UCI, Chapman Join in Rare Public-Private Undergrad Program

In a rare joint undergraduate academic effort between a University of California campus and a private school, UC Irvine and Chapman University are offering a five-year program with two bachelor’s degrees--in engineering, and in math or chemistry.

The engineering program, which begins this school year, allows students to start their course work at the smaller, more personal Chapman, which has 4,000 students. They would finish at the research-oriented UCI, which is expected to reach the 30,000-student level within a decade.

Some UC campuses do offer joint programs with California state universities. The only other joint-degree program with a private school is a doctorate in Jewish studies given by UC Berkeley and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, UC spokeswoman Mary Spletter said.

While public-private collaborations are not unprecedented at colleges nationally, they are rare.

“We’re seeing more of this,” said Sheldon Steinbach, general counsel for the American Council on Education in Washington, D.C. “This kind of partnership is part of 21st century higher education.”

Chapman, pushing hard to improve its academic quality, appears to gain the most from the program by associating itself with the more prestigious UCI.

“I think any relationship with UCI is good,” said Frank Frisch, chairman of Chapman’s Division of Natural and Applied Sciences. “They are a preeminent organization, and we are an emerging quality program.”

In some ways, the program allows Chapman to gain an engineering program without spending the money to build one.

“We certainly will market it that way,” Frisch said. “We’ll tell high school students, ‘If you’re thinking of engineering, we couldn’t help you before, but we certainly can now.’ ”

John LaRue, associate dean for student affairs at UCI’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering, said the program will allow students to take many of the math and science courses required for engineering at a school where there are smaller classes and they receive more personal attention.

He said students who transfer after two years at another college are more focused and motivated than those who major in engineering as freshman.

The program, which begins this coming semester, offers three combinations of degrees: mathematics and civil engineering; chemistry and chemical engineering, and chemistry and environmental engineering. UCI will confer the engineering degrees and Chapman the degrees in the other subjects.

Chapman expects five or six students to enroll in each of the choices annually.

Students must be accepted into Chapman and then apply to UCI to enter the program. A 2.75 grade point average is required.

Students will spend their first three years at Chapman, take two or three classes at UCI the fourth year, then complete the two-degree program in the fifth year at the Irvine campus.

Students will pay Chapman’s tuition of $20,724 a year while attending school there, and UCI’s fees of $4,057 for California residents and $14,671 for out-of-state residents for the last two years.

Frisch said he hopes some students will enter the program, decide they don’t want to become engineers and never make it to UCI, instead turning their sights to one of his university’s graduate schools.

Discussions about the joint program began about 1997 between then-UCI Chancellor Laurel L. Wilkening and Chapman President James L. Doti, according to Nicolaos Alexopoulos, dean of UCI’s engineering school.

Alexopoulos expects more colleges, public and private, to team up in research and teaching programs.

“The paradigm is just evolving,” he said. “This thing between Chapman and ourselves is a very small-scale effort. If we do it well, it may become an excellent avenue for many joint programs for many universities.”

UCI’s engineering school, long in the shadow of its sister program at UCLA, has seen its fortunes jump in the past several months thanks to some highly publicized donations.

Last December, Henry Samueli, co-founder of Broadcom Corp., the Irvine maker of computer chips, and his wife donated $20 million to the UCI school, which showed its gratitude by putting his name on the building. Six months later, Samueli and Dwight Decker, chairman of Conexant Systems Inc. in Newport Beach, each donated $3 million to the school.