UC Merced faces opening obstacles

Staff and administrators continue to wait at UC Merced for their
pioneer class of students, but due to litigation, postponement of
the school’s opening and an uncooperative state budget, the
10th University of California campus is still in its preliminary
stages of building and will not house students until fall 2005, a
year later than this year’s proposed opening date. The main
obstacles faced in opening a university are always different.
“It’s a matter of the circumstances you’re
dealing with,” said Lindsay Desrochers, Merced vice
chancellor for administration and physical planning. And for the
school’s campus, there were many unseen obstacles that had to
be faced. Time was a key difference between opening the campus and
opening other campuses, Desrochers said. “It’s more
complex now than it was 40 years ago when they last built these
(UC) campuses. There are added environmental, labor and cost issues
now,” she said

A new campus, a new budget The 2,000-acre
campus site in the San Joaquin Valley was selected in hopes of
expanding higher education opportunities in the Central Valley, an
area with several California State Universities and a limited UC
presence. The site, 6 miles from downtown Merced, was donated by
two local educational trusts: the Virginia Smith Trust and the
Cyril Smith Trust. Shortly after the site was selected, budget cuts
slowed progress drastically. Instability in the state budget led to
uncertainty about the availability of resources for building the
campus. With such uncertainty plaguing the state’s budget,
there was a question as to “whether the state could afford
it,” Desrochers said. “But the need is there, so the
state must come up with the resources.” Because of a recent
increase in high school graduates and already full UC campuses, the
state realized that something had to be done. According to the
California Postsecondary Education Report, the total student demand
for the UC will increase by 32.4 percent to 229,724 students by
2010. To alleviate some of the stress on the other nine campuses,
Merced plans to take in 1,000 students in 2005 and 1,000 more in
2006 and to expand by 800 students each subsequent year, planning
to accommodate 6,000 students by 2010. The campus will ultimately
serve 25,000 students and provide much-needed additional capacity
for the UC system. The completion of the university is scheduled
for 2030 and will depend on state funding, said Patti Waid Istas, a
spokeswoman at Merced. Original plans called for the campus to open
in fall 2005. But former Gov. Gray Davis accelerated the plans and
rescheduled the opening for fall 2004. The opening of Merced had to
be postponed and the opening moved back to fall 2005, Istas said,
“because the budget wasn’t able to meet the
university’s needs.” Students were affected the most by
the postponement of Merced’s opening, Istas said. “This
year, the UC system had to turn down several thousand students. Had
Merced been open, we could have brought in 1,000 UC-eligible
students from the pool.” The campus also faced difficulties
in obtaining necessary permits because the main location was an
“environmentally sensitive area.” Unknown to the UC
Board of Regents when it first selected the site, vernal pools
““ pockets of water that form after it rains and house aquatic
plants and organisms ““ were found to contain endangered
species of tiny fairy shrimp. Under the threat of litigation, the
main site of the campus was shifted 1.5 miles away to a golf course
with few vernal pools. Coupled with this shift in site, and as part
of a collaboration between the Packard Foundation, the Hewlett
Foundation, The Nature Conservancy and the State of California,
25,000 acres of grassland habitat were set aside for permanent
conservation.

Obtaining faculty and staff Over the last five
or six years a lot has changed in Merced. The school now has a
chancellor, and 220 staff members have also been hired. Last year
alone, 28 professors were brought on board. The university placed
ads in journals and the Chronicle of Higher Education and did
networking through the UC system to find qualified applicants,
Istas said. Some critics have speculated whether top-rate faculty
and administrators will come to this new campus in a little-known,
largely rural part of California. But Istas doesn’t agree.
“The UC system is a well-known public institution, and it is
not difficult to attract applicants. For the first 30 professor
openings, we had over 65,000 applications. The draw is the UC
prestige and quality that is well known throughout the
world,” she said. While the already hired professors wait for
the fall 2005 opening, the professors are busy at work with other
projects. Many are engaged in their own research projects or are
generating new grants and proposals on campus. “In August of
this year, $3.3 million in research proposals went out and over $1
million has come in so far,” Istas said. Others are busy
teaching summer sessions in the San Joaquin Valley and getting
ready for their new students who will arrive next school year.
Faculty and staff are currently being housed in a temporary Merced
building headquarters in Atwater. The building is providing
research labs and meeting space for classes that have already begun
for the 11 graduate students who began their studies at Merced
earlier this month, Istas said.

