ERC Report

ERC Report

Spring 2013 Dean's Memo

The Needs Attention project and this site have remained in hibernation while the new dean was being selected and the humanities-wide external review was being conducted. However, we believe that it is time to begin using this space for the dissemination of information. The new dean, professor Georges Van Den Abbeele, has sent out a spring memo on the situation of the humanities and how he plans to move ahead. While we remain optimistic, some of the language of the memo concerns us. Specifically, he is still using the language of "workload inequalities in the School." "Workload inequalities" has been used in the past to emphasize students as pure numbers (majors-to-faculty and student-credit-hours-per-faculty) over quality, cutting-edge teaching and research in the humanities. Let's hope that Dean Van Den Abbeele will not forget the latter in repositioning the school for maximum success down the bottom line.

The other major concern is the lack of any student input, undergraduate or graduate, in the ad-hoc committee. We might want to consider asking for student representatives, because who else besides students have a vested interest in maintaining quality education over quantity?

Spring Memo 2013

Update on the Foreign Language Requirement

Our friends from Spanish and Portuguese have informed us that the School of Humanities at UC Irvine decided to not tamper with the Foreign Language Requirement after all. Currently, all Humanities Majors are required to take a Foreign Language (other than English) up to the 2C Level to fulfill a general education requirement. All other majors only have to take up to 1C or the equivalent.

But, really... we just keep getting all types of information saying one thing and then another. Perhaps it is time to settle things and ask that the responses to the Needs Attention Memo be made more clear and transparent.

Two Birds With One Stone Or How UCI Managed to Dumb Down Students and Become a Threat to National Security

Two years ago there was a proposal being tossed around amongst the decision makers at the University of California, Irvine regarding several of the general education requirements. The thought was to cut general education requirements (including the multicultural and foreign language categories) in order to make it more enticing for students to pursue a degree in other fields (i.e. engineering, science). There was a protest in which students and faculty discussed how the particular targeting of these categories amounted to an assault on culture but it only made the university governing body flinch a bit and delay what they believed to be the inevitable based on their poor assessment of education and student needs. Subsequently, and during a month of active student protest which included a mock funeral for education on the campus, three people (an undergrad, a grad, and a faculty member) were allowed to witness about 10 minutes of a two hour meeting in which they were told by the decision makers that nothing was going to be cut, that everything out there was merely a rumor gone viral.

A year passed by and the foreign language requirement got cut in half.

Later, the Humanities faced a large budget shortfall. In order to save the faculty and the school, the Dean of Humanities proposed, among other drastic measures, that the foreign language requirement be shortened or cut (just like it was proposed the previous year), although it is still unclear how this would save the Humanities any money. The logic behind this, was the infamous "Needs Attention" memo, predicting a grim future for the Humanities at UCI.

Today, UCI's requirements in categories VI, VII, and VIII (Foreign Language Other than English, Multicultural Studies, and International/Global Issues, respectively), have been reduced to a single course per category (See UCI General Catalog Page 56), while categories II and V (Science and Technology and Quantitative, Symbolic, and Computational Reasoning) still stand at three courses minimum requirement for all undergraduates.

With this overhaul, the University of California, Irvine has managed to accomplish only three things: dumb its student population down, increase their health risks, and contributed to heightened threats to national security.

How exactly have these results come about?

The New York Times reports that according to two separate studies performed in 2004 and 2009, researchers have found out that bilingualism is a fundamental strategy for problem solving that not only increases brain function but helps people to live healthier lives:

"Bilingualism’s effects also extend into the twilight years. In a recent study of 44 elderly Spanish-English bilinguals, scientists led by the neuropsychologist Tamar Gollan of the University of California, San Diego, found that individuals with a higher degree of bilingualism — measured through a comparative evaluation of proficiency in each language — were more resistant than others to the onset of dementia and other symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease: the higher the degree of bilingualism, the later the age of onset."

Surely, a single course in foreign language is not enough to develop "proficiency" in it.

Moreover, a recent meeting from the Council on Foreign Relations which included former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and New York's former school teacher's Chancellor, Joel I. Klein, announced that threats to national security are heightened when there is an inadequate (or poor) emphasis on foreign language learning at schools. Albeit, the focus of the Council's meeting was prompting the creation of a more adequate "human capital" pool for a "volunteer army", the fact that even the military is recognizing the need for more and better language learning and teaching only emphasizes the real and immediate consequences that poor decisions by other types of capitalists like UCIs decision makers have on the future of America.

