University Centers and Institutes Transcript - Part 3
BOILARD: Well, now, we'll turn to a third, in this case, an Institute of the University. And, Nancy Shulock had founded the Institute for Higher Education Leadership and Policy which is an acronym that Don is so fond of. So--
SHULOCK: IHELP.
BOILARD: Nancy, how did-- and this was in the area-- era of the iPhone- that this came out?
SHULOCK>> Uh, Yeah.
BOILARD: People made the confusion--.
SHULOCK:: I guess so.
BOILARD: So what's the story?
SHULOCK: No, people thought more was like a social-- social workers--.
BOILARD: Oh—I HELP.
SHULOCK: -- social workers, it was social workers or something, I know. So this-- Peter talked earlier about he likes origins and creation--
DETWILER: Yeah. Creation, yeah.
SHULOCK: So this-- we heard about the creation of the other two, which really involved you all going to Don and having a very receptive person there. In this case- and Don, in your introductory comments you were way too modest-- this was Don's idea. It was not my idea, it was Don's idea, and it was in-- I don't know quite how early it was but I know that what precipitated his idea was that in 1998, what had been the nation-- the California Higher Ed Policy Center run by Pat Callan went national. And so Don said all of a sudden there was nobody in the State of California who was studying higher education policy and the Master Plan and all of those related issues. And he sees-- he recognized there was this void and wanted to step in and fill it. And, I don't remember exactly how he and I ended up talking about this, but he said he wanted to start, start an institute and get some seed money from the CSU Chancellor's Office. And, actually I don't know if you remember, Don, but Don was-- so this was getting into the early 2001. So, I will say I have been given permission to color outside the lines a little bit and go beyond 2003 because it really only started in 2001. And because it was Don's creation, I think it's only fair that we go a little bit beyond that. But you [referring to Don Gerth], I think were contemplating retirement. And, of course, you would never actually retire; and you were thinking about being a Director of this Institute. And as I recall, Bev [Mrs. Gerth] talked you out of it. And, I said, “Good, I want to do it” [laughter].
BOILARD: And what were you doing [inaudible]?
SHULOCK: I said, me, me, me. I was the Associate Vice President of, for Academic-- one of the couple of-- Associate Vice Presidents for Academic Affairs doing budgeting and planning. And so I was really excited to do it. I'll just tell you at first what that mission was and then kind of tell you why I was so excited to do it. The mission became-- the earliest stated mission-- “to enhance the contribution of California higher education to the state’s well-being by producing information relevant to policymakers, practitioners and educators.” So when this idea came up-- I don't think I had quite that “aha moment” that this was how I want to spend the rest of my life that Susan [Sherry] did-- but I-- it was-- it really tapped into-- really two very important things that were my passion at that time. One of them is in my-- at that time 15 or 16 years at Sacramento State-- as I talked about on Monday-- we had, through Don's leadership, brought in the first strategic thinking, strategic vision and strategic planning, to the campus. And over those many years, the theme of the “Capital Campus” and the “Regional University” and the role of the “State University in the State Capital” had become a big part of our planning and our assessment. And I was the main staff person ushering the whole strategic planning process. And, I had been to a lot of conferences and done a lot of thinking and reading on all of that and really understood the obligations of faculty in a campus such as this to do this kind of research that was connected to policy. And I—secondly, I had a Master's degree in Public Policy. And while working in administration at Sac State, had gone back and gotten a doctorate in Political Science and had written a dissertation that was on the use of policy analysis [and] policy research in legislative decision making.
SHERRY: Oh wow.
SHULOCK: And it was called, in an article that came out of that, was called the "paradox of policy analysis." If it's not used why do we produce so much of it? Because there’s all this research saying that: it's not used; decisions are political; they're, you know, they're already decided before you go in. And in my work at the Legislative Analyst's Office, I had observed that-- where we did all our analytical work and we go into the committee hearing and, you know, the votes were already there. Nobody paid any attention to you. So anyway, I was really interested in doing policy analysis and policy research in the service of the legislature and the state. And so, I was glad that Don let me go over and direct this Institute. And, kind of a theme that you two mentioned, I didn't really know what I was doing. And, we, Don, had to go and get space-- again, another theme. I remember we went over and had to steal some offices from the School of Business and they weren't happy about that at all. And then, you know, I had to go back over to my old office in Academic Affairs and get paper clips and pieces of, you know--
SHERRY: Yes.
SHULOCK: -- notebooks and all of that kind of stuff. So. that was early history. But, I think some of the distinguishing characteristics of this Institute and what we try to make it in that earlier year—because, again, there were so many entities out there putting out reports that may or may not-- usually didn't-- have much influence on anybody, I think coming from a background of public policy and really understanding what public policy is, how to influence it with actionable evidence-based recommendations. I think another real identifying characteristic of our-- of IHELP was that when we said we were doing policy research and making policy recommendations, it was-- actually, we looked at statutes and we looked at the regulations and we were very specific about—“Here, these particular laws and regulations are creating incentives for people to behave this way and look at the results that we're getting from that.” So we would be very specific about laws and regulations that we recommended be changed; whereas, a lot of policy recommendation at that time were like-- somebody should do something about this problem.
