Present: Genaro Padilla (Co-chair), Carolyn Porter (Co-chair), Robert Brentano, George Breslauer, Barbara Davis, Catherine Koshland, Christina Maslach, Ellen Meltzer, Kwong-Loi Shun, Angelica Stacy, Mark Tanouye, Ling-Chi Wang
Staff: Gail Kaufman, Cynthia Schrager, Alix Schwartz

Unable to attend: Alice Agogino, Michael Mascuch

Dean Porter began the meeting with introductions and a brief overview of the original charge to the Commission and its work of last year. Dean Porter described three general areas of work that CUE discussed last year: Advising (see Robert Knapp’s proposal on the CUE website), improving the academic experience for transfer and "native" undergraduate students, and expanding academic enrichment options for students. It was decided that CUE would not work directly on the WASC evaluation and, this summer, EVC Christ asked CUE to continue to meet this year and focus on three areas of work through a subcommittee structure: Advising (Subcommittee # 1), Integrative Intellectual Experiences (#2) and Academic Enrichment Opportunities (#3). Dean Porter emphasized that CUE should be an open forum for ideas and issues, and she encouraged the Commission to make proposals to the Chancellor and Executive Vice Chancellor throughout the year, including proposals designed to be taken into account during the budget process.

Vice Chancellor Padilla further described CUE’s work last year as exploring the relationship of students to faculty and the kinds and quality of intellectual experience students enjoy, or not, in such a large University setting. He emphasized that the Chancellor asked that CUE’s thinking about the nature of undergraduate education and the types of initiatives it might develop not be constrained by issues of funding and faculty resources. He described the discussions in the meetings as covering some of the following areas: Robert Middlekauff’s proposal on creating a Berkeley College (see the proposal on the CUE website); nature of the First Year Experience, Residential Life, integrated curriculum, research and mentoring, and advising in departments and in student services.

Professor Breslauer commented on the excellence of student support now available at the University and asked if the charge to the committee is to, "Make that net larger or reevaluate its need?"

Dean Porter commented that she thought that we needed to pay more attention to academics, the potential of technology and the special advantages that a research university provides for its undergraduates. Professor Koshland suggested that committee members review the Boyer and Maslach reports (see CUE website) as an orientation to the issues and concerns.

Dean Porter asked staff member Cynthia Schrager to orient CUE members to its website resources and to the CUE list serve. The web address is http://learning.berkeley.edu/cue/ and the list serve email address is cue@learning.berkeley.edu.

The committee then turned its attention to membership and participation on the subcommittees as outlined in the charge letter. There was a great deal of discussion about the differences and similarities between the subcommittees, especially the sub-committees focusing on the Integrative Intellectual Experiences and Academic Enrichment Opportunities. The Commission agreed that there was tremendous overlap between the content of all three subcommittees and that Commission members should be encouraged to be involved in more than one subcommittee.

Because it was hard to come to a clear understanding of the distinct focus of each subcommittee, the members agreed to meet once more as a whole to continue a general discussion before beginning its subcommittee work. The next meeting of the full Commission membership was scheduled for September 27, 1999, 2:30-4:30, in 344 Campbell, and members agreed to block out this time every other week. (Since the meeting, we have learned that a number of CUE members cannot attend during this time slot, and are working to schedule another meeting time.) Commission members are urged to email their questions, comments and ideas through the list serve for discussion at the next meeting.

At this point, pending further discussion, the sub-committee membership breaks down as follows. VC Padilla will chair the advising subcommittee with CUE members Breslauer, Shun and Davis participating. Dean Porter will chair Integrative Intellectual Experiences, with Maslach, Brentano, Meltzer, Wang, Agogino and Stacey participating. Professor Koshland will chair Academic Enrichment Opportunities, with Tanouye and Mascuch participating.

Several Commission members expressed an interest in outlining the ideal features of an undergraduate education at Berkeley before we begin to make recommendations to improve it. Members also asked a series of questions and/or posed ideas in order to clarify the Commission’s role. These include:

• What are students’ expectations of UCB going to be in the next decade?
• What are the principles from which we are beginning this work?
• Are we training our students just to replicate ourselves?
• How do we deal with the double bind of professional and liberal arts education?
• What are the particular needs of students in the freshman, sophomore, junior and senior years?
• Research institutions provide a valuable opportunity for undergraduate students to be where knowledge is being produced.
• We should take a careful look at the role of majors and minors and how to better integrate disciplines for a changing world.
• Students need some shared experience as citizens of a common culture.
• We need better information on our graduates, five and ten years out.
• We need to take a look at departments that are already committed to undergraduate education, and learn from their example.
• On the whole we are doing a good job, better graduation rates etc.—we need to get that positive message out to families.
• Every person who does well at Berkeley belongs to a community. What is the community building process?

Next meeting: Monday, September 27, 2:30-4:30, in 344 Campbell Hall.

Submitted by Gail Kaufman
Undergraduate Affairs