Departmental Self Review - UCLA Academic Senate

2.1.1. Maintaining Program QualityThe department has several mechanisms in place to ensure and improve the quality ofundergraduate education in anthropology:• We have continued to appoint a ladder faculty member as Vice Chair of the departmentto oversee undergraduate and graduate curricular matters, to serve as a liaison betweenstudents and faculty and to act as an advocate for student issues within the department.The Vice Chair leads the Academic Coordinating Committee (see below) and approvesall independent studies, course substitutions, and course waivers. The Vice Chair wasfilled by Professors Duranti (1996-99), Hollan (99-01), Arnold (2001-07) and Brantingham(2007-present).• The Academic Coordinating Committee engages in continuous monitoring of theundergraduate and graduate programs to ensure that both meet the most rigorousstandards. The Academic Coordinating Committee is responsible for the planning andmanagement of the anthropology undergraduate and graduate curriculum. Facultymembers representing each of the subfields sit on the Academic CoordinatingCommittee and they are responsible for annually collecting information about teachingplans from their subfield colleagues. Academic Coordinating Committee members arealso responsible for the periodic evaluation of the anthropology course catalog to ensurethat new courses make their way into the catalog and that courses that have ceased to betaught are removed from the catalog. The Academic Coordinating Committee has alsotaken on a regular role in evaluating the distribution of TAships across undergraduatecourses to ensure that these limited resources are being used where they are mostneeded.• The department has a part time undergraduate advisor who serves on the AcademicCoordinating Committee and works in consultation with the Vice Chair to advisestudents on all aspects of the undergraduate program. The undergraduate advisor helpsstudents to declare anthropology as a major or minor and helps students to structuretheir program of study to help ensure timely progress through the program. Theadvisor also works with the University to ensure the equivalence of community collegecourses, communicate timely information about changes to the program, and provideadvice about careers in anthropology. The undergraduate advisor is now a casual staffposition, this is a new policy since the previous review period when advising wasassigned to a graduate student. Our present undergraduate advisor (Dr. Selma Morley)holds a PhD in anthropology from UCLA.• The department has made an effort to make more extensive use of informationtechnology (IT) in service of undergraduate education. Our department webpage6