SHERRY: Right.
SHULOCK: We-- with really good help from a faculty colleague in the Department of Public Policy and Administration-- Mary Kirlin-- really helped us produce very readable concise [reports], I mean, through a lot of hard work and tears. And in this example of-- we produced these really small booklets and she would teach us how each page, you know, when you open it up, each page to tell a story, and you never continue something on the next page, and you have arrows that point to what you're trying to say. And so we worked really, really, really hard to write short, short concise readable things. And, being in Sacramento, of course, allowed us to go down to the capital, talk to people, meet people, have the kind of relationships that you could never have if you were not in the State Capital. My having come out of the legislative environment at the Legislative Analyst's Office, was also a benefit because I had a lot of contacts and all my friends and husband and everybody else worked down there. So, it was really easier for me to go down and kind of build those kinds of relationships. We also tried to focus on really important things. We didn't have any interest in saying things that everybody else was saying and we were, I think, particularly courageous-- and I have some battle scars to kind of show that. In terms of the--
DETWILER: Give me an example of that?
SHULOCK: That it--
DETWILER: Not your battle scar but a topic that you pursued that nobody else was paying much attention to it.
SHULOCK: Well, it was this report here that I just held up. It was-- and I'm going to get into that a little bit later-- but it was when we were working on the community colleges and the community college low completion rates.
DETWILER: Yeah.
SHULOCK: And so we were-- that-- so that was, that was really what got me, what got me the bulls-eye kind of on my back. In terms of the legitimacy that is accorded to you compared to maybe nonprofit organizations that were doing work in these areas-- legit accorded to us by being in the University. And on the topic of the community colleges, we did face a particular challenge here because when we did work on general Master Plan issues and higher education finance, and things like-- that was fine. When we started to do work on community colleges, that was-- we got accused of being biased because we were just these elitists, elitists that we're looking-- that we didn't know, we'd never worked in the community colleges; and so, who are we--
DETWILER: You don't understand.
SHULOCK: We don't understand.
SHERRY: Outside of your lane.
SHULOCK: Yeah. So that was an issue. At the same time we didn't want to be-- we didn't-- be on the-- being at the Sacramento campus and being part of the CSU, didn't want to do-- didn't want to be their hired guns either. So it was a little bit of a challenge to establish our independence; but, I think we did over the years-- that we were never found to be biased or to misuse data or anything like that. We did get, through Don's work with the Chancellor, we got seed money. They promised three years, but they only gave us two years but that was OK. We were able to get other money. And we-- in the earlier years, we did everything we could to establish kind of a portfolio of accomplishments so that we could then go to outside funders.
SHERRY: Yeah.
SHULOCK: And I think what's interesting-- in looking over this to prepare, there were two main events that I think really solidified our existence and our reputation and helped us get going, that were both very well connected to the University. The first was we got a faculty research fellows grant. And we talked a little bit about this on Monday. There was a part of the Center for California Studies-- there was a faculty research fellows program that was a system-wide competition for-- to respond to request for proposals. And thus the-- this goes back to the-- what had been in the California Higher Education Policy Center which then moved to national and gave us this void to fill. They had started putting out 50 state report cards on higher education performance in the states, and had a really key insight-- which was that what really mattered was state-level assessment of how a state’s public higher education institutions were doing-- that the performance at the state level was not the same as the sum of the individual institutions. And so, you could have excellent institutions as we do in California. You could have, just theoretically, every university could have 99% graduation rate, but they could only be serving a small portion of the state. So if you looked at the education levels of the citizens of California and who was getting in, you're not doing a good job. And that was Pat Callan's Center’s big insight-- that we have to start changing the way we look at accountability. You're not going to just look at each university's annual report and see how they did, staple it together and say look how good we're doing, how well we're doing, as a state. And so, we got a faculty research fellows grant to write a report and study how higher education accountabilities doing in California. And that got-- then I got to participate in other things with that national center. And that really got us. We were hired by the legislator. Actually I think it was UC who put in the money that we went down. I facilitated a process of developing the first kind of state level accountability metrics for higher education. And there were participants from the community colleges, the CSU, the university and also the private, the private, private post-secondary sector.
BOILARD: May I jump back just a second, for a moment.
SHULOCK: Yeah. Please?
BOILARD: You talked about seed money, and did you say it came from the-- from Long Beach?
SHULOCK: Chancellor's Office—from the Chancellor.
BOILARD: So was-- did the Chancellor's Office view this as-- view IHELP-- as a system-wide kind of entity or is it more--
SHULOCK: No.
BOILARD:-- Don here's some money for your institute.
SHULOCK: Yes. I think it was more of the second. We-- It was not like the Center in that we had expectations that they were going to be calling the shots, anyway; or that we were going to be having to submit reports to them. It was really just-- I'm not quite sure why they-- I guess Don was so persuasive. I'm not sure [laughter]. Well, I guess, it was part of your mission, your charge, to come and have Centers that serves the capital.
GERTH: Well, we had a very wise Executive Vice Chancellor named Richard West. He was in charge of money and lots of stuff-- but who is a serious academic-- serious intellectual. He was not an academic in the conventional sense-- he didn't have a doctorate, I don't know that ever had ever taught, but he was interested in important things.
SHULOCK: Yeah. So--
GERTH: And you got some money.
SHULOCK: Right [laughter]. So following this whole theme that got started with our faculty research fellows grant and accountability, we started putting out-- we put out a series of reports. And every other year it would be grading-- Well, Pal Callan's Center would put out these “grades” and then we put out a report called “the grades are in,” and we dug deeper. And that was what-- what Pat Callan's Center was trying to do was encourage the state to then take their grades that the report cards gave them nationally and dig down deeper. And that's what we did. And so we put out-- And it was very eye opening because we had, as a state, been guilty, I guess, of the institutional approach and saying-- well we have more Nobel Laureates and we have UC Berkley and we have UCLA; and we have the biggest community college system; and we have the CSU as the biggest four-year; and we have-- excellent in institutions-- but we had never looked at, as a state, how are we meeting the needs of the citizens of California. So for example, I'm not going to get in to detail on other reports that we did, but to show that the awareness that we raised that—“Hey, you know, we're not- we’re not number one;” and “We had this Master Plan that had put California higher education as number one, but things had really started to deteriorate.” So, we were, at the time, 45th out of 50 states in the share of high school students taking advanced math and science. So that was a preparation element of the grade, the grade for preparation. We were 48th out of 50 in the country in the rate at which high school graduates went directly to college. We were 47th in the number of degrees and certificates awarded in relation to enrollment-- largely because of the community colleges where so many enrolled but so few people earned degrees. We-- oh, this was something that-- I mean, I got a lot of mileage out of this and many many presentations. The percentage of the population, different age cohorts, the percentage of the population that had attained an associate degree or higher in California declined steadily with each younger cohort. So our older populations were well educated and we would put up a graph that would show compared to developing nations, all the other were going up and other states were kind of steady and California was going down. So each consecutive younger age cohort was getting less and less well-educated. And we were also able to identify huge variations in performance by race/ethnicity and by region of the state. So, all of that became a big theme. And then we would-- as we got mature in our reports every couple of years we would start doing a better job of linking these findings with the specific policy recommendations. So, that-- and we got a lot of invitations downtown-- I testified often on these issues and the Master Plan and so on.
The other early thing that happened in 2002 was that one of the-- that the Center for California Studies’ “Envisioning” conference, at Don's suggestion, was on the Master Plan. So, that one was called “Envisioning A State of Learning: Moving California's Master Plan for Higher Education into the 21st Century.” So, that was another opportunity to work with the Capital community and invite speakers and have people nationally too. And at the end, we've published the volume that summarized all of the sessions at that conference. And that was back when the conferences were still couple of days long. It was a pretty big conference. That was very, I thought very interesting. So over the period that I was at-- I held- which was 2001 to 2014-- again, I'm not going to go too far beyond our lines here-- but we had two main areas of focus. And the first was the state of California public higher education; and, especially, the Master Plan-- the fact that it had really been left un-- Well, there was no leadership, there's no leader[ship]-- State-level leadership in higher education-- that it was just the institutions doing their things. And we put out these report cards, we put out-- we did a lot of work on transfer from community colleges to-- especially the CSU, adult education, issues of capacity for enrolling the demand that was out there, equity issues, finance, the Master Plan. And we'd spend a lot of time on the state policy leadership because, during this period, the California Postsecondary Education Commission, which was the purported state-level leadership body, had been defunded by the governor.
BARNES: OK, that answers my question.
SHULOCK: One of the challenges in this period, and still going on, is that Governor Brown was not-- had no priority on higher education as a policy area. And actually the State doesn't-- I remember thinking at one point there was a-- I guess it was when Brown was running for Office, and you’d see news articles that would talk about candidates' policy position--
DETWILER: Yeah.
SHULOCK: -- higher education was never there. It was K-12, and—well-- health and transportation and whatever.
SHERRY: Water.
DETWILER: Corrections.
SHULOCK: So yeah. And it was just seen-- and kind of the problem that Pat Callan was trying to intervene and fix was that people just let the institutions do their thing. And Governor Brown didn't-- I don't think still doesn’t, really believe in providing a state-level leadership around higher education. So, that was a challenge because we and others would put out a lot of-- did a lot of work and I think raised a lot of interesting issues about the consequences of not having state-level leadership in terms of our inability to really meet the higher education needs of the people of California. But we could only make limited impact if we didn't have any-- you know, there was really no entity at the state level who could do anything about this.
DETWILER: And had legislators-- because of their Proposition 140 turnover and other--
SHULOCK: There were some-- so there were a few--
DETWILER:-- political factors back off. I mean it used to be because this was not my policy field-- but I sort of remember if a UC issue came up, you went to see Senator Petris.
SHULOCK: No, you're right. Yeah, yeah.
DETWILER: And I don't know, community coll—though-- maybe community colleges had their own champion.