Building a student government Campus leaders
are already actively approaching the task of forming a student
government on the new campus. “The student government for
every campus is so different,” said Jennifer Lilla, president
of the University of California Students Association, a system-wide
student lobbying organization. Eager for student input, “the
Merced administrators invited UCSA to their campus for a board
meeting in spring,” Lilla said. “We made a pro/con list
so that the negatives of all of the campuses can be avoided and the
best of all campuses can be used.” “During the
discussion we reached a general consensus about the desire for a
fair electoral process where most of the positions are voted on as
opposed to appointed,” she added. From this meeting, a
student task force, the “Think Tank” was created. This
group of 20-25 graduate and undergraduate students has
representatives from each of the nine UC campuses as well as
representatives from UCSA. The “Think Tank” was
implemented “for students from different (UC) campuses to
have dialogue on what’s good and important to make the best
student government possible at Merced,” said Carlos
Feliciano, chairman of the board of directors for UCSA and member
of the Merced “Think Tank.” “Last year, they made
a formal announcement to UCSA, and then student governments from
each of the campuses put out a call for various students from
different backgrounds to apply. In June, they selected the
group,” Feliciano said. In mid-November, the “Think
Tank” group will go to Merced for a weekend to meet with the
staff and discuss and brainstorm the best ways to set up their
student government and decide which policies need to be
implemented, Feliciano said. “This student government will be
completely new. I believe it will be an evolving thing because all
of the majors are not going to be coming at once, so it will grow
out of the different departments as they grow. There will probably
be several variations before a final pattern will be set when the
campus has around 5,000 students,” Lilla said. Lilla said the
administrators are handling this difficult process well. “I
am very impressed with the chancellor and student-life people; they
are eager for students to come and are preparing to make their
transition to campus as smooth as possible.”

Seeking Individuality Merced plans to be unique
from the other nine campuses. “Although it’s a state
institution, it will be serving an underserved area of the state.
There is a large population of farmers and migrant workers out here
who deserve the same education as others,” Desrochers said.
Because the median family income in the San Joaquin Valley is not
that high, the UC has planned an aggressive financial aid approach.
Per a 1995 agreement, a community of at least 30,000 will be built
on 8,000 acres adjacent to the campus, the article said. “The
community is part of the overall plan,” Desrochers said.
“We’re hoping it will provide affordable housing for
students and staff and create a revenue stream, bringing
scholarships to Merced students. We’re confident it will
happen, but it will take a few years.” A program is already
in effect to get community college students into this new UC
campus. Currently, more than 40 community college students from
three campuses in the San Joaquin Valley are enrolled in this
program that is planned to streamline their eventual transfer to
Merced. With a blend of research and instructional faculty coming
from all over the globe, Desrochers said Merced hopes to be unique
from the other nine campuses with “its own unique faculty and
array of programs.” Along with the main Merced campus, the
university has opened three “distributed learning
centers” in Modesto, Fresno and Bakersfield.
“Professors will teach some classes there for people who
can’t always get to campus,” Desrochers said.

Campus and valley growth The initial buildings
already under construction include the science and engineering
building, the classroom building, the Leo and Dottie Kolligian
Library, and housing and dining facilities. This initial project
will cost $280 million of the $380 million already invested in the
1,000-acre campus. The buildings of the new campus will be
environmentally friendly, designed to save 20 percent of the energy
costs of similar buildings. Merced plans to play a key role in
spurring economic growth in the valley, and is likely to be one of
the valley’s largest single employers, already creating 1,500
new construction jobs. By 2010, at least $1 billion is expected to
be spent on the campus, both through state and private funding. So
far, leadership gifts have included $13 million from the Packard
Foundation, $2 million from the Hewlett Foundation, $5 million from
the Ernest and Julio Gallo Winery (to create a school of
management), and an almost $600,000 award and $1.1 million
renewable grant from the Small Business Administration. On July 31,
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a budget package for $20 million,
which the university will use to help fund faculty hiring,
enrollment and student support services, library materials and
operational expenses for Merced’s opening in 2005.