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Table of Contents > Dr. Tobin’s Message
Renouveau, renouvellement, renaissance: French has a variety of expressions to signify the return of spring, of change, of succession, of the advent of a new order. All of these occurred in 2007-08 for the units within Academic Programs. Several witnessed the retirement of valued colleagues, and Extended Learning Services was considerably downsized. Bill Ashby graciously agreed to come out of retirement to spend a year as Director of the campus Education Abroad Program, while Michael O’Connell served as Interim Director of the University Office of EAP. Even though the loss of expertise was noticeable, the departments moved forward with their well known commitment and provided the campus with outstanding service. Since most of the successors to our retired colleagues are on the job — and Michael O’Connell has returned to the campus EAP — there is the excitement of renewal about the place.
With our new colleagues on board, our principal goal, as ever, will be to support the teaching mission of the university. From whatever perspective one adopts, one must agree that we are at a point in the history of American education where appeals come from every corner for making the enhancement of student learning the article of faith on which institutions of higher learning should construct their edifice. To take student learning more seriously, we must take student learners more seriously.
Initiatives such as SUNY Stony Brook’s Reinvention Center speak to the awareness among American research universities of the need to refashion undergraduate education so that, at once, it fully profits from the strengths of the research institution and it also assumes the best characteristics of the liberal arts college. Extra-mural constituencies from parents, alumni, and legislators to the regional accrediting associations (the Western Association of Schools and Colleges — WASC — in UC Santa Barbara’s case) are pressing higher education to restructure operations for the more efficient and effective training of students and the evaluation of their progress.
Since I serve as Accreditation Liaison Officer for UC Santa Barbara to WASC, I am involved in giving assurance that suitable tools for teaching and for evaluation of student learning are at the disposal of the faculty. The Course Management System, supported by both Instructional Computing and Instructional Development, will respond to our concern that, pedagogically and administratively, instruction on campus fulfills the needs of twenty-first century students. The evaluation of student learning outcomes is the cornerstone of reaffirmation in WASC’s eyes. The campus has pockets of expertise in assessment, thanks to the efforts of Summer Sessions, which, for several years, has distributed grants for evaluating summer offerings. The WASC reaccreditation of UC Santa Barbara will offer academic departments the opportunity to reflect on ways to demonstrate attainment of their professed goals in the age of accountability. (I can’t resist recalling the old adage that, the less the State gives you, the more accountability it requires.)
The venues for instruction will receive much-needed renewal thanks to the foresight of the Executive Vice Chancellor who, despite yet another stringent budget, has been able to fund a series of classroom upgradings in collaboration with Instructional Development. Yet, our classrooms are far from ideal. We must seek extra-mural resources to construct state of the art classrooms that will enable our talented faculty to excite students about the challenges of a global education.
RONALD W. TOBIN
Associate Vice Chancellor
for Academic Programs
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