Admissions Board Tries Again: Academic Senate
Considers Revised Freshman-Eligibility Proposal

Paul K. Mueller | May 05, 2008

Meeting for the fourth time this academic year, UC San Diego’s Academic Senate swiftly addressed items of business, then listened as Hans Paar, chair of the committee on admissions, explained the recently revised proposal from UC’s Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS) to reform the system’s freshman-eligibility policy.

Originally proposed last fall, the suggested changes are meant to correct an “imbalance” that is “disproportionately borne by less-privileged students.”  The existing system, say the BOARS report authors, “guarantees admission on the basis of a very modest standard of academic success, while at the same time excluding some students whose academic accomplishments significantly surpass this standard.”  It is the latter students who would benefit from the proposed admissions changes.

In brief, BOARS advocated dropping the SAT subject-test requirement; and using an entitled-to-review process for students who complete 11 of 15 prescribed courses and submit SAT or ACT scores. There would be no changes to a campus’ own selection policy.

Academic senates at the UC campuses studied the proposal and asked BOARS to try again. The new version keeps the conditions above, but contains “a much more extensive admission guarantee that applies to the best California high school graduates.” The top 5 percent of students (based on GPA/test scores) statewide, and the top 12.5 percent of a particular school, would then be eligible.

The various UC academic senates will now study the revised proposal, and forward their suggestions to the board this month. (The entire document is available here.)

Prior to Paar’s report, Chair James Posakony welcomed Chancellor Marye Anne Fox, who congratulated two members of the faculty — Steve A. Kay and Martin F. Yanofsky — on their election to the National Academy of Sciences, and summarized ongoing budget negotiations. Fox also discussed building plans for the UCSD-based San Diego Consortium for Regenerative Medicine, and announced the imminent naming of the vice chancellor for External Relations and the dean of Arts and Humanities, with interviews ongoing for the dean of Social Sciences.

The Academic Senate accepted committee reports from Academic Information and Technology, Academic Personnel, the Graduate Council and the UCSD Libraries, and OK’d Senate Council proposed amendments to by-laws — one of which serves to enhance the senate’s “institutional memory” by allowing the immediate past chair to serve as a full voting member of the Senate Council and the Senate Administration Council.

Senators also approved a proposal by the Jacobs School of Engineering to offer courses at the division-wide level. Proposals by the Graduate Council to establish a master’s of advanced study in international affairs; and joint UCSD/SDSU doctoral programs in bioengineering, electrical and computer engineering, and structural engineering, were similarly approved.

The next meeting of the Academic Senate will be May 20 — not the 27th as originally scheduled.