Graduate Changes

Ph.D. programs in feminist studies and LALS as well as a master’s program in theater arts have been approved at UCSC.

Admissions to the LALS doctorate program will begin in the 2013–14 academic year — entry into the feminist studies Ph.D. will begin in 2012–13. Classes will launch for LALS in fall 2014, and for feminist studies in fall 2013.

“Each of these programs reflects the excellence and distinctiveness of scholarship and creativity and activity at UC Santa Cruz,” vice provost for academic affairs Herbert Lee said in a formal announcement.

The announcement said the feminist studies Ph.D. would offer a unique interdisciplinary approach, while a transnational focus would be apparent in the LALS Ph.D.

Before the changes are implemented, faculty and the graduate division are collaborating to finalize admission planning.

“The curriculum is planned out as part of the program proposal, although exactly how it’s implemented requires additional planning,” Lee said. “If faculty can put together an intellectually coherent program where it fits within our resource envelope, then we try to do all of it that we can.”

Finally, a theater arts master’s program has been implemented, with classes beginning in fall 2012. Because the theater arts major will be a conversion from its current certificate program, admissions have already been in place. The theater arts masters program will take advantage of its departmental ties with Shakespeare Santa Cruz and other professional theaters in its year-long program.

Students who are interested in the new graduate programs should contact the associated departments directly.

Undergraduate Changes.

Admission to the American studies undergraduate major has been formally suspended for two years. Students in the major were notified of the proposed suspension in January 2011.

“Since the American studies major is in suspension, we are not accepting new students into the major — neither frosh nor current students,” said undergraduate American studies advisor Donna Davis in an email. “However, students who are already declared American studies majors will be able to finish their degrees.”

Additionally, the economics dual degree pathway program has been discontinued. The program enrolled students from other UC campuses, but according to Lee’s curriculum update announcement, it has not been used for many years.

Still, changes to UC Santa Cruz’s undergraduate curriculum have not been entirely attritional. Faculty and students have developed plans for new programs in critical race and ethnic studies, including a bachelor’s degree, a minor and a graduate minor — also called a “designated emphasis.”

“A pre-proposal for academic programs in critical race and ethnic studies is currently circulating for comments,” said dean of humanities William Ladusaw in an email. “It describes the curriculum needed and the proposed requirements for an undergraduate major and minor and a graduate minor.”

After comments and statements of support are received, the pre-proposal will be developed into a formal proposal for review and potential approval by the academic senate in the fall.

Patricia Zavella, professor and chair of Latin American and Latino studies, said that the designation of UCSC as a Hispanic-serving institution could be a helpful source of revenue for the university. Photo by Kyan Mahzouf.

The number of Latino applicants to UCSC rose 23 percent for the 2011–2012 school year, according to the website of the University of California Office of the President.

As of 2009, UCSC’s Latino and Chicano students made up 18 percent of the undergraduate population, while the percentage of applicants was 21 percent.

If UCSC’s Latino population reaches 25 percent, the school will be recognized as a Hispanic-serving institution (HSI).This designation provides schools with grants and support services.

“It’s a source of revenue that would be very, very helpful,” said Patricia Zavella, professor of Latin American and Latino studies (LALS) and department chair.

Of 26,136 first-year UCSC applicants from California, 27.4 percent were Latino. This is 2 percentage points fewer than the number of Asian-American applicants, according to the website of the University of California Office of the President.

Michelle Whittingham, associate vice chancellor of enrollment management and director of admissions, is certain UCSC will receive the designation.

“That’s going to be real exciting, not if, but when we get there,” Whittingham said. “It’ll really be potentially the next year or two.”

Third-year LALS major Chris Cuadrado is looking for more than just an increase in the enrollment of students of color. Cuadrado, an active member in “El Centro,” the Chicano Latino Resource Center, said he would rather the university do more to encourage the involvement of students of color on campus.

“For the university to reflect the population, the university’s resources need to be available to the general population,” he said.

Currently, all the ethnic resource centers — the Chicano Latino, African American, Asian American/Pacific Islander, and American Indian resource centers — are located on half a floor.

This is where the HSI recognition comes in.

