The Undergraduate Council of the Academic Senate recently voted to temporarily suspend admissions to the College of Creative Studies Literature major, effective Fall 2014, following a request from Executive Vice Chancellor Gene Lucas to consider suspending CCS Literature admissions dated Dec. 20, 2013.
The Undergraduate Council voted on the suspension as a temporary measure to provide time for the program to address alleged issues in program leadership, Senate faculty involvement and development of the program’s relationships with other departments. The release cites the 2012-2013 Program Review Process report as well as the 2012-2013 External Review Committee as indicators of the CCS Literature program’s need to increase their number of ladder-ranked faculty, improve curriculum planning and administration and form better relationships with cognate departments. However, no students currently enrolled in the major will be affected by the new freeze.
According to College of Creative Studies Dean Bruce Tiffney, the hold on admissions for 2014 will provide time for resources to “be aligned in a sustainable manner” in order to improve the program in coming years.
“The structure of CCS allows students … a unique opportunity to use the resources of a world-renowned campus,” Tiffney said in an email. “Developing strong relations with faculty in cognate departments will broaden these opportunities in future years. This integration will enhance creative endeavors among CCS students working with faculty outside the College as well as within.”
Chancellor Henry T. Yang also said the suspension is only temporary and that the Undergraduate Council’s report on the suspension will be on the agenda of a Faculty Legislature meeting taking place next Thursday, March 13.
“It is worth noting that this temporary suspension would not affect the course of study of currently enrolled Literature students,” Yang said in an email.
But while College of Creative Studies Records Assistant Frank Bauman also said that the program will not be cancelled, he also said it is unlikely an appeal will be lodged.
“The Academic Senate voted to freeze admissions to the program, pending improvements,” Bauman said in an email. “Something was said about the possibility of their decision being appealed, but no one seems too optimistic about this.”
Despite administrative statements assuring the CCS Literature program will not be cancelled, many CCS Literature faculty and alumni have expressed frustration with the decision and even contest that the admissions freeze is in fact a transition phase into the program’s dissolution. CCS Literature professor Shirley Lim, for instance, said that she declined to elaborate on the situation due to her anger toward the situation.
“I have nothing positive to say about the suspension and only scathing observations to make of the current events,” Lim said in an email.
Likewise, alumni like CCS Literature graduate from 1991 and current Community Manager of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Tony Pierce said the admissions suspension is simply a step in the Academic Senate’s path to the CCS Literature program’s eventual cancellation.
“The worst part about it is they won’t be honest about it. They won’t say what their problem truly is,” Pierce said. “One of the things they wrote is that CCS Lit kids don’t go to Letters & Sciences as much as they want them to … if you want it that badly, make the requirement. Instead you’ve got to freeze out all CCS on your road to totally dismantling it?”
CCS Literature program graduate from 1979 and current textbook writer with a Master’s in English from UC Berkeley Robyn Raymer said the PRP report reveals that Tiffany knew in August 2013 that the CCS Literature program needed to get more ladder faculty teachers into their faculty and had “six or seven months to do that,” but did not.
“I don’t understand why there was a gap of six to seven months, and I don’t think it’s the fault of the lecturers,” Raymer said. “I don’t understand why the CCS Lit program — distinguished for over 50 years — is getting punished for just going on the way it was and still having really good teachers. It’s not just that there’s not enough ladder faculty.”
Pierce agreed and said the potential cancellation of the CCS Literature program is based on administrative issues involving views that are misguided and problematic.
“Santa Barbara has this one jewel that, instead of saying, ‘Wow look at that thing sparkle,’ They’re like, ‘Oh, it’s blinding me! It’s blinding me! It’s making all my other things look like shit,’” Pierce said.
According to Pierce, the cancellation would be detrimental to the university and its current possession of a one-of-a-kind, self-motivated, creative program.
“There’s nothing like it in all of the USA. There is no college or any university where you can truly be a creative person and not be punished for trying new things,” Pierce said. “Unfortunately, when you try to break boundaries in letters and science … you’re punished. With CCS, you’re rewarded, and there’s nothing like that in UCSB.”
This story appeared as an online exclusive on Friday, March 7, 2014.
Doesn’t anyone get it– why WOULDN’T CCS students take the majority of their classes in CCS? The educational experience in CCS is why they are there at all. If they wanted the traditional classroom experience they would have enrolled as English majors in the College of Letters and Science, not CCS.
