This spring 2006 WASC survey represented the first attempt to invite simultaneous participation by the entire campus community in the university accreditation process. The response was encouraging, both in the number of university employees who responded to the survey and the thoughtfulness of their open-ended comments. The survey results point to some general trends evident on campus that present both challenges and opportunities.
External Stakeholders: There are expectations for CSULB to become more effective as an educational institution and more accountable to the public about its progress in graduating students with highly valued degrees.
Campus Identity: Some campus members have embraced an ambitious vision of becoming a research-driven, teaching-intensive university, but other campus members question both the meaning of and the means to achieve such a reality.
Student Demand: The campus recently experienced rapid growth in the student body that exacerbated old problems and created new problems. The impacts on staffing, infrastructure, technology, communication, and administrative systems have not been sufficiently understood or ameliorated.
Leadership and Succession: The recent departure of some university leaders has compounded the uncertainty induced by the fluctuating budgets of the last several years. Nearly half the faculty have been hired in the last five years, and lecturers outnumber those on tenure-track, leaving fewer faculty to take up the traditional leadership, governance, and service responsibilities of the tenured.
Changes in Education: Students, faculty, staff and administrators from different generational cohorts have divergent perceptions of the nature and role of education. Advances in teaching and learning have been adopted by some but rejected by others.
Campus Culture: A shift is underway from traditional styles of management and decision-making to more transparent and data-driven methods. Responsibility and accountability for student success is being re-defined and decentralized. Resources and rewards are being linked to explicit expectations for performance. Some applaud this shift while others deplore it.
Some of the survey results indicate widespread agreement, for example, on the need for adequate salaries and housing assistance. Other results, however, indicate that the reality of different groups on campus is perceived differently. Perhaps the campus has gotten so large that almost no one has a comprehensive view. Each group describes its own experiences, rather like the blind men and the elephant. This is not to say that any group is wrong, but that people in administrative, staff, lecturer, and faculty roles do not fully appreciate the desires and frustrations of people in different roles.
As the university emerges to a position of regional prominence, CSULB will need to attend to the issues raised by this survey (as well as the parallel survey of students). This first opportunity for the campus community to participate in the accreditation process should be accompanied by a wide dissemination of the results and followed by future opportunities for participation at regular intervals through a variety of venues, e.g., focus groups, discussion forums, organizational meetings, town halls, and so forth. Future calls for participation will provide a valuable measure of progress in these areas.
