Vice Chancellor Genaro Padilla, Co-Chair
Dean Carolyn Porter, Co-Chair
Meeting Minutes
March 15, 2000
Present: Agogino, Davis, Koshland, Maslach, Meltzer, Shun, Tanouye; Staff: Schrager, Schwartz, Thomson
Unable to Attend: Padilla, Porter, Brentano, Mascuch, Stacy, Wang, Bardin, Chang, Knowles; Staff: Kaufman, Warren
Handouts:
Prior to the start of the meeting, Christina Maslach distributed a New York Times op-ed piece highlighting enormous changes facing higher education as a result of the rise of on-line education and other new technologies, as well as new forays by for-profit "knowledge-producing" companies into higher education. She expressed her deep concern that UC Berkeley is not prepared to deal with these changes and urged the Commission to participate in creating a vision that will allow the University to keep pace with these trends.
In the absence of Co-Chairs Padilla and Porter, the agenda was modified to focus on the proposed CUE Spring 2000 Qualitative Survey on Undergraduate Education.
Gregg Thomson began by distributing the Office of Student Research's Statistical Profile of Berkeley's 1999 New Undergraduates. This sheet contains information from their central data and from a survey distributed through Calso, which has a 70% response rate. The Statistical Profile gives a comprehensive picture of the incoming class, which will be of interest to Commission members.
Thomson then presented a possible action plan for the CUE survey. He proposes to conduct a qualitative e-mail survey, with a small number (5-6 maximum) of open-ended questions anchored by a brief quantitative section. The target audience will be currently enrolled students who previously responded to the Undergraduate Experience Surveys; 1400 students will be targeted, and Thomson expects a response rate of 30%-50%, resulting in 500-750 transcripts. The qualitative data gathered can be correlated to existing quantitative data to give a fuller set of demographic and other information. In addition, the qualitative data can be used to design follow-up quantitative surveys that use the meaningful categories and specific language gleaned from the transcripts. Rather than attempting to load everything into one "omnibus" survey (thereby driving down the response rate), separate follow-up surveys on specific topics of interest can be further targeted to specific sub-populations. (These follow-up surveys can focus on some of the issues that are of interest to commission members: technology, writing, library etc.)
Commission members responded favorably to Thomson's proposal. The ensuing discussion focussed on the specific content of the open-ended questions. After much discussion, commission members decided that the survey include four open-ended question that address the following four broad areas:
#1. How have students chosen majors and activities (academic and otherwise) during their time as undergraduates? What factors have influenced them and whose advice have they relied upon (staff, faculty, peers, etc.)? What obstacles have they encountered?
#2. How have students made long-term decisions about the relationship between their undergraduate education and their long-term goals? What factors have influenced them and whose advice have they relied upon (staff, faculty, peers,etc.)? What obstacles have they encountered?
#3. What kinds of "discovery" experiences have students had as part of their academic experience (e.g. capstone, service-learning etc.)?
#4 What is unique about Berkeley (i.e. how do we brand ourselves)? What's missing in your education? What's the one thing we could do that will make a positive difference?
It was decided that Thomson will shape these four broad areas into draft questions by this Friday, which will then be reviewed by the sub-committees at their next meetings. The Advising Sub-Committee will review Question #1. The Integrative Intellectual Experiences Sub-Committee will review questions #2 and #4. The Academic Enrichment Activities Sub-Committee will review Question #3.
The target date for e-mailing the survey is the first week in April. Thomson can then have raw data to the Commission by late April. Preliminary OSR analysis of the quantitative data section can be accomplished by the end of May. The Commission, meanwhile, could undertake a preliminary examination of the qualitative results during May. Realistically, however, full analysis of the qualitative data would be a project that would not be completed until, at best, the end of summer. Several members noted that CUE's final report may need to be submitted before final survey results are available. This issue was tabled until the Co-Chairs can address it. The costs and staffing for the survey will also need to be addressed.
Because of spring break, members agreed to cancel the next scheduled meeting on March 24. The Commission will reconvene on Monday April 3 from 2:30-4:30 PM in 102 Campbell Hall.
Minues submitted by Cynthia Schrager
Last updated on 3/15/00 by CS.