assist Students in Framing and Accomplishing Career Goals.
• To Facilitate Effective Learning Outcomes at Graduation, Including Preparation for Employment or Graduate Studies.

These institutional commitments became the organizing framework for arraying information in a system of indicators to show how the campus is improving undergraduate education and the undergraduate experience. This analytical framework, now called the Quality of Undergraduate Educational Assessment Project (QUEAP), draws on a wide variety of reports and data generated on campus by several offices. The fact that these offices do not have a formal connection is an issue addressed in our self-reflective essay on the Institutional Uses of Data.

Using descriptive statistics, the indicators monitor the variegated elements of undergraduate education considered important to the campus (e.g., the number and percentage of faculty who teach freshman and sophomore courses). The system of indicators allows the campus to identify areas in undergraduate education that need improvement or require closer scrutiny, and help document accomplishments.

2. Surveys of Undergraduates

Surveys of the undergraduate experience are administered in the fall and spring of each year by the Office of Student Research (OSR). They examine the experiences of representative samples of UC Berkeley undergraduates on a wide variety of curricular, administrative, student service, and general campus issues that OSR staff develops by polling campus administrators. Findings are distributed broadly to senior administrators.

The Undergraduate Experience Surveys use somewhat different questions from time to time, while preserving continuity of content on the main items. Survey instruments and results since Spring 1997 are available online.

3. Surveys of Recent Graduates

Surveys of recent graduates are another means by which the campus assesses the undergraduate experience. Surveys were conducted every two years from the late 1980s until about two years ago. Attempts at piloting a web-based survey in 2000 were unsuccessful due to technical difficulties. The most recent data were collected in 1999 for those who graduated in 1995-96. The survey asked graduates about their current employment and educational status, how well Berkeley had prepared them for work or post-graduate study in a number of critical areas, and how satisfied they were with various facets of their Berkeley undergraduate experience. The important findings were:

• Eighty-one percent of freshman admits and 79 percent of transfer entrants reported that the academic preparation received at Berkeley for post-graduation employment was excellent or good;
• Most of the graduates are currently pursuing or plan to pursue a postgraduate education (89% of freshman admits; 80% of transfer entrants);
• Freshman and transfer entrants report high rates of satisfaction with the quality of faculty instruction in and outside the major, overall student support services, overall student life/co-curricular activities, overall cultural experiences and activities, and ability to get into a graduate program of interest or obtain desirable post-graduation employment.

These surveys have helped determine areas of strength that need to be maintained and areas of weakness that need to be addressed. Future surveys are temporarily on hold. Under discussion is a proposal to conduct a survey of graduates who have been in the workforce or graduate school for five years.

A special Commission on Undergraduate Education was charged in 1998 to assess the University’s efforts to provide high quality undergraduate education dating back to the 1990 accreditation and the Maslach Report (1991). One of the several recommendations of the Commission’s report (2000) called for expanding and regularizing the use of the Office of Student Research surveys and studies to help evaluate students’ educational experiences at Berkeley. This recommendation provides important context for Berkeley’s self-reflective essay on the Institutional Uses of Data.

B. Issue Two: General Education Requirements

The most significant issue raised by the Accrediting Commission was whether Berkeley satisfied WASC’s general education requirements. Based on observations of the visiting team, the Commission questioned whether the University was in compliance with several portions of Old Standard 4.B concerning undergraduate education: “Berkeley has virtually no all-campus general education requirements. . . . Each college specifies its own degree requirements. In doing so, they may stipulate required electives but are not likely to address ‘general education’ except as a residual category. Thus, the campus as a whole does not specify a substantial core curriculum or a set of general education requirements for all undergraduates. . . .” This observation was the source of extended discussions between WASC’s executive officers and campus officials.

The campus clarified to WASC that the decentralized governance structure at Berkeley provides for school and college faculties to establish breadth requirements most appropriate to their own students. These faculties comprehend the degree to which their internal requirements must provide disciplinary training and the degree to which disciplinary training needs to be balanced by general education courses. Most of these colleges are larger than the majority of colleges and universities accredited by WASC. Thus, undergraduate education at Berkeley is diverse in content, size and organization, ranging from broad interdisciplinary field majors in the College of Letters and Science to much more concentrated professional training in other schools and colleges.

Given its curricular diversity and the strong role of its faculties in setting academic directions, the campus maintained, with the consensus of WASC executive officers, that no single set of campus-wide requirements could serve the best interests of its 21,000 undergraduates. With these interactions and clarifications as backdrop, we describe briefly how the campus formally resolved WASC’s concerns about general education. By agreement with WASC, the campus was allowed to highlight developments primarily in the College of Letters and Science (L&S).

