Jessica Ngo, a fourth-year economics student, still recalls her freshman General Education cluster to be one of the best classes she has taken at UCLA.
Creating the GE clusters was an initiative UCLA started 10 years ago to be reaccredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.
The university is currently in the process of being reaccredited once more, and it is thus setting new goals for the next decade.
In order to keep universities accountable for properly educating their students, the federal government requires all universities to be reaccredited at least every 10 years.
Reaccreditation is key for UCLA because it is directly correlated with the federal financial aid the school receives; no reaccreditation means no federal financial aid for students.
Over the past three days, a team of five leaders from various universities under WASC, called the visiting team, has been meeting with faculty, staff and students to ensure the effectiveness of education at UCLA.
During its visit, the team looks to see if the university has met past goals, like the creation of GE clusters and to discuss future goals.
Judith Smith, vice provost for undergraduate education, said that UCLA is all but guaranteed to be reaccredited.
The reaccreditation process helps guide the university to evaluate and create new standards for itself.
“It’s a process that helps us do things that we were going to do anyway, but it holds our feet to the fire a little because we have to show others we accomplished what we set out to do,” Smith said.
Over the past few days, the visiting team has had formal meetings with faculty but has also met informally with students and received their input via e-mail.
“UCLA has done extremely well ““ the review team has been very impressed by how engaged the campus has been,” said William Kirwan, chair of the visiting team evaluating UCLA and chancellor of the University System of Maryland.
The reaccreditation process starts with university officials determining three themes, or goals, that the school would like to focus on improving.
The chancellor then appoints a steering committee, which form groups to discuss each idea and write up an institutional proposal. This stage took place in June 2006.
The second step of the reaccreditation process, which UCLA is currently in, is a capacity-site visit, where a team comes to the campus to gather information and ensure that UCLA has the capacity to meet the goals it set for itself.
“WASC doesn’t necessarily expect one answer, they are more concerned with the process ““ how we arrive to solutions at UCLA,” Smith said.
After the visiting team leaves, school faculty will write three essays outlining details in each of the three themes UCLA will be focusing on.
The last step, which will occur in March, requires the group to visit again to solidify the future goals.
One of the three ideas UCLA has focused on during the entire reaccrediting process includes the “capstone experience.”
It will require that certain majors, who opt to be listed as capstone, assign their students to do a comprehensive project as part of the undergraduate curriculum.
Close to 40 majors have already opted to be capstone majors.
The project will vary by department. For example, the history department has a capstone that every senior has to pick a special top seminar and write a thesis on it.
Also, the engineering department requires its students to participate in designing a project.
Smith said that most of these majors already required students to participate in some kind of project or research, and the university is simply helping define it.
“(We’re) trying to brand what this experience is. This will help departments that don’t have this type of option to think how they might begin to establish a capstone program,” Smith said.
The second goal the university wants to focus on is to determine how educational technology can facilitate teaching and learning, ranging from web-based experiences to podcasting.
The last goal is to determine how UCLA can structure itself to facilitate more interdepartmental programs to discuss various issues.
For instance, although stem-cell research is more biology-based, it touches upon other departments such as law and ethics.
In the coming years, the university plans to determine how to best structure a program for interdisciplinary themes.