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New center for educational access and diversity will offer faculty incentives for outreach activities
By Diane Ainsworth, Public Affairs
02 May 2001 |
A new Faculty Center for Leadership in Educational Access
and Diversity will open its doors July 1 as another in a set of recommendations
endorsed by Chancellor Berdahl to promote campus diversity.
The new center — three years in the making — will address development
and implementation of programs to make the campus more accessible to all
seeking higher education in California, said Greg Aponte, an associate
professor of nutritional science and toxicology in the College of Natural
Resources, who has served in an advisory capacity during the center’s
creation.
“It’s very difficult to get involved in activities related to educational
access because the faculty are already over-engaged and there aren’t any
career incentives involved,” Aponte said. “This center, which was conceived
by the Academic Senate, will help facilitate faculty participation in
research directed at removing educational barriers in their fields of
expertise.”
The center will provide material incentives, both in the form of graduate
student support as well as mini-grants, to support faculty and graduate
student research, and engage Berkeley academics, as well as their colleagues
from other UC campuses, state and community colleges, in center-sponsored
symposia and workshops.
Berdahl concurred with the necessity for these incentives in a letter
to the Academic Senate after completion of the center’s feasibility study.
“We recognize that there is a very real skepticism on the part of some
faculty concerning the ability of the campus and its departments to adjust
to the changes that will be needed to ensure that faculty efforts within
the center are judged as equivalent to the research and service functions
now used to assess faculty performance and to make decisions on promotions,”
the chancellor wrote.
“In our view, these ‘cultural’ changes and a commitment to an academically
and politically free environment are absolutely necessary if the center
concept is to have a reasonable chance to achieve the level of excellence
Berkeley has every right to expect,” the chancellor wrote.
The goals of the center, as charted by the Academic Senate, are to foster
a student body that is representative of the rich cultural, social, and
ethnic diversity of California’s population and to foster the excellence
in achievement that leads to graduation and postgraduate education.
“That mission is driven by the recognition that youth from various ethnic
and cultural groups and families with little history of educational achievement
are likely to experience barriers to achievement that, in practice, seriously
limit their range of aspirations and, thus, the contributions they will
make to furthering our society,” Aponte said.
The center’s activities will focus the creativity of Berkeley faculty
to develop ways to remove these barriers. Staff will help identify and
assist students with the potential for success in higher education.
Generally, center activities will fall into three categories: research,
teaching and service.
Participating faculty will be able to address research questions in their
own fields, but also develop, implement and evaluate programs addressing
educational issues. New interdisciplinary research in areas where no current
programs exist, as well as areas that will benefit from additional research,
may be supported with faculty mini-grants.
Research topics might include research to advance minorities through
the Ph.D. and beyond or an ongoing research project at Berkeley High School
focusing on reducing the gap in student achievement, which could be expanded
to schools in the Oakland Unified School District.
In addition to support for faculty, the center will provide research
and training opportunities for students and educators.
A major part of the more traditional teaching effort would fall under
the proposed Graduate Group in Discipline-based Teaching Research, which
would be comprised of faculty from the humanities, sciences and social
sciences. This discipline-based research would allow graduate students
to focus their expertise on studies of educational issues that are relevant
to their own disciplines. Take the Berkeleyan readers' survey
by May 18 |
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