I completely agree with you, Miriam. CCS Literature was my dream program and the reason I chose to attend UCSB over my other options. It offered the kind of educational experience I wanted: small classes, taught by lecturers who were passionate about the subject matter they were teaching and were active writers/poets/academics. While at UCSB, I took some excellent classes in L&S and also studied abroad for a year. However, the classes that I feel helped me grow the most as a reader, writer, and thinker were found within CCS. I hope the admissions freeze on CCS Lit will soon… Read more »
Exactly, Miriam. The CCS Lit experience offered engagement that was not otherwise available. The Academic Senate has acted shamefully and with intellectual dishonesty.
Amen, Jason. And not just the Academic Senate–everyone at UCSB who worked to make this happen.
My former teacher at CCS Literature, Dr. Ross Robins, has given me permission to post his letter addressed to Dean Tiffney and leaders of the Academic Senate: As one of the first graduates of CCS and as its first Academic Coordinator –and also as someone who used what he learned there to create a widely respected English curriculum at one of the best boarding schools in the country—I’m writing to express my alarm at the CCS Literature admissions moratorium and the proposed changes to the Literature program. As I understand them, those changes constitute a repudiation of the experiences that… Read more »
Having been a pretty much ‘straight-laced’ regular English major at UCSB when I met Tony Pierce my first few days working at the Nexus (ca. 1990-91), I just want to say that being exposed to CCS through Tony (et al.), completely rocked my world. (Sorry for the run-on sentences, but, well…I just gotta say this!) I learned so much more about “thinking outside the box”, taking responsibility for what I do in this life, realizing that it’s possible to do amazing and wonderful things if I just realize that these things ARE actually possible…these are just some of the valuable… Read more »
Shame here, shame there…what a lot of shame going around. But the angry discourse by alumni and members of the USCB community is neither uninformed nor irrelevant. No amount of name-calling on either side will ever bring the two sides to a mutual understanding or agreement, not that this issue was ever a true negotiation. Negotiation explicitly refers to two entities hoping to reach agreement, and this was never the case in the issue of the CCS Literature major. I too am disappointed by the Academic Senate’s vote to suspend the CCS Literature major. The Academic Senate showed a stunning… Read more »
Amen, Miriam. I’m proud to be your longtime friend.
I have been taking many measures to inform myself about the issues. I’ve corresponded with Professors Bhavnani, Karoff, Plane, and many others. I’ve studied the PRP report, the UgC memo, and a transcript of Thursday’s Academic Legislature meeting in depth. I do understand the issues. Yet, I still disagree with the vote. You (like many other academics) speak doublespeak and in abstractions. You are not interested in having a real conversation about these matters. And now you are flouncing out altogether.
Thank you,
Robyn Raymer
Agreed, Robyn. It’s quite telling that Prof. Stan Klein choose to exit the debate without actually participating in debate but instead just dishing out some invective. Considering that we know the Senate did not give those petitioning the committee more than scant minutes to confront the critiques of the review, we can only conclude that honest inquiry was not the purpose here. If you, Prof. Klein would like to elucidate these matters furthers, this is a great place to do it–unlimited by arbitrary rules of order. There’s certainly no limits on what you’d like to say. Please do explain further… Read more »
I must add, Prof. Klein, for someone who is focused on “many of the largely unwarranted (either empirically or theoretically) assumptions that are stipulated to pertain to self, memory and consciousness” that you are curiously making many assumptions about this bureaucratic process when alluding to: ” I also am interested in many of the largely unwarranted (either empirically or theoretically) assumptions that are stipulated to pertain to self, memory and consciousness.” How about you share with the UCSB community what those recommendations were, how you can empirically prove that lack of partiality on the part of the reviews, the actual… Read more »
Pardon me, copied the wrong part of your quote, Prof. Klein: ” reasons the vote was seen as necessary after several decades of largely unheeded recommendations by a number of impartial review committees.” So do explicate this further.
Notice, Prof. Klein that Prof. Robbin’s application of the CCS Lit model elsewhere proved highly successful–how’s that for some empirical evidence? __ When I left my post as CCS Academic Coordinator in 1990 to lead the English Department at Cate School—which was and still is on every list of top U.S. boarding schools—I brought the fundamental features of the Literature program with me. Remembering the excitement I felt (as both student and teacher) at the constantly changing list of CCS courses, I created Cate’s first full-scale offering of English electives; it is an integral part of the school to this… Read more »
The reality is that CCS Literature is either going to be “reconstructed” to the satisfaction of various deans, the EVC, and non-CCS ladder faculty members, or the program is going to peter out. Here is what I think is horribly unfair about this: the reconstructors will not include CCS Literature alumni, or former CCS Literature faculty, or even former CCS provosts. Correct me if I am wrong, but I do not think the reconstructors will include current CCS Literature students or current CCS Literature faculty, either. Maybe this is just the way things go in universities, but it is not… Read more »
Dear Stan Klein:
None of us was at the meeting but a fellow alum was and he recorded the meeting and provided us with a transcript.