Yes we are becoming dumber, less healthy, and we are letting our poor military down... (read the sarcasm on the last point). But at what gain?

How much money has the School of Humanities really saved in all of this? How long can it sustain itself by making equally worthless decisions that will, no doubt, end up creating a vicious cycle in which there will be less students taking foreign language, thus needing less T.A.s to teach the courses, thus needing less Faculty to teach graduate courses, thus needing less of everything over and over again?

This is a race to the bottom that all of us will lose.

School of Humanities' Response to the "'Needs Attention' Plans"

SOH Response to NA(1)

The EVC's Measures of Qualities Memo

Here is another document that was presented on June 11, 2012 in a meeting with the School of Humanities. The document is called "Budget Reduction Memo" and it was sent from the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, Michael Gottfredson's office. This document is dated last June and re-distributed by then School of Humanities Dean, Vicki L. Ruiz in October. It pertains to cuts Gottfredson passed down last spring, in other words, cuts that started to be implemented in 2011-2012 and that he stresses are "permanent." It makes clear that the cuts are differently--widely differently--distributed, and notes that Athletics was given no cut. It also shows the breakdown of votes that the individual members of the Academic Planning group and the Budget group conducted on whether a unit should be on the "Needs Attention" list or not. Budget Reduction Memo.2011-2012.Humanities 20110720171641-1

School of Humanities Departments Veto Language Requirements

Our comrades from the Spanish & Portuguese department held their last meeting a couple of weeks ago. The Grad Student meeting revealed that there will be changes in the language requirement:

Departments are now free to decide what their language requirement will be since school wide requirements have been stopped.

English majors will still have to take another language (good, b/c English is 40% of total enrollment in Humanities, they total 900 majors).

The Departments of Art History, Philosophy, Visual studies, Film and Media will all reject language requirements.

History is still undecided about the language requirement as of last faculty meeting on 1/11.

Spanish is expected to lose 10% of enrollment in undergrad courses as a result of these Humanities departments' decision to do away with the requirement.

The ADVANCE Equity Representative for the School of Humanities Responds to the "Needs Attention" Memo

Dean Vicki Ruiz c/o Acting Dean James Steintrager School of Humanities University of California Irvine

Date: January 14, 2012 Re: Departments Designated as “Needs Attention” in Fall 2011 APG-EVC/P Memo CC: Doug Haynes, Frances Leslie

Dear Dean Ruiz and Acting Dean Steintrager:

I am writing in my capacity as ADVANCE Equity Representative for the School of Humanities regarding the November 2011 APG and EVC/P Memo on the university budget, which designated several departments within the School of Humanities as “Needs Attention.” As Dean Ruiz addressed in the Town Hall Meeting of December 9, 2011, this categorization was given to department units whose quality and/or productivity fell short of expectations and requirements, especially with regards to Student Credit Hours (SCHs), number of majors, and overall rating by the NRC. Departments which have been designated “Needs Attention” have been alerted to the likelihood that significant programmatic and structural changes by their units may be requested and, in the meantime, they are not eligible for new FTEs.

I write to express my particular concern that all of UC Irvine’s Inter-disciplinary Programs on gender, race, and ethnicity were designated as “Needs Attention” and therefore face uncertain futures. In the School of Humanities, Women’s Studies, African-American Studies, and Asian-American Studies were designated as “Needs Attention” along with four language departments. In Social Science, Chicano Studies was designated “Needs Attention.” From a diversity and equity standpoint, this is very worrisome. The curriculum and scholarly mission of the IDPs are especially designed to address issues of difference, inequality, and oppression along lines of gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity. The faculty members of the IDPs are disproportionally women, under-represented minorities, and other people of color, as are the students who take classes in IDPs or become majors in these fields. Women’s Studies, African American Studies, Asian-American Studies, and Chicano Studies are also programs where some of the most exciting new talent at UC Irvine has been hired in the last decade (indeed, the last five years). The classes offered by these units are explicitly intended to promote and deepen students’ understanding of “diversity” and satisfy the university’s general education requirements that have similar goals. As Interdisciplinary Programs, each of these units has developed innovative curriculum which speak directly to the on-going transformations in the Humanities and Social Sciences towards more transnational and cross-disciplinary paradigms. Although these are certainly difficult financial times for the University of California and all departments can be expected to make changes in response to the crisis, I find it alarming that the IDPs are being placed on de facto probation with such uniformity. This is not a time to rollback the university’s commitment to cutting-edge research and teaching on diversity and equity.

