Western Association of Schools and Colleges team representatives will return March 12-14 for their second planned visit to campus this academic year. Meanwhile, efforts have been moving along on a new general assignment classroom building – a project identified as a priority by the team when WASC representatives visited in December.
The December visit focused on more analytical measurements of campus capacity standards, said Vice Provost for Undergraduate Studies Pat Turner. With physics professor Joe Kiskis, Turner is co-chairing a 14-member steering committee charged with developing information and reports for the WASC team visits.
During Academic Senate and Federation forums and smaller meetings, faculty members shared with WASC representatives what they saw as a need for more classroom space to keep pace with Tidal Wave II enrollment. That enrollment growth is expected to bring some 4,000 additional students to UC Davis by 2015.
"The (WASC) team recommended we pursue formal planning for a classroom facility," Turner said. In January, a workgroup was established to examine the possible scope and configuration of a proposed $6 million general assignment classroom building. Turner, along with Vice Chancellor for Resource Management and Planning John Meyer, is co-chair of that effort as well.
The building would have happened anyway, Turner said. "But having the WASC team draw our attention to it helped us to recognize how important a priority it is for our faculty," she said.
Turner counts it as one of the many positive outcomes stemming from the WASC accreditation site visits, which take place approximately every 10 years and compare UC Davis standards with those of peer institutions in several areas – including institutional integrity, administration, educational programs, and faculty and staffing.
"What we appreciated about the first visit is that it turned into a series of very collaborative conversations among colleagues rather than a drilling exercise with the team firing questions at us," Turner said.
She expects the same mood will mark the March 12-14 site visit. "I’m looking forward to it, because it enables us to incorporate external perspectives into our planning."
The March visit will focus on measuring educational effectiveness through various UC Davis programs and initiatives. WASC team members will focus in particular on two areas in which the campus specifically asked for evaluation – opportunities for undergraduate research scholarship and initiatives in educational technology.
"They will be asking us how we know we are serving our students well and appropriately as a campus. And the team will want to better understand how student learning processes are evaluated and measured."
Among other stops, the visit will include meetings with Teaching Resources Center representatives. Team members also will talk to faculty who have mentored students in undergraduate research projects. And they will discuss new Web-hybrid chemistry classes at UC Davis that promote more efficient use of lab space. In the hybrid classes, students go online for an overview of the lab exercise they are to perform, including a materials inventory, safety protocols and more. It’s information that would traditionally take up valuable time at the beginning of a lab period, Turner said. But students now walk in ready for hands-on work.
Turner noted that two of the six WASC team members hail from UCs – UCLA and UC Irvine – and so are intimately familiar with fiscal challenges the university is facing in tandem with rapid growth.
"As we move into this era of fiscal uncertainty we want all the advice we can get on how to deliver high caliber learning experiences for our students and really have the confidence we’re using our resources wisely," Turner said.
For more details about the WASC accreditation visits and process, see wasc.ucdavis.edu.