1. College of Letters and Science Breadth Requirements

In various communications with WASC executive officers during the 1990s, Berkeley reaffirmed the great importance of general education to the undergraduate experience. In addition to the campus-wide breadth requirement in American Cultures and other initiatives, each school and college requires breadth for all students pursuing the bachelor's degree in the subject matters and methodologies of the humanities, natural sciences (including mathematics) and the social sciences. (Old Standard 4.B.7)

L&S, which houses more than three quarters of our undergraduate majors, elected to drop its general breadth requirement–six courses outside the major field– and to replace it with seven more specific requirements: Arts and Literature, Biological Science, Historical Studies, International Studies, Philosophy and Values, Physical Science, and Social and Behavioral Science. These requirements effectively added an additional course to the requirement and stipulated that the choices incorporate more areas of knowledge. They fall into three categories that are the building blocks for a liberal arts education: the mastery of the "essential skills" of reading and composition, quantitative reasoning, and foreign language. The seven-course breadth requirement specifies that a minimum of seven courses be taken outside the student's major in several different departments or fields.

The campus took steps to ensure that the lists of courses satisfying L&S breadth requirements include a broader range of courses from the professional schools and colleges. Steps were also taken to ensure that requirements in the professional units allowed their students broader flexibility of choices in L&S. And finally, the campus encouraged students to take more literature classes by distributing the demand away from the English Department to other departments (e.g., foreign language departments that offer literature courses in English translation). These changes signified a trend towards exposing undergraduate students more broadly to the richness of the Berkeley curriculum.

2. Transcript Analysis

In addition, the campus effectively resolved WASC’s concerns about general education by submitting a transcript analysis in Fall 1995 of the course-taking behavior of recent graduates in the College of Letters and Science and other undergraduate colleges.

The small-scale analysis of the actual course-taking patterns of a randomly drawn sample of recipients of the Bachelor's degree provided assurance that Berkeley’s general education requirements were serving their purpose. The analysis examined the distributive requirements for our undergraduate programs, and showed how students distributed their course choices.

Among the most important conclusions were:

• Courses students took in their majors ranged from 23% of their overall load in biological sciences to 50% in engineering.
• Even including courses outside the major department but within the same school, college or division, the highest concentration was 55%.
• On average, students in both L&S and the professional programs took 45% of their course loads in their major department or same school, college or division.
• That left 55%, on average, taken outside their area of emphasis. That is, of the approximately 125 units students took to graduate, they took about 68 units outside their emphasis (compared to the WASC recommendation of 45 units of general education).
• In terms of exposure to fundamental areas of knowledge, students in professional programs took more L&S breadth courses than did students in L&S, 11.5 compared to 9. Notably, they took quite a few social sciences courses: 6.25 courses for students in Natural Resources, 6.78 for Environmental Design, and 10.25 for Business Administration. Even in Engineering, arguably the most concentrated of our professional undergraduate programs, students took about five courses each in humanities or social sciences.

The aforementioned Commission on Undergraduate Education (2000) called for including a distinct section for evaluative comments concerning undergraduate education in the regular reviews of instructional programs and units, as recommended by the Faculty Senate Committee on Educational Policy (CEP). It also called for expanding and regularizing the use of reports and analyses from the Office of Planning and Analysis to help evaluate instructional and course-related outcomes at Berkeley. These recommendations are under active consideration by the Educational Effectiveness working groups charged with improving undergraduate program review. How to incorporate the ongoing review of general education is a question worthy of the working groups’ attention.

C. Two Important Challenges Identified by the Visiting Team

The Visiting Team's report ended with a section entitled, "Conclusions and Recommendations"; however, rather than summarize its conclusions or make explicit recommendations, it listed two challenges facing the campus: 1) undergraduate education, and 2) diversity.

1. The Challenge of Undergraduate Education

The committee recommended that Berkeley's approach to undergraduate education take advantage of its preeminence in graduate education and research, and that this approach be guided by the leadership of senior faculty. The following several undertakings illustrate how the campus responded to this first challenge.

a. The Council on Undergraduate Education

The Vice Chancellor’s Council on Undergraduate Education was created following discussions between The Vice Chancellor and then Chair of the Academic Senate in 1990. The objectives for the Council were:

• To facilitate communication and joint efforts among administrators responsible for different aspects of undergraduate education;
• To facilitate the development and elaboration of innovative programs designed to enhance undergraduate education;
• To provide a unified source of oversight and critical assessment of programs associated with undergraduate education;
• To consider the long-range goals and directions for undergraduate education on the Berkeley campus;
• To increase campus and statewide recognition of the goals, accomplishments, and outcomes of our undergraduate educational programs;
• To develop a coherent rationale for the Berkeley undergraduate educational experience.

Under the Council on Undergraduate Education, the campus examined many aspects of the undergraduate educational experience, which led to the development of the Commitments to Undergraduate Education and the current Quality of Undergraduate Educational Assessment Project.

b. Opportunities for individual contact with senior faculty.

