September 22, 2023
This message is distributed to Senate Faculty, Academic Department Chairs & Deans, Academic Assistant Deans, and Academic Business Officers. (Click here to view description of distribution groups.)
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To: Chairs, Senate Faculty, and Academic Staff
From: David Marshall, Executive Vice Chancellor
Re: Navigating a New Academic Landscape
I write to welcome you back to campus as a new academic year begins. The past few years have been challenging for all of us. Faculty and staff rose to the occasion during the pandemic and the long transition back to campus, working valiantly to carry out our academic mission. Changes in the workplace brought about by hybrid and remote work schedules have required adjustments, and they have been compounded by staff shortages and staff turnover that reflect national trends. Last fall, we experienced a difficult strike; and now we have the challenge of managing the implementation of the new contracts between the University of California and the United Auto Workers (UAW) covering Academic Student Employees (ASEs) and Graduate Student Researchers (GSRs). This will require faculty, students, and staff to once again navigate a new academic landscape.
This fall, my office will be working with Budget and Planning and the deans to develop scenarios for how we will absorb the increased costs required by the new ASE contracts. As you know, last spring we guaranteed that we would maintain levels of Teaching Assistant FTE for the 2023-24 academic year, and in some cases, we were able to increase TA allocations in order to respond to enrollment demands, assist undergraduates in finding places in courses, and meet our UC quotas for student FTE. Working with the deans, we aim to provide departments information about projected TA funding levels for the 2024-25 academic year by the end of the Fall Quarter so they can plan their curricula and make decisions about graduate admissions. Graduate programs in all disciplines are integral to our mission as a research university, our ability to recruit the best faculty, and our responsibility to provide a first-rate education for our undergraduates.
Chancellor Yang worked with my office and the Office of Research to set up a matching fund program to help PIs support GSRs and postdoctoral scholars through the end of the 2023-24 academic year. This plan is being implemented in consultation with the deans and ORU directors. Chancellor Yang also appointed a joint Senate-administrative Task Force on the Training and Support of Doctoral and Postdoctoral Researchers to consider how to revise and reimagine graduate student support models in the context of the evolving academic environment and changes in external and internal funding opportunities.
Beyond financial consequences, the new GSR and ASE contracts will require adjustments in how we teach, mentor, and work with graduate student employees. Teaching Assistants have been unionized on our campus for over 20 years but new requirements following the recent Collective Bargaining Agreement will formalize and in some ways change some of the roles and responsibilities of both graduate student instructors and the faculty who supervise them. GSRs are now unionized for the first time on UC campuses, and this presents both logistical and philosophical challenges, especially for research teams that include both faculty and graduate students. Many of our practices supervising graduate students, whether as full-time doctoral students or part-time employees, have to be documented. Graduate student employees (both TAs and GSRs) will be required to report any work periods in which they have taken leaves, and this leave reporting will have to be certified periodically by faculty supervisors. In addition, faculty supervising graduate student employees will need to document separately their expectations for student employees and, whenever academic credit is given, expectations for progress towards degree objectives.
Many faculty will find it difficult to think of their graduate student mentees as part-time employees. Although graduate student research assistants in some disciplines are hired to carry out specific tasks not directly related to their dissertations, in many cases faculty find it challenging to distinguish between the work that graduate students are sometimes paid to carry out and the activities in which they engage in pursuit of a doctoral degree. Doctoral students, with faculty supervision, are expected to pursue new knowledge and discoveries and make original contributions to research or creative activities. This is why we need to think about more than compliance and contractual obligations; we need to reassert the principles of graduate education that are at the core of a great research university. Faculty (and the university) have a deep investment in preserving these core values and traditions: the teaching and mentorship that define a research university dedicated to preparing the next generation of scholars, scientists, engineers, artists, and professors. This is why we need to articulate and formalize the parameters of the academic work in which graduate students and faculty are engaged.
At stake is the academic autonomy and authority of the faculty, who are empowered by the UC Board of Regents to determine academic policy, oversee degree programs, courses, and curricula, and set professional standards relevant to our academic mission. Faculty have the authority to require, assess, and judge academic outcomes and to assess progress toward academic degrees, and they must do so for all graded activities in the university, consistent with the policies and procedures of the Academic Senate. Wherever faculty give academic credit to students for academic work leading to their degree objectives, the faculty have a right and a responsibility to establish the criteria by which their academic progress will be assessed. These academic assessments are separate from assessments of employees’ work performance.
There will be some additional work required of faculty, especially in this transitional period, although departments can share common templates and utilize standard checklists, as well as build on past practices. Although “syllabi” are needed for independent study and dissertation preparation credits, not every “syllabus” has to be exclusively tailored to an individual student. Insofar as some additional work may be involved in developing academic progress expectations, faculty may describe this work in teaching self-assessments when they prepare materials for merit and promotion reviews.
Please review the Update on the UC Joint Senate-Administration Workgroup on the Future of UC Doctoral Programs, co-chaired by Senate Chair Susannah Scott, which includes Interim Guidelines for Directed Studies Courses issued by the UC Academic Senate’s Coordinating Committee on Graduate Affairs (CCGA). The Workgroup is preparing relevant guidance and materials. As noted in the recent memo from AVC Mastro, Interim Dean Rupp, and AVC Adler-Kassner, addressing Faculty Supervision of Graduate Students, sample templates and other guidelines can be found on the AP website under Resources for Faculty Supervisors. Workshops with additional materials will be offered and we will continue to provide guidance about policies and protocols that faculty and students are required to follow, based on mandates from the UC Office of the President.
Ideally, this process will make us better teachers and mentors as we hold ourselves more accountable and explain to students how they will be held accountable in their academic course of study. Over the years, faculty have invested time and energy in similar tasks—for example, in delineating and assessing learning outcomes for courses and programs in the context of reaccreditation requirements. Many departments were able to frame these tasks as intellectual projects that brought their faculty together as thought-partners and helped them to become better teachers by engaging in more conscious and creative curricular design. This moment requires resourcefulness and creativity and a willingness to defend the traditional principles that are worth preserving and to rethink long-standing practices that may need change. The financial impact of the UAW contracts will cause us to review the composition of our graduate programs and the pedagogical and curricular models we use to deliver undergraduate instruction. If we view this moment only as a compliance problem, we will miss an opportunity to both innovate and to reassert the value and the values of graduate education in the University of California.
Finally, remember that not all graduate students arrive on campus with a full understanding of the traditions of graduate education and the work of a research university. We all face newly complex issues relating to academic work performed by full-time doctoral students who are sometimes also compensated as graduate student employees. I encourage faculty and departments to have conversations with graduate students to help them understand both their and our roles and responsibilities.
I am grateful to our colleagues in Graduate Division, Academic Personnel, and Labor Relations, as well as Academic Senate leadership, who (along with Academic Affairs) have worked with their counterparts on other UC campuses and with the UC Office of the President to convey and interpret the new mandates and requirements that these contracts have imposed on us, and to preserve our academic prerogatives. I am confident that our faculty and staff, working together and working with our graduate student colleagues, can manage the changes and transitions required of us and protect the excellence of the graduate and undergraduate education that distinguishes UC Santa Barbara.
Thank you.