TCAC
August 1999 Report Index
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In 1989 the state legislature authorized the establishment of five branch campuses, three to be operated by WSU and two by the UW (one in Tacoma, and the other in the Bothell-Woodinville area). This legislative action, strongly reinforced by naming the latter two branches the University of Washington Bothell and The University of Washington Tacoma, established the Three Campus University of Washington. As explicitly noted in the prologue to the enabling legislation, the clear intention of the legislature was to address the "insufficient and inequitable access to upper-division baccalaureate and graduate education" for place-bound, time-bound and work-bound citizens in the five urban regions immediately surrounding the new branches (Appendix 1A). The perceived economic consequences arising from the "lack of sufficient educational opportunities" for "some of the state's urban areas" are stated explicitly: "The lack of sufficient educational opportunities in metropolitan areas also affects the economy of the underserved communities. Businesses benefit from the access to the research and teaching capabilities of institutions of higher education. The absence of these institutions from some of the state's major urban centers prevents beneficial interaction between businesses in these communities and the state's universities."
Following the action of the legislature, the two new UW campuses opened in the fall quarter of 1990. They came to be and they continue to be under the authority of the UW Board of Regents, president and provost with the chief academic and administrative officers of these new campuses reporting to and serving at the pleasure both of the president and the provost. For faculty at each of the three campuses, their appointments reside at that campus alone unless adjunct or joint status is extended on an individual basis by a program, department, college or school at another campus. Even in the case of adjunct appointments, tenure resides exclusively at one campus.
Since 1989 one challenge facing the legislature and the state's colleges and universities has become evermore evident; namely, providing the state's citizens adequate access to all levels of higher education between now and 2010. The impact of addressing this access issue on the Three Campus University of Washington must not be underestimated. Simply put, it will be a major effort for the UW in the coming decade to provide quality educational opportunities to an ever-increasing number of students, i.e., the baby-boom-echo cohort, as well as people beyond the traditional student age who intend to develop new career opportunities, or to continue interrupted educations and thereby enhance their future. The actual increase in new students to be served by the UW in the next decade will be determined by the availability of resources and the dictates of good practice and, therefore, is unknown. Even so, based upon the expected trajectory of the regional economy and upon the operating budgets of the 1995-1997, the 1997-1999 and the 1999-2001 biennia, it is safe to anticipate that growth during the coming decade will be measured in thousands of new UW students, not hundreds. It is also clear that a substantial portion of the growth of the UW, perhaps as much as two-thirds, will occur at UW Bothell and UW Tacoma. Thus, both from an operations and capital perspective, it is evident that UW Bothell and UW Tacoma are now, and will continue to be, in the business of aggressive growth through 2010. As a result, they will be an ever-larger piece of the Three Campus UW.
The preceding paragraphs summarize the context in which the newly formed Three Campus Advisory Committee (hereafter, the TCAC) has been charged with providing advocacy and vision for the Three Campus University. At this point, all the campuses are doing well generally, but the forces of change that will act upon them in the coming years are formidable: serving thousands of added students effectively, providing significant numbers of students with opportunities to learn at a distance, doing all this at the smallest possible cost per FTE, serving the economic and other societal needs of the region, maintaining a world class research effort, etc. As the committee considers these forces (several of which are interconnected) and looks out five years or so, it offers the following broad vision for the Three Campus University of Washington:
Part of the challenge of achieving a suitable balance will arise directly from the expectations of students. On the one hand, many UW students in the future will be attracted to high-quality educational opportunities primarily offered on or from one campus just as have thousands of students in the past. On the other hand, the committee envisions other students, in significant numbers, who will be attracted to unique, high-quality educational opportunities spanning all three campuses; these will be opportunities which are greater than those accruing from a simple summing of various isolated experiences on the three campuses, i.e., where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. If this piece of the committee's vision is to come to fruition, thoughtful, efficient connections and coordination among the campuses will be required. Obviously, achieving the desired connections and coordination during a period when the new campuses also are experiencing dramatic growth constitutes a special challenge. In this report, the committee outlines its perception of that challenge and offers advice consistent with the effective development of the individual campuses as well as the three campus university.