SHULOCK: Well, there were a couple champions still. There was Jack Scott before he became Chancellor.
DETWILER: Right.
SHULOCK: And there's Carol Liu who was the Education Committee Chairman. And so there were a few people; but you're right. And that reminds me, something that I had to do a lot of that it was very frustrating and reflected the turnover and the term limits and all that. There was so much turnover and I would get calls from a staff member of a legislator who had just taken over the chairmanship of a committee or just going to-- And they would say, you know, my member wants to solve the transfer problem, could you come in and just help us-- you know, what are some ideas? And, you know--
DETWILER: A fair question though--
SHULOCK: -- there was- no--
DETWILER: -- but no context.
SHULOCK: -- no context, no history, no institutional memory.
DETWILER: Yup.
SHULOCK: And you know, it was-- then it would happen again two years later.
DETWILER: Right. Right. Yeah.
SHULOCK: My member wants to solve this problem. Can you come in and tell us about how?
BOILARD: For the positive side of that is people thought, “Hey, let's call IHELP.
SHULOCK: Right.
BOILARD: They understand this topic.
SHULOCK: No, that is true. I really do think that we became the go-to source of, you know, independent research on— and knowledge on-- policy- especially higher education and higher education policy.
BOILARD: And in that role, do you-- do-- is your sense that IHELP was seen as part of-- connected to Sacramento State or more of just kind of seen as a more independent entity?
SHULOCK: I think in the Capitol, we were seen as part of Sacramento State for sure. Nationally, I'm not so sure. We had, again because of the work that we did first with Pat Callan's institute, and then he had the WICHE [Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education] and NCHEMS [National Center for Higher Education Management Systems].
I don't need to go into these acronyms, but there were a lot of national organizations and we got to be very active in those. And, I , I think they knew we were from Sacramento State. I mean, you know, it's all of our reports right there.
BOILARD: Right.
SHULOCK: But-- no, downtown, I think for sure, they thought of us was being at Sacramento State. So, I think it did rebound well to the reputation of Sacramento State. We did-- as I said the second area that we focused on in the latter half of the time that I was there was on the community colleges. And we did so-- we actually modified our mission statement to say “with a focus on the community colleges because of their importance to the education and welfare of the State of California”-- because the more that we got into this work, the more that we saw that 75, 80%, of students attending public higher education in California began at the community colleges and the community colleges was-- was designed that way under the Master Plan. And, they just-- it wasn't-- it was the biggest obstacle if you look at the national data about where we fell short, it was because we had so many students go into college and so few students finishing it. And that's where we-- the big thing that put the target on my back and raised some issues about we were located at Sacramento State and here we were taking potshots at the community colleges. And we--
DETWILER: So it's the flip side of Steve's question, do-- were you getting credit--
SHULOCK: Yeah.
DETWILER:-- for being at Sac State and the flip side that, “Oh, you're at Sac State.”
SHULOCK: Yeah. And I think part of the problem was-- and we get tried to get better at this when we went along-- we-- with this report-- this was the first report that had really quantified the graduation rate at the community colleges because before that-- and this is where I think we had a lot of impact on the thinking in the legislature-- people would just think in terms of enrollment and access. And, I would see, I would see news articles like a local-- I mean in any part of the state-- the community college president would go to their trustees and say good news our enrollment is up--
DETWILER: Yeah.
SHULOCK: -- 5%, 6%. It was all about enrollment. And the mission, as understood in the Capitol, of the community colleges was to provide access. And when we started this work, we actually went to the community colleges and said, “can you help us understand?” About this time we had gotten foundation grants because the national foundations, the Hewlett Found-- not, the Hewlett Foundation, the Gates Foundations, the Vine Foundation were all starting to be very interested in the rate of return for all the investments that citizens and taxpayer were making in higher education. And, I think in large part because of the ground breaking rule Pat Callan's institute had done looking at educational attainment of a State’s populus was really, sort of the main benchmark that came out. How well is your State doing? What percentage of your population is educated? In other countries, as I said, were going up. The United States-- the States-- were flat and California was going down. And so these foundations had gotten really interested in that. And so we got funding. And we were talking to the Community Colleges Chancellor's Office about, you know, “Can you help us understand your completion rates? And they said, you know, “That's not why we're here. You're asking a wrong question, that's the wrong benchmark. it's your elitist lens that you're looking through from.“ They actually accused us of coming from this, you know, elite institution and we were looking through lenses and asking the wrong questions. But we persevered, and that's the-- you know, we just-- they said, “We can't tell you and it's really hard to compute”. And this is true. In the CSU, if you try and look at graduation rates, everybody who comes in the CSU for the most part is trying to earn a degree, but people go to community colleges for all variety of reason.
DETWILER: Right.
SHULOCK: So it was really not straightforward to compute.
DETWILER: Yeah.
SHULOCK: The denominator of these people finishing and these were the people trying to finish it. So, big huge debates and it's hard to have technical debates in the-- through the press, which we ended up having to have. Anyway, we put out that 24%-- in this, in this, “Rules of the Game” brief-- only 24% of the degree seeking, which we defined in our own way, including, as well, associate degrees and certificates-- only 24% had earned, had earned anything in six years. And these are two-year colleges.
DETWILER: Yeah.
SHULOCK: And we pointed to policies. We weren't blaming the colleges, we-- like I said, we were really always looking at the laws and the regulation, and said, the way we fund, you know, the way we have categorical programs, the way that the colleges are restricted from using their money. We had five different pots of public policies that had incentives that work against student success and completion. But it—unfortunately, we put this report out when there was, there was a ballot initiative being circulated by the community colleges to get their own carved out part of Proposition 98.
DETWILER: 98, Yeah.
SHULOCK: And we were-- And so we were accused of--
DETWILER: Oh yeah.
SHULOCK: -- they said-- but they even sent to us-- we know that you're not blaming the colleges, we know you're pointing at the policies; but the people, the general public isn't going to know that and they're going to think that is critical, so we're coming at you with everything we've got.
DETWILER: Therefore we have to hit you in public.
SHULOCK: Yeah. So I don't need to go into the details, but that was-- that was kind of what we went through. And then we, we did a lot of work on community colleges over all those years. And I actually was-- I think if you look at the-- just kind of looking at how successful we were in these various-- these two kind of buckets of work that we did, I think we were more successful in the community college area because during our-- they really did turn a corner in terms of accepting that completion matters. They actually told us completion didn't matter. And then--
DETWILER: Then they did.
SHULOCK:-- that completion mattered, and there was a Student Success Task Force, I was one of three outsiders appointed to it that led to a Student Success Act. They've got all kinds of amazing good stuff going on now. So that was-- I think we played a big role in that. In the--
DETWILER: Because nobody else was asking the question, nobody else had the methodology to probe.
SHULOCK: Yeah. But I don't want to make it sound like we were the only ones. But I think we were probably the most persistent ones that took-- that took a little more courage, and were willing to really point--point to more policy solutions. And so, I think that was-- that we had influence there. On the state-level area, I think we, again, had the big obstacle of the no state- level leadership. And we certainly, I think, and the work that I did in my dissertation in understanding how public policy research can be effective, can be used. My conclusion was it's-- you know, we were sometimes looking for too high of a definition of “use.” It's not like, oh will they pass this law because of you?
DETWILER: Yeah.
SHULOCK: But we-- but it's how you define the problem and how you raise awareness. And so, I think that we, we, along with a lot of other partners-- a lot of nonprofits, groups that we worked with and other researchers-- really did greatly raise the awareness of: California isn't number one because we have the most Nobel Laureates; but we are struggling, we have a lot of problems and lacking in leadership, lacking in funding, lacking in all kinds of things and we need to rethink a lot of these things. And I think that maybe with a new governor-- I think that governor/gubernatorial candidates are more likely to be speaking out and addressing these issues. And a lot of groups are working with these candidates to kind of continue this fight. So I think we help lay the groundwork for a lot of this, But we did have-- Oh, we did have one, I think, pretty direct influence on state policy in that arena. And that was the-- there's a --the creation of a new Associate degree in the community colleges for transfer. There was not-- there was always a disconnect between earning an Associate degree and transferring. If you earned an Associate degree, you still weren't necessarily eligible to transfer, and then you would transfer and they would make you retake all of these courses.
BOILARD: It was almost a terminal degree.
SHULOCK: Yeah, yeah. It was almost a terminal degree. And most people actually, most people actually-- who transfer didn't even bother to earn an Associate degree on the way because it didn't really help you. So about five years ago?--
BOILARD: Yeah. Five, six.
SHULOCK: -- Yeah-- and the CSU worked collaboratively really with the community colleges and developed these “Associate Degrees for Transfer,” that are disciplinary and--
DETWILER: Are they named differently?
SHULOCK: Yeah. “Associate Degree for Transfer.”
DETWILER: Really?
SHULOCK: Yeah. And it was really, really a lot of work by the Faculty Senates in both segments. But we had put out a report early on to just show how misaligned our policies were and we had different options. And so I think that was-- that was where I think that was the most direct actual influence on state policy.
DETWILER: So sometimes, you know, in the policy making world or in studying and teaching it we talk about the softening up process.
SHULOCK: Yes. Exactly.
DETWILER: And, Carole's work showed that. Clearly your work and your story showed that. This is another example of kind of softening up-- you don't always know-- you kind of hope where it's going, but you can't always control it, you can't always get through it.
SHULOCK: No, that's-- Thank you. That's actually in the policy change literature.
DETWILER: Yeah.
SHULOCK: That's a really big one. And so you have these ideas out there-- so then, when other external--
DETWILER: Changes, windows here, yeah.
SHULOCK: Exactly. When externals circumstances change for example a new governor or, you know, new chair of a committee then you've got, you know--
DETWILER: The garbage can is ready and--
SHULOCK: Yes, exactly.
DETWILER: OK.
SHULOCK: Yeah.
BARNES: So can I ask a question? But does that mean that the articulation agreements are honored-- that is, that-- whatever they do in a junior college would be accepted?
