Publications

This brief provides additional information on the role of the Academic Senate in new campus planning in the 1960s. A previous report, “The Role of the Academic Senate in Tenth Campus Planning,” provided background information for the University of California Academic Council and the Assembly of the Academic Senate regarding the potential role of the Academic Senate in establishing UC Merced. The Merced campus is scheduled to begin instruction in the fall of 2004. This report is intended to provide contextual information for the Academic Senate’s UC Merced Task Force.

This brief provided a possible policymaking path for the University of California to would improve UC intercampus articulation, while also retaining the authority of the campus Divisions of the Academic Senate (which regulates course agreements), colleges, and academic departments to set standards for the acceptance of course credit. Two issues are discussed. One, an outline of the current difficulties for a student to be simultaneously enrolled in a course at a UC campus other than their "home" UC campus, and the need to improve this process in the future. And two, the possibility of a policy framework and a proposed mechanism for both improving and regulating enrollment and the transfer of course credit toward the degree and major with applicability within university and an improving articulation with California's Community Colleges.

Two major features in the historical development of the University of California distinguish it from other major public research universities. The first is the university's unusual status as a constitutionally designated public trust -- a designation shared by only five other major public universities. The second is the University of California's tradition of shared-governance: the concept that faculty should share in the responsibility for guiding the operation and management of the university, while preserving the authority of the university's governing board, the Regents, to ultimately set policy. Both of these organizational features of California's land-grant university, combined with a massive investment by tax payers to expand enrollment and academic programs, has resulted in a university enterprise of international distinction and vital service to the people of California. This paper provides an historical summary of the development of shared governance at the University.