To sustain effective and continuous growth at the UW and, most importantly, to provide superior educational opportunities for future students, new, high-quality academic programs will need to be developed biennia after biennia, particularly at UW Bothell and UW Tacoma. This kind of effort, along with the other work related to growth, which collectively is referred to as institution building, has already placed and, for the next twelve years, will continue to place demands on faculty and staff at all three campuses. However, for a large number of the faculty and staff at UW Bothell and UW Tacoma, the demand currently goes well beyond the typical service work at a mature, established university. Recent faculty workload surveys at UW Tacoma corroborate the magnitude of the net service demand on all the faculty at the new campuses, both in the area of institution building and institution maintenance. Based upon a 59% response of these self-reports, analysis (at the 95% confidence interval) reveals that faculty devote 50% to 51% of their time to teaching activities, 27% to 33% to the net of service activities and 12% to 19% to scholarship. Further, the Tacoma faculty report that approximately 50% of their service component is devoted to institution building. The process of building an evermore effective Three Campus UW will put even more demand on UW Bothell and UW Tacoma faculty in the service area and thus, will tend to skew the relative effort expended on service to even larger values (Appendices 7 and 8).
To sustain effective and continuous growth at the UW and, most importantly, to provide superior educational opportunities for future students, new, high-quality academic programs will need to be developed biennia after biennia, particularly at UW Bothell and UW Tacoma. This kind of effort, along with the other work related to growth, which collectively is referred to as institution building, has already placed and, for the next twelve years, will continue to place demands on faculty and staff at all three campuses. However, for a large number of the faculty and staff at UW Bothell and UW Tacoma, the demand currently goes well beyond the typical service work at a mature, established university. Recent faculty workload surveys at UW Tacoma corroborate the magnitude of the net service demand on all the faculty at the new campuses, both in the area of institution building and institution maintenance. Based upon a 59% response of these self-reports, analysis (at the 95% confidence interval) reveals that faculty devote 50% to 51% of their time to teaching activities, 27% to 33% to the net of service activities and 12% to 19% to scholarship. Further, the Tacoma faculty report that approximately 50% of their service component is devoted to institution building. The process of building an evermore effective Three Campus UW will put even more demand on UW Bothell and UW Tacoma faculty in the service area and thus, will tend to skew the relative effort expended on service to even larger values (Appendices 7 and 8).
However, if the ratio of net service to scholarship is adjusted such that the percentage of time spent on scholarship is no less than that on service, including the component arising from three campus development, then the committee anticipates that the negative consequences predicted above will be avoided. Most importantly, the quality of educational experiences for students then will be sustained over time. Achieving the situation where time spent on scholarship is no less than that on service also will have another major consequence; into the foreseeable future, all the major issues surrounding appointment and promotion of all UW faculty members can be effectively and fairly addressed within one shared set of guidelines and values, namely, those described in chapter 24 of the Faculty Code in the UW Handbook. From the committee's perspective, achieving the situation outlined above is essential and will result in the UW reflecting key hallmarks of an effective, viable and yet appropriately diverse three campus public university: i.e., 1) where the quality of educational experiences for students is sustained year after year, 2) where the distinct roles and missions of different units, colleges, schools and campuses are respected and complementary and where sufficient local autonomy exists to sustain this distinctiveness and 3) where, over many years, enough in common is shared, concerning the expectation of faculty activity, that a single code describing scholarly and professional qualifications is applied and embraced throughout the entire university.
The following key phrases quoted from Section 24-32 "Scholarly and Professional Qualifications of Faculty Members" of the Faculty Code (Appendix 2) illustrate the last point above:
Keeping the benefits to students in mind, the committee recognizes the necessity of sustaining high-quality institution building (and, therefore, high-quality educational opportunities at UW Bothell and UW Tacoma) during this coming period of significant growth. Again, with students in mind, it also perceives the key importance, over time, of enabling the faculty at UW Bothell and UW Tacoma to engage consistently in successful professional development as teachers and scholars (i.e., in renewal) and, further, to engage fully in building the viable, effective and diverse Three Campus UW mentioned above. The committee has concluded that a synergistic combination of three conditions will be required to attain all these desired results:
The case for enhanced cross-campus faculty collaboration, implied above and stated explicitly in the second bullet of the vision section of this Executive Summary, rests on a number of key factors, which include but are not limited to the following:
