Academic Senate

Quarterly Update

Undergraduate Council:

• Quarter Updates: 

  • Extend academic flexibilities from Fall 2020, Winter 2021, Spring 2021 and Summer 2021 to Fall 2021 and Winter 2022:

    • The deadline for undergraduate students to change the grading basis to P/NP, using MyUCLA without a petition, was extended from Friday of Week 6 to Friday of Week 9 for both Fall 2021 and Winter 2022.

    • The College and School FECs were granted the authority to allow departments and IDPs to accept P/NP-graded courses toward major and minor requirements.

    • Students are allowed to meet the College Writing I, Writing II, Diversity, and Quantitative Reasoning requirements by successfully completing qualifying classes on a P/NP basis.

    • Transcript notations with disclaimers about the COVID-19 pandemic will continue to appear on student transcripts.

  • Admin proposed and voted to move forward with in-person instruction for Winter 2022.

  • Admin denied the CAE’s request to reinstate the priority enrollment unit cap from 15 units to 19/20/21 units for Winter 2022. UgC voted to approve the CAE’s secondary request to offer an exemption process for requesting additional priority enrollment units
    to CAE-registered students as an academic accommodation.

Faculty Executive Committee:

• Quarter Updates: 

  • Interdepartmental American Indian Studies Program is aiming to be established as its own program.

  • Winter is almost 100% back in person.

  • Aiming to recognize community engaged scholarship in Academic Personnel Review.

Legislative Assembly

• Quarter Updates: 

  • Hiring new EVPC, hoping to have a new person by Fall 2022.

  • UCLA’s vaccination rate is strong and growing, cases are down and the hope is that more UCLA staff and courses will be in person by Winter. Need to strengthen and get more students to fill the symptom monitoring survey.

  • Top priorities are to have a safe ramp up to safe activities while increasing vaccinations and maintaining low covid cases, increase faculty diversity, and
    enforce flu shot requirement.

Committee on Undergraduate Admissions and Relations

• Quarter Updates: 

  • Ad hoc committee on Ethnic Studies A-G requirement will be reviewing feedback from BOARS about the implementation of Ethnic Studies, as an overlay requirement not an additional admissions requirement.

  • Talks within BOARS about TAG and why UCLA admissions has opted out in the past.

  • Impact of Standardized Testing on Admissions: UCLA is becoming more selective, and with a larger applicant pool from the removal of SAT there are positive impacts in that the rates of low income and first gen student admits are growing after a descending trend previously.

Committee on Planning and Budgeting 

• Quarter Updates: 

  • Next year will be the first year where the new budget model is in full swing. Current subcommittee working on this budget model closely.

  • Concerns regarding lowering Out of State student populations and increasing in-state enrollment (lower net proceeds to the UCs).

  • Lobbying happening to increase support, achieve 90% graduation rate, etc.

Committee on Diversity Equity and Inclusion

• Quarter Updates

  • The Program Review Comments of the Self-Reviews from the Departments.
    ○ These reviews are departmental self-reviews regarding how each department has maintained and created more diversity, equity, and inclusion within their respective departments.
    ○ Certain CODEI committee members have volunteered to review the departmental self-reviews. They are here as follows:

    • The Nursing Practice review was discussed. They changed their diversity section to Section E from Section H. The most promising information regarded the gender and racial diversity of the program.

    • The Musicology review was discussed. Their diversity section was Section H.

    • The General Education review was discussed. A big issue was that there did not seem to be any evidence that the program was actively working to promote more diversity.

    • The Public Affairs review was discussed. The program seems to be heavily committed to maintaining diversity and equity but fails to formally refer to their specific actions to maintain diversity and equity in their self-review.

    • The Applied Statistics review was discussed. No updates could be given due to the person who reviewed not being at the meeting.

    • Program reviews pertinent to Fall Quarter were assigned such as the Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics review, the Sociology review, and the Business Analytics review.

​Committee on Teaching

• Quarter Updates: 

  • Next year this committee will exist under a different committee.

  • CTIG developed a resource guide on good practices and things to think about. Along with UCLA guides on tech and COVID guidelines.

Committee on Faculty Welfare

• Quarter Updates:​

  • Committee has reviewed the Office of EDI Evaluation of Senate Faculty Recruitment and Hiring.​

  • Committee has reviewed Mitigating COVID-19 impacts on Faculty Working Group Preliminary Report is reviewed. 

Committee on International Education

• Quarter Updates:

  • Looking for a replacement Dean.

  • International virtual study abroad programs will continue this year plus in person programs to be more accessible.

  • Most international students are in compliance with the vaccine requirement. Those who are not are planning to defer.

  • Students can continue taking online courses in the US or abroad noting that for newly admitted students they need one in-person or hybrid class to enter the US. An exception for the ability to take courses online from abroad is students from 5 countries most notably Iran.

General Education and Governance Committee

• Quarter Updates:

  • Starting the recertification of courses this year. 

  • Conversations about supporting an inclusive syllabus model for professors do follow: The syllabus is linked on our GEGC website. It can be found on our submission page: 

    • http://www.uei.ucla.edu/academic-programs/ucla-cluster-program/ge-credit/

  • School of Engineering GE Tracks: GE Tracks allow students to meet some of their GE requirements by taking a specified set of related courses (typically three to five) to explore a topic or theme of interest in greater depth. 

    • https://www.seasoasa.ucla.edu/undergraduate-ge-tracks/​