SHULOCK: Yeah. If you follow the track and you get an “Associate Degree for Transfer” in Sociology for example; and then it's campus by campus in the CSU they will-- if they have agreed and signed this articulation agreement, then they can't make you retake anything, they have to count all your credits. And you can't be made to take any more than whatever the number of units are-- I forget, once you get to the CSU.
BARNES: Right, right. That's really good.
SHULOCK: Yeah.
BARNES: We worked on a lot of articulation back in the '80s and '90s, but those apparently never went anyway.
SHULOCK: Well that was what we pointed out in the report that we did-- that I think was kind of beginning of turning the corner because there were-- it was alphabet soup. They were all these-- and they were all little institution to institution, this community college with its feeder or this CSU with its feeder colleges would have this and this and this and this. And students couldn't possibly figure all of that out. So that was a big, a big change.
GERTH: Well, there was also enormous variation among the California State University campuses. There’s one campus, I don't know about the current situation of-- I’m long gone-- but there was one campus way back that everybody knew that they paid absolutely no attention to any articulation agreements [laughter]. But it was done at the departmental level on that campus. And, it was a mess, but students still went there because of the-- like all of our campuses-- it was one of the older ones-- it had a unique characteristic, or, and that appealed to some students and they've been there and put up with it.
SHULOCK: So, just concluding thoughts that I think will maybe segue to the summary conversation is that I think where we struggled the most and didn't knew the best was institution-- institutionalizing ourselves in the life of the campus. And one- one challenge I think inherent is that we tried to establish a concentration in the Public Policy and Administration program where I was faculty so had that link, but it's a very narrow field and there's not jobs. You know, you really couldn't get students--
BARNES: Right, right.
SHULOCK: You really couldn't get students to take these courses. We had two courses. We thought we have three, we tried to have two. They were undersubscribed and we gave that idea up. But students, just—“what jobs are there in the state in higher education?”-
DETWILER: Why should I take nine units to go after one of those five jobs that I could have gotten anyway?
SHULOCK: Yeah. I mean there used to be jobs at CPEC, the Postsecondary Education, then they went away. There's jobs, a few jobs in the Chancellor's Office of the community colleges. Well, other than that, in Sacramento, there's a couple of committees where staff are-- have been there for a long time. So that was hard. And, like, your Institute [Institute for Social Research] and your Center [Center for Collaborative Policy] was multi-faceted in its reach. You know, you've worked on all kinds of different policy issues. We were on higher ed--
DETWILER: Oh yeah.
SHULOCK: -- and there just wasn't much going on to tap into on the campus in higher ed.
BARNES: But, there's still an institutional -- ian nstitutionalizing issue there. And that is-- you don't-- there ought to be a way to not have to teach or have it connected to the teaching program to have an ongoing Institute on campus that has a research function.
SHULOCK: Yeah. And we did-- we worked, we did-- I skipped over this in the interest of time-- but we did involve faculty, we worked with faculty in Economics and our own faculty and we, you know, we published things and we went to conferences and we got a couple more faculty research fellows grants. We hired graduate assistants, but not in a big way. Occasionally-- and this is definitely going beyond your [Gerth’s] years—but, occasionally, the University would remember that they had on this campus some people who had done a lot of work, research on student success. And they would have us come and talk to their graduation initiative committees about how we could track our student progress because in the community colleges we did a lot of work, quantitative-- you know, tracking student cohorts, where are students getting stuck, where are they're not finishing and why. And we did a lot or work recommending changes in the community colleges to help students make more steady progress. And that, of course, has become a huge issue in the CSU. And so, we were asked to come and talk about that in several forums at Sacramento State, but--
DETWILER: Did that ever translate to any of the other campuses or to the System?
SHULOCK>> No. Oh, actually, yeah, we did some work for the System. We did a couple of funded projects--
DETWILER: So Long Beach would call and say, let's--
SHULOCK: Yeah, we did.
DETWILER: -- take advantage of your research [inaudible]. OK.
BOILARD: So when -- what strikes me about all three of these Centers and Institutes is-- I mean, there's-- obviously each of them is unique-- and I think one of the really unique aspects of IHELP was you were actually making policy recommendations, which-- it sounds like, you know, ISR and CPP weren’t formally making recommendations. But in all three cases you're serving clients beyond Sacramento State and particularly in the government. What-- how does that fit within the vision of what Sacramento State is about? How does it fit within Sacramento State's mission? I don't mean it to sound like a challenging question-- because I believe it does-- but can we just articulate and explore how your Centers and Institutes advance Sacramento State's mission?
SHULOCK: Well, that's why I was so excited to have this opportunity because I felt like we were implementing the strategic plan-- because it was right in this University's mission statement and value statement and strategic themes of being part of the region and contributing to the Capital knowledge base.
