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Executive Summary 
The Intersegmental Major Preparation Articulated Curriculum
(IMPAC) Project originated in the Intersegmental Committee
of Statewide Academic Senates (ICAS) of the California Community
College (CCC), University of California (UC), and California
State University (CSU) systems. IMPAC is a unique faculty
project designed to assist the student transfer process from
the community colleges to the UC and CSU systems in their
chosen major. The project, as explained in the Introduction
that follows, is funded by a $2.75 million grant that supports
for five years the development of an infrastructure for faculty
from the three higher education systems to meet regionally
at regular intervals to discuss issues, concerns, and academic
procedures that impinge upon the transfer process for students
between the community college and the UC and CSU systems.
Specifically, the grant funds faculty discipline and interdiscipline
dialogues that address prerequisite and lower division courses
students must complete prior to transfer to either the CSU
or UC systems.
In this its first fully-funded year, the IMPAC Project experienced
a remarkable surge in interest and participation, in achievements
and new agreements. The project’s Steering Committee, under
the aegis of the Intersegmental Committee of Academic Senates
(ICAS), regularized its reporting format and adopted participant
evaluation forms; we also tracked the efforts to induce affected
faculty and administrators in all three higher education segments
to engage in the on-going faculty-to-faculty dialogues at
the heart of this effort and to “institutionalize” this project
within the on-going work of their departments. Steering Committee
members promoted IMPAC’s efforts in more than ten formal presentations
to professional gatherings of faculty, to systemwide administrators,
to student support service providers, to governing boards,
and to state legislators.
To communicate its efforts more broadly, the project also
produced 10,000 copies of its newsletter, sending it to all
identified faculty, to deans, to system administrators, to
governmental leaders and to legislators. In addition, IMPAC’s
expanded website at www.cal-impac.org carries the listing
of participants (both by segment and by discipline), as well
as the notes of the discussions and this annual report, after
consideration by the field and accepted by ICAS.
During the 2000-2001, 541 faculty attended the regional and
statewide meetings (see Appendix A). Their findings, in turn,
have been reviewed by them and their discipline faculty colleagues
across the state.
In this year’s annual report, you will note a uniformity
of reporting. Appendix B explains this new format in greater
detail. Generally, concerns are reported, and potential solutions
offered in these segments:
Discipline Issues, Trends, and Concerns
At least 87 issues and concerns are identified by the faculty
in the nine disciplines reported here.
- Faculty report that transferring students in the sciences
and science-intensive areas have often failed to complete
the necessary lower division coursework for those majors;
on the other hand, many of those students would require
3-4 years at a community college to complete all remedial
and preparatory coursework.
- Faculty in all segments share concern for standards and
seek to ensure rigor.
- Requirements of some prerequisites that serve as “gatekeepers”
in 4-year institutions may become barriers in the community
college.
- Faculty recruitment, hiring, and retention remain of
critical concern in these fields.
Recommendations for Specific Action
To address these issues and concerns, faculty in the groups
made 44 specific recommendations for further action.For example:
- Monitoring of existing, innovative curricular efforts.
- Research to determine beyond anecdote the experiences
of transfer students.
- Greater communication with potential transfers, using
websites and brochures.
- Increasing communication with regional feeder community
colleges.
- Identification of some strategies to identify critical
faculty shortages (mathematics, nursing, computer science)
and in related area.
- Continue discussions regarding teacher preparation (e.g.,
mathematics for K-6 and for secondary teachers).
- Possible posting of university syllabi outline on web
(after due consideration of intellectual property issues)
as indicators of changed approaches, new textbooks, new
emphases that should be monitored and considered by community
college faculty.
Cross-Disciplinary Recommendations
The 26 recommendations in this category call for greater
collaboration and joint study for resolution, and a new examination
of related coursework that can be viewed as complementary
but not necessarily required in the major. These recommendations
become the nucleus of discussions among the disciplines in
the next year.
Intersegmental Transfer Initiatives
One of the most significant developments this year were the
steps taken by ICAS and the California Articulation Numbering
System (CAN) Board and its Executive Director to draw in faculty
from UC. To that end, ICAS committed itself to encouraging
greater UC and CSU participation into IMPAC discussions and
the CAN processes; in return, the CAN Board has agreed to
accept any modifications of CAN descriptors of this year’s
four majors (food science and nutrition, agriculture, biology
and physics) without further faculty review. IMPAC is also
forwarding to the CAN Board for its consideration, IMPAC faculty’s
recommendations for revisions of 5 existing descriptors; for
1 new sequence; for 21 new courses to be CANned; and most
importantly, recommendations for revisions of the CAN process
itself so that the segmental transfer processes including
CSU Lower Division Core and others, might be increasingly
integrated. IMPAC and new articulation officers will next
pursue agreements offered to community colleges by 9 CSU campuses
as a result of these IMPAC discussions. (See Appendix C).
In addition, ICAS and the IMPAC faculty are also forwarding
to the CAN Board of Directors programmatic recommendations
calling for possible designators for learning modules to differentiate
essential and optional elements needed for students transferring
into biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, and computer
science. Concurrently, the IMPAC faculty are forwarding recommendations
of new CAN procedures designed to encourage even wider UC
and CSU participation in CAN reviews.
The IMPAC Steering Committee proposed, and ICAS concurred,
that the Steering Committee should be enlarged to incorporate
articulation officers who would follow the discussions across
the year and be of particular assistance to the discipline
faculty at the regional and state meeting. The statewide intersegmental
organization of articulation officers has enthusiastically
endorsed this proposal; its representative to the Steering
Committee will be working with the steering committee and
the academic senates to identify articulation officers to
serve in this capacity. The faculty have also called for a
uniform statewide articulation process (and form) to ease
their review work. This revision effort is currently being
coordinated by ASSIST, and IMPAC faculty hope to have an opportunity
to review their work.
Finally, the reports contain calls for one new degree program
and future consideration by IMPAC faculty of an IGETC alternative
for science-intensive majors. Tentatively called SciGETC,
this alternative will be among topics of future IMPAC discussions
where faculty will be asked to explore what might comprise
such an alternative. If recommended by IMPAC, this recommendation
would be forwarded to ICAS for segmental consideration.
This report concludes with a look toward next year’s efforts
and appendices that validate this year’s valuable progress.
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