Berkeley recognized the importance of early intellectual engagement for students entering a major research university. This recognition, coupled with the incentive provided by a University-wide directive on undergraduate education, led to the augmentation of the existing freshman and sophomore seminar program, the creation of a new one-unit freshman seminar in nearly every campus department, and the creation of programs that enabled undergraduates to perform research under the guidance of senior faculty.

c. Protecting the Quality of Undergraduate Education

The campus buffered undergraduate education from the harsh effects of the economic downturn in the early 1990s by taking the following steps:

• Rise in average unit load. Since 1990, the average number of units attempted by Berkeley undergraduates has risen significantly and steadily at all class levels, and in both the Fall and Spring semesters. Overall they are within a fraction of the campus's normative expectation of 15 units per semester. We attribute these increases in large part to rising fees: students are attempting to finish their degrees in as few semesters as possible. The fact that they are able to sign up for increasing numbers of units indicates that we are efficiently deploying resources in a manner that provides students access to the classes they need.
  
• Protected access to gateway courses. The central administration instructed departments in the early 1990s that, in their deliberations on how to trim their budgets, they should protect the supply of seats in gateway courses, courses that students need to complete early in their careers in order to proceed through the prerequisite sequences that allow them to begin work on their majors.
  
• Increased use of Summer Sessions. In an effort to accommodate expanding enrollment, Summer Sessions is now fully funded by the State. This funding allows the campus to offer more attractive courses and enroll greater numbers of UC students during the summer.
  
• Distributing student demand more evenly across the curriculum. Some examples of this include increased offerings of undergraduate minors by professional schools and colleges, sharing the teaching of reading and composition courses among sixteen departments and programs instead of the English and Comparative Literature departments alone, and sponsoring 108 courses that satisfy the American Cultures requirement among multiple departments.

d. Commission on Undergraduate Education

The Commission on Undergraduate Education was established in 1998 and charged to assess what the University does to provide the highest quality undergraduate education and to make recommendations of steps the University might take to enhance the undergraduate educational experience. The Commission’s recommendations in its final report (2000) were grouped into four broad categories: 1) Integrate inquiry-based learning into every phase of the undergraduate education; 2) Ensure that all undergraduates have the opportunity to become literate and numerate across a broad range of disciplines by the time they graduate; 3) Improve the availability and quality of advising for both declared and undeclared students; and 4) Regularize the institutional assessment of undergraduate education on the Berkeley campus. This report established the framework for 1) the mission and charge for the newly created position of Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education; and 2) the development of the campus’s WASC Institutional Proposal for its current accreditation.

e. Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education

Perhaps the two most important developments in undergraduate education since the 1990 visit were the creation of a Cabinet level position responsible for undergraduate education and the appointment of Vice Provost Christina Maslach to head the new division (2001). The Division provides for the first time in the senior administration a single point of focus for undergraduate education, which spans all colleges, schools and departments. The Division's mission is to:

• Promote excellence in undergraduate teaching and learning;
• Encourage innovation and academic enrichment in the undergraduate curriculum;
• Enhance academic support services;
• Promote academic programs and services in support of diversity;
• Integrate and advance the use of educational technology;
• Provide oversight for multi-college and campus-wide programs.

Through consultation, advocacy and purposeful planning, the new Vice Provost will act to capitalize on the benefits and ameliorate the problems associated with the decentralization of responsibility for the University’s undergraduate education mission identified by the 1990 Visiting Team.

2. The Challenge of Diversity

The Visiting Team’s report also stated that faculty leadership is needed to meet the second challenge: diversity. The thrust of the Team's discussion was that, when Berkeley's women and minority students look at the curriculum, course content, support services, faculty, administration and staff, they do not see themselves. According to the report, faculty leadership is needed in providing systemic, purposeful recognition in the culture and content of faculty, staff and offerings of their existence. The Team also felt that a decision-making structure is needed in which the respective units subscribe to the goals and assume responsibility to work together.

Because many aspects of the previous Visiting Team’s observations about diversity are addressed in the self-reflective essay on Campus Diversity in the preparatory report, no further elaboration is provided here. The campus continues to value diversity, and much progress has been made in recruitment and hiring a diverse workforce, despite the constraints under which California’s public colleges and universities operate in comparison with their peers.

Concluding Observations

One of the key outcomes of the campus’s 1990 accreditation experience was the positive dialogue it initiated between the campus and WASC officers and commissioners about the nature of accreditation for large public research universities. WASC was engaged in similar conversations with other member institutions. In due course, those discussions culminated in the creation of the new accreditation model. Berkeley participated fully in those discussions and enthusiastically embraced the new accreditation process. While critical at times of the former process, we acknowledge its importance in identifying important issues in undergraduate education for the campus to address then and now.

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