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Viewpoint:
Make the student experience top priority when managing growth
By Ally McNally, ASUC Vice President As a senior
at Cal and as the Associated Students of the University of California
vice president of academic affairs, I recognize that students have a lot
at stake when faced with issues of growth for the UC system.
Many students
already feel like mere numbers on their student identification cards,
disconnected from the intellectual community of the campus. Expansion
of the Berkeley campus to accommodate the influx of 4,000 students from
now though 2010 will impact the sense of an intellectual community on
campus and will threaten the quality of students' education, if careful
planning is not undertaken.
When I claim
that growth will negatively affect students' education if we do not actively
address community issues, I am assuming that participation in the rigorous
academic and social community of this campus dramatically enhances classroom
learning, as well as intellectual and personal development. So, in order
to preserve the quality of our undergraduate education in light of growth,
Berkeley must strengthen the connection between students and faculty by
creating opportunities for faculty to student mentorship and scholarly
research, strengthening and expanding the academic advising services,
and maintaining smaller classroom sizes.
In terms
of the physical planning, Berkeley must create a strong student center
to maintain a sense of cohesion between members of the student body and
to provide opportunities for students of different academic and social
backgrounds to meet, discuss and get access to campus information. If
Berkeley were to construct satellite campuses in surrounding communities,
students involved in such programs would still need a place on the central
campus to interact with other students and to feel connected to the central
university. In addition, Berkeley must consolidate the bureaucracy and
should renegotiate its student services given the advances on the Internet
in regards to access of information and Web-based services.
Increased
enrollments may provide Berkeley with an opportunity to think creatively
about how it operates and uses its facilities and resources. However,
I propose that unless we prioritize intellectual community, issues such
as growth will make this university even more impersonal and will threaten
the quality of a Berkeley education.
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