A draft of an academic plan outlining UCLA’s main goals and focus for the next decade was recently released by university officials for review by students and faculty.
The academic plan aims to achieve a transformation during the next 10 years by making the campus more of a residential community, while focusing on problem-based teaching and multidisciplinary research.
“(The plan) is not a specific proposal; it is rather a general overview of where the university should go,” said Scott Waugh, executive vice chancellor and provost of UCLA.
Some of the key points of the plan include creating a master housing plan, which would increase the available housing for students, and making a more “family-friendly” campus for faculty and staff.
It also includes strategies for further facilitating more cross-disciplinary research and teaching as well as making civic engagement a core part of the university’s academics.
The plan creates a framework that the university may eventually adopt, thereby providing a course for achieving the four guiding principles the university abides by: academic excellence, civic engagement, diversity and financial security.
Waugh said that the plan is a listing of the campus’ aspirations and plans until 2019, which coincides with the university’s 100th anniversary.
He added that it also lists the current challenges the university faces ““ namely funding ““ as well as the advantages it has that help make the university a competitive school.
Waugh said that the university’s strategy was, up until recently, to simply “grow.”
However, according to the draft of the academic plan, challenges in funding no longer make general investing practical.
Instead, the plan calls for the university to focus more specifically on “select investments that can yield significant returns in knowledge and substantially elevate UCLA’s prestige,” according to the draft.
To do this, the plan identifies seven thematic areas of discipline, which would allow departments, programs and centers to develop their own plans that abide by the university’s plan, a change from what UCLA has done in the past.
The current draft is something that was started from scratch shortly after Chancellor Gene Block came to UCLA and has since “followed its course,” Waugh said.
The Academic Senate has reviewed the various drafts of the plan, said Michael Goldstein, chair of the senate.
Goldstein said that, while it is difficult to determine exactly how the plan will be used in the future ““ if at all, having such a plan would be useful to the university when making decisions regarding funding.
If the university is faced with a situation where it cannot fund certain programs, having such a plan would at least provide some sort of basis for the university’s priorities and help decide which programs should be funded, he said.
He added that, while the senate’s committee members do not have a unified position on the plan, the senate is supportive of the focus the plan places on more multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research and teaching.
“There are a lot of statements of support for this, but there hasn’t been corresponding financial support for it,” Goldstein said.
The plan also includes an emphasis on more civic engagement research and teaching, which students in some departments sometimes have a difficult time achieving, said Layhannara Tep, Academic Affairs commissioner for the undergraduate student government.
Tep said that students, especially from the sciences, are often interested in working more closely with the community, though they are unable to do so.
By showing how everything can relate to helping the community, she said, more students would be able to see the relevance of their studies.
Students can access the draft of the plan on the executive vice chancellor and provost’s Web site at blog.evc.ucla.edu.