ACADEMIC PLANNING
COUNCIL
Bulletin #68
December 3, 2004
I.
Economic Impact of the Arts
and Humanities
II.
Student Engagement
III.
Draft Presentation on the
Master Plan
IV.
Health Sciences Committee
I.
Economic Impact of the Arts
and Humanities
Provost Greenwood described the
importance of building public support for the University’s arts and humanities
programs, much as a case is being built for science and engineering, in order
to further the University’s long range planning within the context of keeping
California competitive. She
acknowledged that it is much easier to make a case for science and engineering,
which produce new ideas, inventions, and jobs that are quantifiable.
Dante Noto, Director of Humanities,
Arts and Social Science Research, led the Academic Planning Council in a
discussion of the economic impact of the arts in California. Showing data
that arts enterprises generate $5.4 billion annually in California, in addition
to creating jobs and generating tax revenues, he also noted that UC has the
largest arts program in the United States with 51 undergraduate arts majors and
460 faculty. He suggested that as an institution we can do much more to
advertise the University’s collective contribution to the arts in
California. The systemwide arts MRU, the Institute for Research in the
Arts, is currently refocusing its orientation from being solely a grants-giving
program to one that also addresses ways of becoming more advocacy-oriented to
develop public recognition and support.
APC members pointed out that the
arts include a broader set of enterprises with the increased use of art in
technology. The digital arts, for
example, which fuel the entertainment industry as well as the growing games
industry, requires trained artists; scientific communication is also incomplete
without artists. Members suggested
ways of assessing the impact of UC’s arts programs, including reporting public
participation in campus cultural events and attendance at museums; reporting
the value and extent of UC’s collections and holdings; tracking the
accomplishments of alumni, including starting or running arts-related
businesses and participation in arts councils.
Regents were also mentioned as a source of ideas and support.
Director Noto acknowledged that it is more difficult to make arguments for how the humanities contribute to California’s competitiveness, particularly to audiences who want economic facts as evidence of academic value. APC members agreed with his assessment that the state can’t compete on a global scale without workers who know foreign languages, traditions and history of other cultures, as well as having the general skills of critical thinking, verbal and written communication. Anecdotally, it is known that many humanities undergraduates enter the professions, particularly law and medicine, and that many CEOs have stated their preference for employees who are broadly literate to those with narrow technical training. It was suggested that spokespersons for the humanities need to integrate this type of narrative into economic impact arguments that are useful to legislative and public constituencies. APC members agreed that approaches taken with the arts may not work for the humanities, and that the messages of the two should be kept separate.
II.
Student Engagement
Vice Provost Julius Zelmanowitz
described various internal and external efforts to promote “student engagement”
through participation in community service (voluntarily or required) as a
curricular or co-curricular activity.
The Compact with Governor Schwarzenegger expects (but does not require)
such participation; the California Performance Review also encouraged efforts
to involve more students in community service.
Student Academic Services will be
updating previous campus surveys of student engagement, collecting descriptions
of best practices, and making the information available for discussion at the
February 2005 Student Life Retreat. In
addition, staff will be working with the Center for Studies of Higher Education
to conduct a symposium in spring 2005 on the most recent UCUES survey, part of
which addresses student experience with civic engagement. He also noted that CSHE’s newly formed
General Education Commission for the 21st Century will undoubtedly
consider expectations of service learning.
Student Regent Jodi Anderson
described for the APC her interest in promoting civic engagement through the
service learning that is incorporated into the curriculum. Acknowledging that there are different ways
to engage in academic materials, she suggested that the APC might consider how
students throughout the system can have many more opportunities to apply
classroom learning in a community context. She did not support a
mandatory approach, but hoped that each discipline might be able to offer at
least one opportunity for incorporating service learning into the classroom.
APC members pointed out that, along
with research opportunities, service learning could be a way to distinguish the
unique value of a UC undergraduate education.
In response to concerns about the quality of the experiences, Regent
Anderson assured members that courses would be approved by faculty just as all
others are. APC members supported the
idea of coordinating a systemwide discussion of how best to expand academic
opportunities with the upcoming UCUES symposium.
III.
Draft Presentation on the
Master Plan
Vice Provost Zelmanowitz and
Director Todd Greenspan led the APC in a preliminary version and discussion of
an upcoming presentation to The Regents’ Committee on Educational Policy
regarding the Master Plan. The intent
of the presentation is to inform Regents of the history of how the Master Plan
came to be and the nature of the political and social forces shaping its
specific components; how the segments of higher education have developed under
its framework and the how Master Plan itself has changed over time; and some of
the emerging challenges. Many of the
long-range planning discussions that the committee will engage in over the
coming months depend on a solid understanding of how the MP affects and guides
our choices.
APC members endorsed presenting the
historical context and underlying assumptions prevailing at the time about
differences among segments. They
suggested describing how UC and the state have benefited from the Master Plan.
IV.
Health Sciences Committee
Vice President Michael Drake
reported on the three-year project of the Health Sciences Committee that
analyzed California's workforce needs in each of the health professions taught
by UC, and the Committee's recommendations for how UC should respond to those
needs. The final report will be made public at the March 2005 Regents
meeting.
VP Drake used the report on
medicine as an example of the approach taken with analyses of other health
professions (dentistry, nursing, optometry, pharmacy, public health and
veterinary medicine). The analyses looked at what the size of the
California workforce should be given comparisons to other states and standards
of the profession; the geographic distribution of the workforce relative to
population centers; and UC's role in providing practitioners. California
has been an importer of physicians (and other professionals) but it is harder
to attract them than it once was, resulting in spot shortages in key areas of
the state. Exacerbating this situation is the fact that at least two of
the areas that are the most underserved are also the regions experiencing the
greatest growth (the Inland Empire and parts of the Central Valley).
VP Drake noted that the most
successful strategy for increasing the number of practitioners serving a
particular underserved population (e.g., immigrants) or region of the state is
to train them in that region. UCSF's Fresno program is a highly
successful example of this approach, with most its medical residents choosing
to remain in the area. The current increases in medical school
enrollments (the first since 1976) at the Irvine campus are directed to
training physicians for underserved Latino populations. Future growth would be directed to
correcting disparities in access to quality health services in other regions of
the state and for other underserved populations.
The issues facing the health
sciences professions include aging practitioners facing retirement, the
increasing difficulty of importing young practitioners, a growing and
demographically diverse population, emerging fields requiring new or expanded
training, and University enrollments that have not grown for 25 years.
These issues present new planning challenges for the State and
University. Many of the same issues face other professions outside of the
health sciences. The APC will discuss at future meetings the specific
recommendations for changes in health sciences enrollments, as well as the
suitability of adopting similar analytical approaches to the study of other
professions.