Students See Some Good, Some Bad in New Course

Student reaction Friday to Chancellor Laurel L. Wilkening’s plan to catapult UC Irvine into the ranks of the nation’s top 50 research universities ranged from guarded approval to apathy to fears about a decline in UCI’s teaching quality.

With the fall quarter less than two weeks away and the campus largely quiet, news of the chancellor’s vision for the estimated 13,000 undergraduates and 3,000 graduates spread slowly. Most students received word of the chancellor’s plan from an eight-page campus newspaper in which Wilkening outlined her ideas to bolster university research while coping with state funding cuts to UCI of $35 million since 1990.

Undergraduate and graduate student leaders, who convened separately to discuss the chancellor’s plan, seemed supportive of its ideals but questioned its specifics and implementation.

“I do see a lot of her long-term vision and that’s good,” said Bryan Hannegan, 24, of Irvine, a doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering and a vice president of a graduate student government. “But from a student perspective, we’d like to know what is going to happen in the short term.”

Added undergraduate vice president and social ecology major Michelle Tsui: “It’s looking pretty good now. We will be looking to see how the student community will respond and how (the plan) will be implemented.”

But other students whose department fell victim to the university streamlining expressed disappointment with the chancellor’s choices. Students in the comparative culture program, the university’s only academic casualty thus far, were particularly upset.

“(The program) offered a unique perspective beyond the dominant culture,” said Jaime Ruiz, 23, of Carson, who is a double major in history and comparative culture. “It was the only anti-Establishment program. I found it more intellectually stimulating . . . than other courses which espouse middle-class values.”

Many students in humanities courses also feared that the chancellor’s plan signals a further trend toward what they described as the overvaluing of research and undervaluing of undergraduate teaching.

“The emphasis on this cut-and-dried research rather than teachers that have actually helped students is completely detrimental to the university,” said Michael Allen, 23, a senior history major from Cerritos. “I’d look at other schools if I had it to do over again.”

“I think students feel research is more important than undergraduates,” added Desiree Hedberg, editor of the New University.

Hedberg said the student newspaper will comment on the chancellor’s plan point by point in an issue due out Monday. Eliminating the comparative cultures department is a blow to undergraduates, Hedberg said, but at least the chancellor’s statement seemed to consider their concerns about teaching quality.

“Often, we’ve felt pretty ignored” by the administration, said Hedberg, 21, a senior English major from the San Francisco Bay area.

Other students shrugged off Wilkening’s announcement. Bryan Allred, who received his undergraduate degree from UCI and is now a graduate student in civil engineering, seemed unfazed by the chancellor’s plans.

“There’s been so many changes and cutbacks that after a while I think you become oblivious,” said the 23-year-old from Irvine.