Present: Co-Chairs Padilla and Porter, Alice Agogino, Barbara Davis, Catherine Koshland, Ellen Meltzer, Angelica Stacy, Kwong-Loi Shun, Mark Tanouye, Ling-Chi, Wang; Staff: Gail Kaufman and Cynthia Schrager

Unable to Attend: Robert Brentano, Christina Maslach, Michael Mascuch; Staff: Alix Schwartz

Dean Porter provided the committee with the following hand-outs:

• Minutes of the October 14, 1999 meeting
• Draft # 12 of the Berkeley Center for Teaching, Learning and Technology
• Draft of " A UCB graduate should be able to…." Generated by the Integrative Intellectual Experiences Sub-committee
• Flyer about Dr. Robert Full’s course, "Biomotion: Solve the Mysteries of Motion

Dean Porter asked that the Commission first discuss the proposal (Draft # 12) for the Berkeley Center for Teaching, Learning and Technology being developed by Faculty Assistant Agogino. The proposal had first been presented to the Integrative Intellectual Experiences Sub-committee, and suggestions were made to emphasize that this was not just a center for "techies" but a center about new teaching methods, and that the Center was to be driven by pedagogy, not by technology.

CUE discussed the proposal for most of the meeting. Much of the discussion focused on the purpose of the Center, teaching evaluation and assessment, centralization and departmental autonomy, and specific faculty concerns.

Purpose of the Center:

• The Center should be a force for teaching and learning at the undergraduate level and should draw upon discipline-specific issues in teaching, with technology being one component.
• We need to be familiar with the recent changes in K-12 pedagogy to better understand how our students have been learning and how undergraduate education in a research university can build upon this scholarship.
• The Center could bring attention to the issues associated with teaching and learning and help boost existing organizations and units involved with faculty development that are struggling due to a lack of resources. How can the Center help strengthen these efforts?
• Make it clear that the Center is to focus on undergraduate students.

Teaching Evaluation and Assessment:

• Issues of assessment, including performance outcomes, is an important element that is all but ignored in most undergraduate teaching.
• We make too many assumptions about what we do in the classroom and what our students take from our instruction
• Present instruments to evaluate teaching are inadequate; they become popularity contests. We need genuine incentives and recognition for those who take teaching seriously.

Centralization and Departmental Autonomy:

• Is the centralization model the best way to impact teaching and learning on the campus? We might want to look more closely at what is happening in departments and in disciplines to inform this work?
• Having a Central entity will provide a richer opportunity for fundraising on these issues and allows the campus to apply for grants where the funder requires a centralized organization. The organization of the Center is yet to be defined nor its relationship to other units/projects on campus working on teaching and learning such as the: Graduate Student Teaching and Resource Center, Teaching Library, Office of Educational Development, Instructional Technology Program, and OMS.
• The Center needs to facilitate and coordinate the work of the departments. In a recent survey, 60-70% of faculty did not know where to go for help. We need to provide a "map" for faculty.
• Concern by departments that the Center will strip away autonomy and resources.
• Faculty concerns could be expressed in the proposal, and then specifically discussed. For example, that the center will encourage ideas and will not exercise veto power over faculty or department initiatives.
  

Specific Faculty Concerns:

• The award structure of the University does not support faculty in departments who are very involved in teaching. This often leaves faculty feeling isolated in their departments.
• There is no incentive for new faculty to change the traditional model of being thrown into teaching courses without much help or guidance.
• Faculty care about teaching and want to succeed. There is an intrinsic motivation to teach well. There are many faculty who are great teachers, we should support them.
• One example of an issue the Center could deal with would be to look closely at the classes with high failure rates and coordinate all the resources we have to improve the teaching/learning in those particular courses. The question raised was whether departments perceive large numbers of failures as a problem or just the nature of the course? Another example would be to duplicate successful summer institutes that have been held. Others felt it would be too limiting for the proposal to be so specific.

Faculty Assistant Agogino reviewed what seemed like the significant additions the Commission would like to see integrated into the proposal. They were:

• Describe that there are excellent resources and talent in existing organizations on campus, and these initiatives have been hurt by budget cuts and a lack of attention.
• Center is driven by pedagogy not technology; use examples such as collaborative, inquiry-based, and project-based learning.
• Provide examples such as issues of evaluation, assumptions we make about student learning, and new advancements in knowledge of how students learn.
• Center is a forum for studying undergraduate education.

The Commission voted to support the proposal with these changes and asked Faculty Assistant Agogino to send the revised document to CUE members before it was discussed at the November 4, 1999, VCAC meeting.

Next, VC Padilla presented a revised proposal for creating a Chancellor’s Distinguished Faculty Advisor Program that is designed to bring greater recognition to faculty engaged in undergraduate advising. He solicited feedback from the members of the Commission.

The revised proposal was enthusiastically received, and the following suggestions were made to further refine and improve it.

• Place a focus on "integrated mentoring" to help students make connections between their disciplines and career choices and to apply disciplinary knowledge to other fields
• Clarify that the proposal is cross-College, not just L & S
• Intention is to provide a strong foundation for the Freshman/Sophomore year, but is not exclusive to lower-division students
• Think about the advising proposal in connection to Professor Stacy’s draft "A UB graduate should be able to…" and to AVC Davis’ working list of academic enrichment opportunities for UCB students.
• Coordinate with other existing advising programs (e.g. CUSH’s advising for Chancellor’s and Regent’s scholars) in order to avoid giving some advisors perks and others none
• Request funds from the Chancellor, with the understanding that once piloted, the program could be supported by the donor community.
• Request a minimum of $75,000 for stipends for 50-100 faculty members
• Include additional administrative costs in the budget including salary for a staff coordinator
• Create a 2-4 hour training program in consultation with advising staff in L & S, the other Colleges and by faculty themselves and take into account diversity issues and other complex issues involved in effective undergraduate advising
• House the program in an administrative/physical location that recognizes and optimizes its cross-College nature (e.g. integrate it into the Berkeley Center for Teaching, Learning and Technology or revive idea of using space in Moffit)
• Create a mechanism for selecting students (10 per advisor for a total of 750) through the Colleges or the residential halls–creating the potential for advising cohorts or intellectual communities rather than simply isolated advisor-student pairs.
• Examine models at other universities — e.g.faculty residential programs or Stanford’s programs.

The Commission wholeheartedly endorsed taking the proposal to the next level. A revised proposal, incorporating the above suggestions, will be circulated via the listserv for final comments by CUE members.

Meeting was adjourned.

Minutes submitted by:
Gail Kaufman and
Cynthia Schrager