When Katie Petersen learned that two lecturers in her major’s department, French and Francophone Studies, had received layoff notices, she worked with other students to start a petition and write to the dean of humanities.
The fourth-year student also voiced her concerns by speaking to the team from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges at its open meeting for undergraduate students on Feb. 25.
The accreditation association’s four-year review of UCLA will end in July, confirming the quality of the university’s academic programs and identifying areas that could use improvement. Only accredited institutions can distribute federal financial aid.
“(The association) looks in on campus periodically and asks us to really think about what we’re doing,” said Academic Senate Chair Robin Garrell. “It provides an outside look which brings additional energy to projects.”
As part of the evaluation, the visiting team spoke with staff and faculty as well as students. The open meetings educated participants about the evaluation process and helped the committee pinpoint issues that are important to the Bruin community, said team member Bill Ladusaw, vice provost and dean of undergraduate education at UC Santa Cruz.
“It’s great that they can take down our input and bring it to higher up people. Students can have really good ideas about the problems administrators deal with,” Petersen said. “(Communication) is what’s missing here, and that’s why students are so frustrated.”
Several of the 12 students who attended the open meeting for undergraduates said they viewed the committee as a middleman who could pass on their opinions to UCLA officials.
“If (the committee) hears a theme or a thread we can tell the administration, “˜We heard the following concerns,'” Ladusaw said, adding that there is no guarantee UCLA officials will take action.
Academic Affairs Commissioner Layhannara Tep said she spoke to the committee about implementing a diversity requirement in the College of Letters and Science. Courses in areas such as ethnic studies, women’s studies and disabilities studies would fulfill the proposed requirement.
“It’s very important for diversity in race, gender, sexuality to be reflected in the general education curriculum,” Tep said. “It’s important for students to learn about who they’re going to school with every day.”
On the other hand, faculty members said they attended the meeting to find out what standards the reaccreditation team judges by.
Katy Kolodziejski, part of the WASC team at UCLA, asked the committee to clarify their purpose. Her office informally helps members of the UCLA community resolve conflicts.
“My questions were really related to what the view of the team was like,” Kolodziejski said. “How do you measure educational effectiveness? Who judges the effectiveness? It’s just vague.”
Ultimately, the review process has brought several changes to the UCLA campus, said Judith Smith, vice provost for undergraduate education.
For example, during the evaluation the university has worked on developing Moodle, a common platform for Web-based instruction where teachers can post quizzes or other exercises, Smith said.
UCLA’s capstone initiative, which encourages departments to include a culminating project as part of their undergraduate majors, was also a product of the reaccreditation process, Ladusaw said.
But the process is not perfect. As the university nears the end of its evaluation, UCLA officials said they have begun to talk to the accreditation association about shortening the time frame of the process to three years.
“We started (preparing for the evaluation) in 2005 and now it’s 2010, so one can get rather weary of it,” Smith said. “In part, this was their delay, not our delay. We were ready for the (visit in 2008), but they were not able to put together a site visit team, and that delayed us nearly a year and a half.”
This summer, the accrediting association’s senior college commission will schedule the next reaccreditation visit and suggest an interim report or visit. The next full-fledged review cycle will start in about eight years, Smith said.