“If we’re able to become a Hispanic-serving institution, that will be a really good thing,” Zavella said. “Whatever resources we get to work with Latino students will free up resources for other students. It’s one of those win-win situations.”

If a university with HSI recognition wants to implement or improve a program, the U.S. Department of Education provides money and instructions on how to do so.

“Let’s say we decide we really need to work on writing, and we want to write a proposal for a writing program,” Zavella said. “They would have very clear guidelines of what that would look like, how much money they’re willing to allocate and how it will be used. There would be very clear reporting mechanisms that [ensure] UCSC used the funds correctly.”

Zavella is on the team drafting up a proposal for UCSC’s application to become an HSI.

“We’ve had one meeting so far,” she said. “We’re trying to brainstorm what are the issues we need to think about. What are the problems that Latino students face? What are the resources on campus? And where are the weaknesses? Where do we need to identify where we could apply for programs that would help students?”

Currently, UC Merced and UC Riverside are HSIs.

Whittingham credits many factors for the increased Latino applicants. Not only did more students identify their ethnicity on the application, but UCSC reached out to more students.

UCSC is trying to recruit more non-California residents for fiscal purposes, Whittingham said. Increasing the number of non-residents would raise UCSC’s income. Due to California’s budget crisis and education cuts, the state can only pay for 11,000 UCSC students.

“Our primary mission is serving the state of California,” Whittingham said. “But being a top-tier, world-renowned university, we definitely want to offer learning opportunities for students not only from California but well beyond.”

Non-California residents are not displacing California residents, because the school has the physical capacity for more students, she said.

The admissions office used new methods to further inform prospective students both in and out of state.

These included “College Week Live,” a virtual college fair to let interested students talk to UCSC faculty online.

Many UCSC students also went back to their high schools to promote the university.

“We’ve reached a lot more people that we weren’t able to reach before,” Whittingham said.

Illustration by Justin Martinez.

Alicia Sebastian works to organize and mobilize a pool of roughly 50 volunteers for the Santa Cruz AIDS Project (SCAP), a local nonprofit. Through its volunteers, SCAP provides support to community members with HIV and AIDS, distributes clean needles to drug users, and performs outreach to educate underrepresented areas of Santa Cruz and surrounding regions. 

Sebastian is a UC Santa Cruz alumna who majored in community studies and now works as the volunteer and staff support manager at SCAP. She stressed the importance of the social sciences program to the greater Santa Cruz community. SCAP runs on roughly eight staff members and its volunteers. Sixty percent of the organization’s volunteers are from UCSC’s field study program, headed by community studies lecturer Mike Rotkin.

Large-scale budget cuts now loom over UCSC’s Division of Social Sciences like a dark cloud of uncertainty. As it stands now, the division faces $1.3 million in cuts as the entire university confronts a $13 million state funding cut, adding to the $6 million in cuts left over from last year.

“When it comes time to cut the budget, people always cut services, clubs, anything that isn’t the bare bones,” Sebastian said. “They cut the social sciences. When you do that, you cut what makes the UC different. You’re cutting away what makes this community different.”

The budget cuts to the social sciences are the largest core budget reduction campuswide, and will affect every program within the division.

“Cutting all of the hands-on opportunities, cutting the social sciences this way, is sending a message to incoming students [of the social sciences] that says ‘There’s no future for you here,’” Sebastian said. “The community is not going to be receptive of these decisions, and it is not going to be quiet.”

Sebastian has even received calls from other community organizations in Santa Cruz and beyond offering support for the social sciences programs at UCSC, which provide volunteers for organizations well beyond the city limits.

“Planned Parenthood called me yesterday asking what they could do,” Sebastian said. “I didn’t even call to tell them about it. The support for these programs speaks for itself.” 

There’s Something Happening Here

Deans and vice chancellors learned that their divisions would be facing major budget reductions in December. 

Sheldon Kamieniecki, dean of social sciences at UCSC, informed his division on April 1 of the large-scale budget cuts set for the 2009-2010 school year. Since then, information about how the cuts will affect departments — and the faculty and staff that support them — has been scarce. 

Kamieniecki declined several requests for a phone or e-mail interview from City on a Hill Press.

