TCAC
August 1999 Report Index
Index to Appendices
The genesis of the three campus UW was unusual. The enabling legislation was passed by the legislature in 1989. The first faculty members (all in Liberal Studies) were hired during the period February-April of 1990, and the doors of the new branch campuses (as they were called then) opened in September of that same year. A period of approximately three weeks was set aside during the summer of 1990 for the final phase in the development of the curriculum. During that summer, students applied for admission to schools in which the courses did not yet exist. It is safe to say that most did so on the basis of their faith in the good name of the "University of Washington." (The whole development process, however, was somewhat akin to starting a 30-page research paper the night before it is due.) This unorthodox pattern of development with its extremely compressed timetables has continued to characterize the growth of UW Bothell and UW Tacoma.
It is notable that such a pattern is in stark contrast with the development of new campuses of the University of California. Each new UC campus is comprehensively planned (faculty hired, curriculum developed, etc.) well in advance of the date on which students begin applying for admission. The differences also continue after the two campuses open for business. On the UC campuses, substantial numbers of faculty were hired; the student-to-teacher ratio during the beginning years of each new campus was not considered to be of prime importance. It was assumed that the population of students would gradually grow and that the student-to-teacher ratio would gradually reach normal levels. At the UW Bothell and UW Tacoma, however, very small numbers of faculty were hired at the start, and very small numbers have been hired every time a new program has come on board. For example, at UW Tacoma the nursing program began with three tenure-track faculty members, two of whom were non-tenured and the third of whom was a program director teaching half-time.2 The same situation obtained with regard to the genesis of the education program. The Business Program began with five tenure-track faculty and the Social Work Program with three. (The initial Liberal Studies faculty, whose scope spanned the humanities and social sciences, numbered thirteen.)
The effects of this scale and pace of hiring were two. First, the tiny program faculties were responsible for the development of curriculum (both the initial one and all the revisions and alterations to it), all the committee work (programmatic as well as campus-wide), the hiring of new faculty (whose numbers represented, and still represent huge percentage increases), and the integration of this new faculty into the program. Second, because of the funding metric used to support the campuses, faculty had to make sure that their classes filled nearly to the limit in order that the campus as a whole not suffer severe monetary penalties. For example, if a professor attracted only 25 students to a class whose enrollment cap was projected at 35, he or she could seriously jeopardize the financial health of the entire campus. It was even intimated to the faculty that the level of enrollment was crucial to the question of whether or not the permanent physical campuses would actually be built.
While the new campuses have been extremely stimulating and rewarding places to work, it is not surprising, perhaps, that the pressures on the Bothell and Tacoma faculty were felt to have been unusual. Significantly, faculty members on the Seattle campus have not been subjected to these particular pressures. It seems fair to say that up until the UW Bothell and UW Tacoma proved their ability to sustain a certain level of enrollment growth, both were on unofficial probation. It is also reasonable to observe that until the formation of the TCAC, those campuses were on probation, for a variety of reasons, in the eyes of UW Seattle as well. We are now, then, at a juncture where UW Bothell and UW Tacoma have proved themselves to the extent that they are to be taken off probation and integrated more carefully and methodically than has been the case in the past within a truly multi-campus University of Washington. It is also to be hoped that UWT and UWB will be funded in the future according to a more flexible and responsive system, one which promotes such rational integration as well as (better) promoting the individual intellectual health of those two campuses.
1David C. Morris is an Associate Professor at UW Tacoma and one of its thirteen founding faculty members.
2A fourth faculty position was utilized to hire part-time faculty.
TCAC
August 1999 Report Index
Index to Appendices
