Chancellor's Advisory Council Charge to the Strategic Planning Committees

UC Irvine is updating its Long Range Development Plan this year. As part of that process, we have an opportunity to reconsider the enrollment target projected for our campus. We are now very close to the numbers of students and faculty projected for 2005-2006 by the current LRDP, which was last updated in 1989.

	1989 LRDP projection for 2005-06	Fall 2003 actual
Student enrollment
Undergraduate	20,000	20,133
Graduate	5,000	3,609
Health sciences	1,050	1,132
Total	26,050	24,874
Faculty FTE
General campus	1,200	1,161.17	budgeted FTE
Health sciences	350	186.63	budgeted FTE in the College of Medicine, plus approx. 120 more Academic Senate members

Most people would now agree that enrollments at UC Irvine will inevitably grow beyond the enrollment targets projected in 1989, especially if we are to attain flagship status for UC Irvine. Over the course of this year, we need to consider how much growth-and what rate of growth-can be accommodated on our campus while maintaining our overarching goal to increase quality and breadth in our teaching and research. We must address some basic questions about the enrollment targets for our campus and how those goals will affect the kind of campus we want to be:

• What should be our enrollment target for the new LRDP, which requires a projection to 2015. Should we also set shorter-term goals?
• Should we have a larger target for some point further in the future, i.e., a maximum enrollment at build-out? If so, what should that target be, and what year should be predicted? (The LRDP of 1970 projected build-out at 1990, with 27,500 students on the General Campus.)
• How can we best coordinate enrollment management with planning focusing on the academic objectives of the campus, campus life for faculty, staff and students, opportunities for research and funding from the state and extramural sources, the development of the physical facilities of the campus, and our public mission--and the public's perception of that mission?

Faculty, staff, and students will be encouraged to discuss this issue in specific ad hoc subcommittees, and the Chancellor's Advisory Council (CAC) will oversee six committees formally charged with considering the question of an enrollment target from different perspectives:

Academic Breadth: Sue Bryant, Chair
Campus Life: Meredith Lee, Chair
Physical Facilities: Jay Gargus, Chair
Public Mission and Expectations: Ralph Cicerone, Chair
Research/Graduate Studies: Nicolaos Alexopoulos, Chair
Resources: Debra Richardson, Chair

In considering these issues, the committees should set goals that are appropriate for our ambition but also realistic. This year we have just under 24,000 students, and we have been growing by an average of 1,333 students per year for the past five years. For example, if we grow by 750 new students each year (e.g., an additional 600 undergraduates and 150 graduate students), that would result in 33,000 students by 2015. If we assume the current state-funding ratio of approximately 18.7:1 students:faculty FTE, that means we would need to hire 480 faculty in the next twelve years (plus what we would need to replace vacated positions at a turnover rate of 5% for the campus, or about 60 FTE/year). That results in our needing to hire roughly 100-105 faculty per year for the next twelve years, whereas in the past the most we have hired in one year is 80.

Can we realistically expect to increase our hiring rate by that amount without compromising the quality of our appointments? Can we expect our graduate programs to continuing expanding at that rate? If so, can and should we consider extending that rate of growth another decade to reach an enrollment of 40,000 by 2025?

All of these questions will be compounded by the issues associated with the six committees, and each committee will be expected to report on its deliberations periodically to the CAC during Winter Quarter 2004 to help coordinate our work. By the beginning of Spring Quarter 2004, each committee will provide the following to the CAC:

(1) a one-page statement establishing an ideal enrollment target for 2015, and a maximum enrollment for the campus at some point in the future if those numbers differ; and

(2) a brief set of strategies for reaching that goal and some metrics for measuring progress associated with the particular perspective of that committee. Each committee should format its response using the sample template below:

Goal	Strategy	Metric
Attain flagship status for UCI by enhancing campus life	Create a vital on-campus community for students	House 50% of students on campus