Campus spokesperson Jim Burns also declined a phone interview with CHP. However, via e-mail he said that few details about implementing the budget cuts are now known, but as divisional budget plans emerge, these should become clearer. 

However, UCSC has not had to take some of the more immediate actions that the state has taken.

“State of California employees have been subject to furlough days in recent months as one means of saving the state money,” Burns said. “The 10-campus UC system has not implemented similar furlough measures.”

However, Burns said UC President Mark Yudof told the Board of Regents in March to implement furloughs and other salary reductions if they become necessary due to the state funding situation.

On March 4, campus provost David Kliger informed all deans and heads of departments of their budget-reduction targets. These cuts include $8.5 million in cuts delegated across the administrative divisions of UC Santa Cruz, and $4.5 million in cuts to academic divisions.

The social sciences are not “taking the lion’s share of the campus’s budget cut,” Burns said.

Burns said that the academic-division budget cuts range from $450,000 in the Division of Arts to $1.3 million in the Division of Social Sciences. The Division of Engineering’s $600,000 in cuts, Humanities’ $1 million, and Physical and Biological Sciences’ $1.15 million fall in between. 

What It Is Ain’t Exactly Clear

The Coalition to Save Community Studies (CSCS) formed when news of possible fatal cuts to the community studies (CMMU) program spread. Since then, CSCS has organized two walk-outs/speak-outs and a teach-out in protest. Speakers demanded the administration take from the top before considering cuts in academic divisions, and to practice transparency in all proceedings.

A group of student organizers from CSCS met with Kamieniecki last Tuesday and viewed the tentative plan for the execution of the budget cuts, which is online at the “Coalition to Save Community Studies” Facebook group.

Andrea San Miguel, an organizer of CSCS and a fifth-year transfer student majoring in community studies, attended the meeting with the dean. 

“It took quite a bit of persistence on my part to get to meet with [Kamieniecki],” San Miguel said. “We got a hold of his official proposal about how to save money, and we got to ask him direct questions about it.” 

San Miguel couldn’t reveal many details about the meeting due to confidentiality, but he did come away from the meeting with the impression that Kamieniecki does not have the authority to avoid these budget cuts.

“They might not be offering up a lot of transparency, but these things are public documents so we are looking into it,” San Miguel said. 

In the projected plan, Kamieniecki tentatively proposed making the field study program an optional part of the community studies major. 

However, San Miguel said the field study program is vital to the academic side of the community studies major. 

“Field study is far from just volunteer work. It ties directly into the program,” San Miguel said. “Cuts to staff are cuts to the major, because staff support the field study and the same quality of education is not possible in community studies without it.” 

CMMU lecturer Rotkin said that firing teachers is the dean’s way of destroying the community studies program.

“We are not a traditional program,” Rotkin said. “The dean does not have a lot of sympathy for experimental education and civic engagement.”

As of May 1, Rotkin received two pink slips notifying him that, after running the field study program for 40 years, his position will be phased out over the course of the next two years.

Guillermo Delgado and Susanne Jonas, lecturers in the Latin American and Latino studies (LALS) department, both received pink slips last week. The first walk-out/speak-out on April 22 was organized largely due to their impending terminations. 

Delgado has taught at UCSC for 20 years and Jonas, 23 years.

“I recommend the administration to rethink priorities regarding undergraduate education,” Delgado said. “At the end, it’s always the student quality that counts. If you mass-ify education and raise tuition, that doesn’t sound good. They are paying more for less.”

Jonas said the current generation of college students is capable of social movement and change for the better, despite setbacks. 

“The main reward we get is to pass along education about social justice in America and empower students here,” Jonas said. “That’s why I came here.” 

A Bird Without Wings

On any UC campus, decisions to add or eliminate undergraduate majors or academic programs are proposed by faculty or deans within those divisions. They require the campus provost’s full consultation with the campus’s Academic Senate. 

“To date, the provost has received no proposals to cut academic programs related to these budget cuts,” campus spokesperson Burns said.

The deadline for vice chancellors and deans to inform campus provost David Kliger about how they plan to implement budget cuts is May 15. 

Campus spokesperson Burns said the budget cuts are likely to affect all areas of campus.