Thanks for putting us in our proper places. I must say I admire the dignity with which you comport yourself.
Yours,
Robyn Raymer
Because Professor Klein is trying to make Dr. Jason Harris sound stupid, and because Jason probably won’t do this himself, I’m posting his information:
Jason Harris
B.A., CCS Literature, 1995
Ph.D., English Literature, University of Washington, 2001
Adjunct Professor of English, American River College, 2002–2004
Visiting Assistant Professor, Writing Rhetoric and American Cultures,
Michigan State University, 2004–2008
Assistant Professor, Humanities and Communication, Florida Institute of Technology, 2008–2012
M.F.A., Fiction Writing, Bowling Green State University (TBA Spring 2014)
Fiction Editor, Mid-American Review, 2013–present
Why all the secrecy Dr. Klein? Why should workings of the Academic Senate be so occult? This is not Hogwarts, Dr. Klein. These are not private employment records being discussed. These, according to your comments above, are important debates about the future of a long-established major in a long-established program on the campus of a public university supported by taxpayer funds. A number of CCS literature alumni read the PRP report after making a FOI request to the UCSB Public Information officer–it was complete except for a few redacted names. So what, sir, did they miss in the report? It’s… Read more »
Thank you, Prof. Klein, for your contributions to this event. I hope that many students and faculty of the UCSB community bear witness to your attitude. So, you close by reminding us of the fallacy of ad veritatem, the appeal to authority, and yet you began your first post by emphasizing your experience in the Senate. Then you accuse people here of being ignorant since they could not be at the meeting or have access to the facts. Many of us read the review, as well as other reviews in the past, which is one of the reasons we are… Read more »
For the rhetoricians, yeah, made a mistake there, the Latin term is “argumentum ad verecundiam.”
Dear Dr. Klein: Before the Faculty Legislature meeting, I asked the Chair if alumni and former faculty were allowed to attend. She graciously said that they were allowed, but they could not speak. I have written to her to tell her about your threat and to say that, had my fellow alum known that it was illegal or against University rules to record the meeting, no doubt he would have refrained from doing so. I also told her that I did not hire or ask him to do so, but I was very grateful that he did. Otherwise, we alumni… Read more »
That’s catchy. It really is! “Learn to learn.” Almost as good as “graduate school for undergraduates.” You didn’t answer my question at all, Dr. Klein–why so secret? Are members of the Academic Senate afraid to reveal their votes on this matter?
Come on. Three minutes. Among colleagues. You’re a failure as an apologist, and only serve to demonstrate everything wrong with the way the Academic Senate does its business–full of snark, hostilty and smoke.
I am the parent of a current student in CCS lit by the way, and a graduate of the program. The value of the degree earned is one of the issues that concerns me. The Senate has lessened the value of that degree considerably.
“I’ve had enough!!!! By the way, I wasn’t trying to make him SOUND stupid…he just IS stupid. Just to clarify.”
Dear Dr. Klein:
I just want to remind you that it was I, not Jason Harris, who listed his degrees. He was not trying to “speak from authority.”
I am glad that you see the value of good teaching. I read your teaching reviews from students and they like you a lot. I am thinking that maybe in person you must be a lot funnier and less condescending. And hopefully you do not yell at your students in ALL CAPS and call them furniture and so on.