Of course, the APG Memo did not indicate that units with “Needs Attention” status would necessarily be dissolved or folded into other units (and Dean Ruiz helpfully reminded the faculty at the Town Hall Meeting that any such changes would require a Senate vote). Nonetheless, the very designation of the IDPs as problem units and the associated freeze on faculty recruitment places these units in a very disadvantageous (i.e. unequal) position vis-à-vis other departments in the School and the Campus. The hiring freeze seems especially unfair given that most of the IDPs already service large numbers of students with very small numbers of faculty. Indeed, the Asian American Studies Department and Women’s Studies Department have among the highest student enrollments (SCHs) in the School and much higher enrollments than traditional, large departments such as History that have been deemed “excellent” and permitted to recruit new FTE. More importantly, the reality that all ethnic studies and gender studies programs at UC Irvine have been deemed problematic has a terrible impact on faculty and student morale. It sends a strong message--- intentional or not--- that the scholarly and curricular focus of the IDPs on race and gender no longer has the full support of the administration.

As I know you are aware, each of the IDPs is submitting a formal response to the APG memo that addresses what they see as inaccurate and unfair assessments of their programs as well as numerous factual inaccuracies. There is particular concern that the IDPs have been evaluated largely on the number of majors (as distinct from student enrollments) and that the considerable scholarly achievements of faculty (including outstanding intermural funding and publication awards) have not been recognized by reliance on the NRC data. I write this letter to express my concern about the situation and my hope that as conversations continue with the EVC, the School of Humanities will strongly support its IDP units. If I can be of further assistance on this matter, I hope that you will call on me.

Yours Sincerely,

Heidi Tinsman
ADVANCE Equity Representative School of Humanities

Administration Appoints Controversial Humanities Dean Search Committee

(Via UC Rebel Radio)


We have just received some information about the Humanities Crisis at the University of California, Irvine. Since we last published the documents in which several departments were identified as "need[ing] attention" by the current Dean of Humanities, Vicki L. Ruiz, it seems like she has announced her resignation from the post.

Moreover, it now looks like the committee in charge of overseeing the hiring of the new Dean is made in great part from those departments that were "protected" under the new budget guidelines, and not from the "needs attention" list. In fact, the search committee that's been announced includes only one faculty member from the "Needs Attention" departments: Prof.Nasrin Rahimieh. Several of the rest are not from the School of Humanities at all, but from science and other schools. 

Below is the letter sent out to the School of Humanities Members: 

________________________________

Dear Colleagues, 

We are pleased to announce the formation of a search committee charged with assisting us in appointing a Dean of the School of Humanities. 

A national search will be conducted to identify the most qualified candidates for this position. Interested UCI faculty are highly encouraged to apply. 

The committee will evaluate nominees and make recommendations based on the suitability of candidates. The committee is chaired by Steven Topik, Professor, Department of History. 
Additional committee members include: 

Jonathan Alexander, Professor and Campus Writing Coordinator, Department of English 

Samantha Cohen, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of English 

Susan Egan, Assistant Dean, School of Social Ecology 

Christopher Hughes, Professor and Chair, Molecular Biology and Biochemistry 

Kenneth Janda, Dean, School of Physical Sciences 

Anthony Kubiak, Associate Professor, Department of Drama 

Julia Lupton, Professor, Department of English 

William Maurer, Professor and Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies, Department of Anthropology

Glen Mimura, Professor and Associate Dean for Graduate Study, Department of Film and Media Studies 

Deanna Nunez, Director of Administrative Operations, Bren School of ICS 

Maria Pantelia, Professor and Director, Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, Department of Classics 

Nasrin Rahimieh, Professor and Director, Center for Persian Studies and Culture, Department of Comparative Literature 

Jacobo Sefami, Professor, Department of Spanish and Portuguese 

Cecile Whiting, Professor and Chair, Department of Art History 

We are soliciting your assistance in the recruitment of our future dean, and request that you submit any suggestions, applications, and/or nominations to: 

Professor Steven Topik Chair, School of Humanities Dean Search Committee 

C/O JiWon Kim, 509 Aldrich Hall, Zot Code 1000 or Email Address: jiwon@uci.edu 


We welcome your participation and look forward to the search committee's assistance in concluding a successful search for this important position. 

Chancellor Michael Drake and Executive Vice Chancellor & Provost Michael Gottfredson