BOILARD: But clearly, I mean, serving the region in that the Capital community happens to be in the region, but it’s serving the entire state, right? It's a-- Sacramento State ends up being a statewide force or force serving entire state. And how about CCP and--
SHERRY: Yeah. Well, if you look at universities as places where innovation can be fostered and can grow-- and that's what happened with the Center for Collaborative Policy in that the methodology of trying to solve public policy problems, the University nurtured us to develop that. And, that is why we thought it was very important for us to take that knowledge back to University. So we consciously—I mean, we could have gone on not connected back to the University but we found an obligation to do that. So that's when we approach MPPA and now there's this great certificate. And David could speak to this but students come back to us that David has taught and said, “this has changed how I do my job’ or t”his got me my job to have this Certificate in Collaborative Governance.” So we could take all the insights and the new field that we have developed and give that wholesale to MPPA to give to their students. And it gave them an edge, it gave the MPPA program an edge, that no-- no other MPPA program was offering this. So that was how we felt that we brought back to the campus some value.
BOOHER: The other aspect to this is because it was so cutting edge in terms of a method for doing public policy, it's gotten international attention. I mean, people, other scholars from around the world came to the Center to study what we were doing. People from, you know, from Europe, from Japan, from China would come to-- would come to the study, come to the Center to advance their own research and scholarship on this.
SHERRY: They knew it was Sac State.
BOOHER: And-- Yeah, they knew it was Sac State. They’d take tours. They-- you know, we would always bring them out and take tours of Sac State. And in some cases-- like one particular fun time, we got them to get-- we-- it was Japanese students who came to learn about this process. The book’s been trans-- our book has been translated into Japanese. And so, we arranged for the students to come out and have a-- have classes with students on campus who were studying Japanese-- Japanese language. So think-- there were a lot of intangible opportunities like that for the campus to benefit the Center and for the Center to benefit the students on the campus.
BOILARD: And Carole, how about ISR?
BARNES: Well, I'm thinking, more generally, universities have served the function of providing special, you know, knowledge to the communities we serve. And that's the-- I mean from the [inaudible] interest in the old land-grant universities-- has a long, long tradition. So I think, you know, the community, the state government, the community governments here, do look to the campus for leadership in particular areas and for specific knowledge in particular areas. And I think many of our departments offer that. It-- you know, we've got a particular focus here on policy and research but the Engineering Department does a lot in the community and ARC [Archaeological Research Center] does a lot. There's quite a few different-- particular parts of the University, which are integrated with the community. So I think that's something we can offer in the future.
BOILARD: Yeah. It seems like, particularly during this period we're looking at, when Don is President, that the University innovated and really explored how to use this very flexible model of an Institute or Center to, to build different kinds of relationships, to try different kinds of products; while, of course, attending to the main interest or the kind of main justification for the University of instruction. But, at the same time, you’ve-- and this goes beyond just applied research as well-- the way that individual faculty members were pursuing individual research agendas. This is more institutionalized.
SHULOCK: And I kind of skipped over this part, but I do think that one unifying name is how, how Don really led us into this new world that was not easy and he had to persevere-- we all had to persevere-- because we were seen as a teaching institution, we shouldn't be doing this. People didn't understand what this was. And when we started doing our work-- and, I think, even to this day or when I left-- the procedures were not there for us to get our budget and our positions hired because, you know, I would fill out these forms and they would say, “well, how many teaching units--
DETWILER: Yeah, yeah.
SHULOCK: -- does this grant pay for? It’s like, well, I'm not teaching.
DETWILER: I'm not doing that.
SHULOCK: And. so it was just-- you know, it was, it was, really a sea change and a difficult one. And, you know, I-- again, it comes back to leadership and vision and perseverance.
SHERRY: I mean, we always felt we were this square or the round peg—constantly--
SHULOCK: It was so hard and anything.
SHERRY: Constantly. And I think it comes back to what's the basic definition of what a University is.
SHULOCK: Yeah.
SHERRY: Is a university committed to teaching, research, and service-- or is it just teaching? I mean, how seriously [do] we take the service piece? And that was what Don seriously took-- as a contribution we should make.
BARNES: That's a very good point.
SHERRY: And I don't think all universities do that. And you have to have a person at the top totally committed to it.
SHULOCK: But I think-- and you weren't here on Monday when we talked about this organization that we kind of connected with in the early years, the Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities. It was trying to put forth this new model. So, the service part, yes, is important, but it's integrally related to the academics and the scholarship. So how you define your mission and service, then, influences the curriculum--
SHERRY: Absolutely.
SHULOCK: -- and the faculty scholarship. And so that's what's all coming together here. And it's not easy to do when you're in a culture that sees them as separate-- and teaching’s up here and these other things—Well, maybe if you have time and money, you'll do that.
SHERRY: Yup.
SHULOCK: Peter, I want to make sure you had a chance to jump in on this kind of unifying theme question.
DETWILER: Well, I'm, I am really interested in this notion of applied research, and some work I did in the Capitol with UC President's Office on their-- on their some of their other abortive efforts. And it's really interesting to see how these three Centers took the theme of applied research and then carried it out in different ways. And, a theme that comes out of that kind applied research is this notion of-- building your portfolio builds your legitimacy. And so it sounds like it was really important in the early years, in that creation myth, to get some early successes.
SHERRY: Yeah.