Thank you,
Robyn Raymer
Dr. Klein, THANK YOU for the clarifications and exegisis. I get it (IT) now: You have been a member of the UCSB Academic Senate for six whole months! During your tenure as Academic Senator you reviewed twenty years of PRP reports! I salute you for taking time away from your research and from you the teaching that matters to you so much to YOU for slogging through these documents and for participating in the highly serious and smart and hidden-from-view stuff that the Senate does and doesn’t want recorded or discussed. Even the SCOTUS allows recordings. I know you’re busy… Read more »
I don’t know much about Aspergers except that Sheldon Cooper on “The Big Bang Theory” (which I love) may possibly have it. Maybe you don’t quite understand how condescending and dismissive and closed minded you sound in writing. Maybe you don’t understand how it feels to be insulted the way you insult people. In other words, you are not coming across as a mensch. For instance, why did you assume, right off the bat, that none of us knew anything about what went on in the meeting? And why do you assume that, if we do know, we have no… Read more »
I’m starting to think that this dude keeps forgetting his hat on purpose…
Well. That was edifying. Here is this poor man making such an effort to uphold the dignity of the Academic Senate against the assaults of a few ignorant and irrational people (nobodies, as he quite rightly insists) who don’t even have a right to address it in person. We find ourselves quite powerless against the Academic Senate’s august mightiness, but Mr. Stein is so jealously protective of its standing that he invents new prerogatives for it and descends to the website of the Nexus in his zeal to defend them; for instance that the Academic Senate’s decisions should not be… Read more »
The fact that you didn’t even manage to get prof. Klein’s name right kind of diminishes the bite of your snide paragraph. Yes he is rude, but he is correct in all his points (excluding insults, which I think are largely for effect and should def not be taken to heart). I understand why so many here are becoming defensive in reaction to that though, but some people just have an obnoxious manner of communication. I don’t understand why he is being bombarded with accusations of hypocrisy and some kind of sinister commitment to secrecy, but it’s probably again because… Read more »
Dear Current Student:
Which points of Dr. Klein’s do you think are correct? Wasn’t his main point (in his first post) that the other posters knew nothing about the issues and so they should not comment? I know a lot about the issues, yet I still disagree with the Senate Legislature’s decision. What is your opinion? It’s true that the discussion went haywire because everyone started insulting each other. Nobody likes being insulted.
Sincerely,
Robyn
My bad LOL please convey my apologies to Mr. Klein for spelling his name wrong. It was not at all intended. Everything else I said was, though. I can’t speak to Mr. Klein’s behavior in the classroom but here we have his own confession that he has a habit of insulting people, something that you yourself feel you can’t omit from your attempt to defend him against a little bit of snark. I don’t know why mr. Klein dishes out insults if he can’t bear to take a little criticism himself. Or maybe your defense of his right to impunity… Read more »
? I don’t need anything from Klein, his class was an easy peasy A…I’m not a psych major…and pie? what? Anyway, his first comment: “I would urge responders to at least demonstrate basic awareness of what actually was voted on, why the vote was necessary at this time, and why the outcome of the senate votes supported the recommendations (and votes) placed before it,” looks like it’s in response to comments asking, in a very general sense, that the program be preserved. What I understood from this was he was asking for commenters to be more specific in their admonishment… Read more »
And now on a personal level, since this is what you and quite a few others brought up yourself, I have no qualms defending Klein partially because he was a great professor whose ideas/questions provoked me and many of my psychology peers to think about/do independent work related to a field which too often is studied without critical thought, and to challenge popular, vague, easily accepted responses to difficult situations/realities. Even if I don’t like some of his idiosyncrasies that come out in communication, it’s not related to the topics he brings up. Do I see many of my other… Read more »
In case your buddy doesn’t share this “internal post” with you: “Stan is right that we needn’t wish illness upon anyone. ‘Sputter into silence’ referred to his anger, not his health. But Stan’s provocative, nasty, snarky personal attacks made people understandably cranky. Maybe they spoke heatedly in self-defense. Anyhow, We wish you well, STAN. Long may you live and argue with others. May you read 100 more years of PRP reports! Same to you, mole or spy. Be well!
Mr. Klein, Once again: Sincere good wishes for your good health, happiness and success in all future endeavors, research, and Academic Senate committee work. You must admit that this debate has become heated in unfortunate ways, i.e. you lashed out and have been pretty hot under the collar. I never wished you ill. Or illness upon you! Only responded to your public remarks and the personal attacks you lodged against commenters this forum. Which was about the admissons freeze the Academic Senate approved for a beloved program. Let’s hope for an elevated debate if the debate continues. Once again–I wish… Read more »
When I say I’d like the College of Creative Studies Literature program to stay the same, I don’t mean that I’d like CCS Lit to be a clone of what it was when I was there—it never could be, since all the teachers are different. I mean that I want it to be a straightforward program in which excellent teachers and bright, motivated, talented students read lots and lots of literature together—not just English literature, but Japanese, Russian, Indian, French and whatever else in translation (rather, read the literature separately and discuss/analyze the works together); and then analyze the works… Read more »