“[Kamieniecki] has not made final decisions about how he will implement $1.3 million in cuts,” Burns said. “While he is not contemplating across-the-board cuts — neither are other academic deans or administrative vice chancellors — it would be fair to say that $1.3 million in cuts within his division will impact every single program. To be clear, the cuts in every academic and administrative division on campus are large and they will be impactful. The size of the budget shortfall makes that unavoidable.”

Adam Butler is a student volunteer at SCAP as well as an organizer of CSCS. An American studies major, Butler volunteers through the field study program run by Rotkin. 

Butler said Rotkin and the field study program have been invaluable to his education. 

“It’s pretty shocking that things that will affect the end product of the education process are what’s being cut, instead of the tens of thousands of dollars being paid to the greater administration,” Butler said. “The end product — me, right here — my hands-on learning is what’s in danger of being cut.” 

Butler, who will graduate at the end of the quarter, said the administration has shown a lack of transparency with regard to the budget. 

“If the faculty hadn’t leaked information about community studies, no one would know it was in jeopardy,” Bulter said in reference to an e-mail sent out on April 2 that revealed Kamieniecki had told CMMU staff their department would face major staff cuts. “Saying ‘We’re just going to cut lecturers’ is like saying [about the program] ‘It’s still a bird — we’ve just cut off its wings.’”

Butler said he does not see the upper levels of the University of California doing all they can to cut costs on administrative levels rather than aspects directly linked to education. 

Sebastian, of SCAP, said the social sciences at UCSC and the social services in the community are directly linked, and advised the administration to implement budget cuts in ways that will not take teachers or field study away from the student experience. 

“At a time when there is a need for social services and a need for change, and a need for our role in it, the university wants to cut those programs,” Sebastian said. “And that’s the wrong message to be sending. [The people making the cuts] are not looking at the impact it’s really having on the community or the message it’s sending to students and to the world. There is a need for these programs.”

Photo by Conner Ross.

Classroom Unit I was filled to more than half of its capacity as students, administrators and faculty addressed concerns about the ongoing budget crisis and program cuts at the Student Union Assembly (SUA)’s town hall meeting last Wednesday. 

Speakers included Sheldon Kamienieki, dean of social sciences; Felicia McGinty, executive vice chancellor of student affairs; David Kliger, executive vice chancellor and campus provost; and Bill Ladusaw, dean of undergraduate education.  

Each administrator fielded questions from the crowd as SUA internal vice chair Tiffany Loftin facilitated the event. 

Dean Kamienieki responded to questions primarily pertaining to cuts in his division.   

“We haven’t made any decisions yet,” he said with regard to  the proposed cuts to the community studies department.

However, an inquiry about terminating two Latin American and Latino studies (LALS) lecturers, Susanne Jonas and Guillermo Delgado, prompted an explanation about the propriety of faculty members at UCSC. 

“It’s an option,” Kamienieki said. “We haven’t made any final decisions.” 

Kamienieki proceeded to suggest that the lecturers had not taken advantage of the opportunity to get job security during their two-decade-long careers here.  

“If these lecturers are really valued, they should have been hired by the department as ladder-ranked faculty,” he said.

But according to community studies field director Mike Rotkin, a collegue of Jonas’, she has attempted to get hired as a ladder-ranked faculty on several occasions — but her request has always been denied.  

Kamienieki was quick to assure that the cuts do not reflect the value of a department or faculty member. 

“I don’t want you or anyone here to think I don’t appreciate the contributions these two individuals have made to the program,” he said. 

One member of the crowd questioned the inequity of student fee hikes and program cuts juxtaposed with six-figure salaries for administrators. 

Vice chancellor McGinty dismissed the comment as immaterial. 

“I make what I should make based on a national comparison,” she said. “I have no guilt about the money I make.”

Executive vice chancellor Kliger suggested that the financial policy of the UC, as a whole, lacks integrity. He added that the impending fee hikes will not likely serve as a solution to the cuts, since the budget is distributed inequitably. 

“The rich campuses keep getting richer and the poor campuses keep getting poorer,” Kliger said. “Right now it’s very unlikely, unless the budget situation turns around, that we’ll be growing at all.”