This is transparent and blatant politicking. What Dean Smith neglects to mention is she has already told the departments that they will be responsible for all costs of any future peer learning center.
How can she propose to ask a departmental commission if such a center should be established, given this huge conflict of interest?
Essentially she is asking the departments to decide the fate of peer learning at UCLA after telling them they have to incur all costs, when they have no historical reserve set aside for this purpose.
If they conclude that such a center is necessary, faculty will somehow have to independently decide how to divide who is responsible for what payment. And all of this will be after Dec. 1, meaning that students whose classes are overenrolled and whose professors have full office hours have no cushions or academic resources to turn to in the meanwhile.
What this serves to do is primarily redirect attention from Dean Smith to the departments, and that is a mistake.
Dean Smith cut all funding from her office to this program and gave the departments absolutely no warning that they might need to save for this contingency.
It is the Division of Undergraduate Education, not any faculty commission, who is responsible for the decision that peer learning, and by proxy, student learning, is of low priority.
Allison Wong
April 28, 2011 on the article “Faculty to recommend whether math, science peer labs can continue” in News