AT A GLANCE

WHAT: Public forum, called by the Joint Administration-Academic Senate Special Task Force on Graduate Education

WHEN: 1-2:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 28

WHERE: Ballroom B, Conference Center, at the campus’s south entry

THE VISITING EXPERTS

• Frances Leslie, UC Irvine: dean, Graduate Division, and professor, pharmacology, School of Medicine
• Steve Matson, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill: dean, The Graduate School, and professor, Department of Biology
• Joel Michaelsen, UC Santa Barbara: professor, Department of Geography, and chair, Academic Senate, 2006-10

THE TASK FORCE

As charged by Ralph J. Hexter, provost and executive vice chancellor; and Linda Bisson, professor, Department of Viticulture and Enology, and chair, Academic Senate.

Mario Biagioli, professor, Science and Technology Studies

Gina Bloom, professor, Department of English

Ethan Evans, doctoral candidate, sociology

Rachael Goodhue, professor, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics

M “Lev” Kavvas, professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Kent Lloyd, associate dean, School of Veterinary Medicine

Jonathan London, assistant professor, Department of Human and Community Development

Cassandra Paul, doctoral candidate, physics

Wolfgang Polonik, professor, Department of Statistics

Richard Shintaku, assistant dean, Graduate Studies

Alan Taylor, professor, Department of History

Heather M. Young, dean, Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing.

A UC Davis task force is bringing in a panel of outside experts to help prepare a vision for graduate education here.

A public forum with the experts is scheduled for Friday, Oct. 28, with everyone in the campus community invited to attend. “Your input is needed to imagine how graduate education promotes excellence for UC Davis, for graduate students and for faculty,” said Heather M. Young, dean of the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing and associate vice chancellor for nursing at the UC Davis Health System.

Young is the chair of the 12-member Joint Administration-Academic Senate Special Task Force on Graduate Education, established by Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Ralph J. Hexter in partnership with the chair and executive committee of the Academic Senate.

Their charge letter calls on the task force to conduct "a broad stock-taking of the various ways our instutiton supports graduate education, in all its forms."

This is not a standard review of either the Graduate Studies unit or of UC Davis’ many graduate and professional degree programs. Rather, the task force is engaging in “a visioning process that aims to articulate what we want graduate education at UC Davis to be or become as we approach 2020. The charge is to answer the question ‘what’ much more than ‘how.’

As outlined in the charge letter, the outside committee will formulate its report, reflecting on both the current state and organization of graduate education at UC Davis and offering suggestions for its future shape and organization, and submit it to the provost, Academic Senate chair and the task force.

The task force will study the committee’s findings and suggestions and, building on these and its own observations and any consultations it chooses to make, will present its conclusions to the provost and Academic Senate chair. The task force will also prepare a written summary of its findings and recommendations to be circulated, along with the external committee’s final report, for comments from the larger community — probably by the end of February.

"In every way we will look not just to support but advance graduate education as a key element of our institutional excellence while upholding values dear to the university: interdisciplinarity and diversity," the charge letter states.

The letter acknowledges that undergraduates comprise the vast majority of the student body, and adds that interaction between graduate students and undergraduates, in classrooms as well as research labs, is a key learning opportunity for both groups.

Besides the public forum, the outside experts’ schedule for Oct. 28 includes meetings with Jeffery Gibeling, dean of Graduate Studies;
Andre Knoesen, chair of the Graduate Council; the Council of Deans; graduate students; graduate group and program chairs; and the task force itself.

On Tuesday, Nov. 1, another outside expert is scheduled to pay a visit: Carol Lynch, senior scholar in residence and co-director, Professional Science Master’s Initiatives, Council of Graduate Schools.

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