DETWILER: Here's a project or here's a program and we've done this. And then building on that, so people are willing to come to you with more contracts or people from the outside or foundations are willing to fund it. So, in effect, you're getting that gold seal of approval that the performance is what will attract people to what this campus is doing-- which then allows me to say it's not a gold seal of approval, it's a green and gold seal of approval [laughter] given the campus colors.
BOILARD: Well done, well done.
SHULOCK: Well, you can't, you can't accomplish that first piece unless you have the leadership--
DETWILER: That's right.
SHULOCK: -- that gets you the commitment and the money to do it. Yeah.
DETWILER: That's right. And the openness.
SHULOCK: Otherwise, how do you do that?
DETWILER: You can't.
SHULOCK: You just can't do it.
DETWILER: You can't, right. Then the Center is only a junior faculty member with letter head on the name of the door and it's not really applied for something.
SHULOCK: And that's what I found when I came, as mentioned earlier--
[multiple speakers]: [expressions of mutual agreement]
BARNES: Well-- And there's something that's changed in the CSU that's going to make it more difficult to do this kind of thing in the future. And that is we have more and more adjunct faculty and not full-time faculty. So when I came I think 75% of us were tenure track faculty and now it's 75% part-time faculty.
DETWILER: Is it really?
BARNES: Yeah.
BOILARD: [inaudible attempt to interject comment]--
BARNES: When you don't have people who are, you know, full-time at the institution, you don't have the energy to do extra sorts of things like this.
BOILARD: But, I think-- it's not simply being-- I mean, I agree it -- it’s important it be a more permanent fixture; but, I think, in addition to that, you know, there's some faculty who are full-time faculty but they have a carve out of, you know, a couple hours a week in order to kind of put towards one of these kinds of projects. And in all these cases, we had people that were able to completely immerse themselves into leading these organizations. So, you know, it doesn't come without cost, resources on the campus are in “zero sum,” and what you choose to apply them to or you're not able to apply them to other things. But it strikes me that, you know, what we're looking at here both with the Institute and Centers today as well as the conversations we had on Monday about Sacramento Semester Program and Center for California Studies and, of course, when we talk next time on the PP&A program. We've had this tremendous number of successes probably more than a normal president would be entitled to, so [laughter]. And with that, Don, do you want to give some kind of benediction to this program?
SHERRY: Or questions?
GERTH: Pardon me?
SHERRY: Sometimes when you birth something, you don't know what happens after, right?
GERTH: Well, I've had that experience this morning [laughter] and learning many new things about the richness of these three operations-- the Centers and Institute. I want to say, Thanks. I'm of a mind that a good healthy University-- excuse me, but my voice sometimes gets a little raspy- I’ve got a whole pocketful of cough drops, but we don't have time for that-- A good-- that good healthy universities can be research universities-- like the University of California or the University where I graduated from three times, although the University where I graduated from three times had such an extraordinary emphasis on undergraduate education. That is really quite remarkable in the midst of all this research and jazzy research-- you know, big time stuff like inventing nuclear power. I’m thinking about Enrico Fermi from whom I took freshman physics--
[multiple speakers]>> Oh no [laughter]
GERTH: >> Physical science, but we couldn't understand him [laughter]. I think his English skills had not yet been perfected. But, on one hand, the research university-- on the other hand, the more open kind of university to the general population and otherwise known as the teaching university, because a teaching university needs, in a sense, at a min-- as a minimum, an applied research operation to contribute to its richness. And that's what we've heard about this morning. And it's easy for that to get lost in the shuffle. We had some conversations during the earlier, earlier break about the extent to which you can emphasize applied research while also emphasizing graduation rates, which is at this stage of the game a very important thing in California. And it's an important public policy issue. The question is, how do we manage to do both and keep them compatible? So I think this has been a very, very useful discussion. A point just made a couple of minutes ago about the balance of the faculty, full-time regular faculty, people who are into this as a career as opposed to people who are itinerant, part-timers, or lecturers would like to be-- not lecturers-- and would like this as their career-- but aren't getting it. The numbers on that have changed extraordinarily in recent years. And, that, that is something that needs substantial attention. It's a topic I tried to tackle toward the end of my time here. And I ran into opposition, I would say, in some amazing places like the unions themselves. And so on-- serious opposition. And-- but that's another whole topic.
Anyway I want to say thank you to all of you. This has been just an absolutely first-rate discussion. I think it contributes to the understanding of the history of the University, where things come from, where things might go. And I’ve always--,you know, I’m a Political Scientist, not an Historian, but I love to read history. And the-- some of the writing I've done is more historic than political science like things. I think we can learn from in terms of what the University is and where we're going because we can learn from discussions like the one we've had this morning, that all of you have shared in. I want to thank Steve again for your wonderful leadership of these panels. And I want to thank our colleagues from, let's see it’s—the proper name I think is the Create-- Creative Services. Yeah. I need to write that down, so I won’t forget, because you've been wonderful in terms of accommodating these two discussions--and there's one more to go. And maybe, at the rate things are going, maybe two more to go. Thank you very much.