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Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI) have become an essential point of access for Chicana/o/x and Latina/o/x undergraduate students. UC Riverside is uniquely positioned to understand access and opportunity for Chicano/Latino students as the first HSI in the University of California system designated in 2008 and one of the first Hispanic Serving Research Institutions (HSRIs). While there has been a growing body of literature on HSIs, serving is often defined in a contemporary context, and few studies involve Chicano/Latino students in determining what serving means to them at an HSI. In this study, I define serving as the ability to promote a culture of student success that enrolls, cultivates, validates, and graduates Chicano/Latino students. Guided by Critical Race Theory and Chicana Feminist Theory, this Participatory Action Research study centers the voices and experiences of Chicano/Latino students both historically and presently to identify the origins of Chicano/Latino student success at UCR and trace the university’s trajectory to becoming an award-winning HSI (Matute, 2022). I created a course to explore the labor of Chicano/Latino student activists and faculty from the 1960s-1970s. Twelve Chicana/o/x and Latina/o/x undergraduate co-researchers and I formed Encuentros, Student Participation Action Research, and Testimonios (ESPARiTU). Over the span of three academic quarters, we analyzed archival documents, including photographs, outreach flyers, student newspapers, and college information brochures. We also conducted three testimonios (oral histories). We interviewed Dr. Carlos E. Cortés, who was one of two UCR Chicano faculty in the 1960s-1970s foundational to the formation of Chicano Student Programs and the concept of serving Chicano/Latino students at UCR. We also interviewed two students, Ofelia Valdez-Yeager and Alfredo Figueroa, who played a central role in Chicano student activism and helped establish support structures for Chicano students during the 1960s and 1970s. In addition to facilitating the course and engaging in the ESPARiTU research, I conducted collective observations, field notes, pre and post interviews, and analyzed co-researcher weekly journal submissions. I placed our collective analysis of the archival materials and oral accounts in conversation with my analysis of the ESPARiTU undergraduate experiences to map continuities and contestations across time.This collaborative research affirms the vital role of Chicano student activists and leaders in the 1960s-1970s in establishing structures of serving at UCR. Engaging in this historical recovery, Chicano/Latino undergraduate students gained a renewed sense of self-determination evident in three phases: 1) conocimiento (knowledge production), 2) comunidad (establishing a collaborative knowledge community), and 3) cambio (change). To preserve and pass on the revelatory counter history we excavated, ESPARiTU created a new digital collection that is available for the community and scholars to learn about the Chicano/Latino presence and evolution at UCR. This study advances our knowledge of HSRIs by recovering the practices and tools used to promote a culture of Chicano/Latino student success and liberation at UC Riverside.

The Library and Information Science (LIS) literature has made clear that academic libraries in the U.S. have experienced decades of hiring freezes and budget cuts that reduced staffing overall and eliminated many middle management positions. Consequently, now that baby boomer library managers and administrators are beginning to retire, there are few qualified applicants to replace them. Thus, many in the LIS field have called for better succession planning by top-level library administrators (e.g., Deans, Directors, University Librarians). Few studies, however, have directly addressed this issue by examining these administrators’ perceptions or behavior regarding succession planning. This study begins to fill this literature gap through semi-structured interviews with all 10 of the University Librarians (ULs) in the University of California (UC) system. The study employed a case study/cross-case analysis design; each participant-UL was considered a case. During data analysis, a within-case thematic analysis was conducted for each participant and then a cross-case analysis was undertaken to compare and contrast the ULs’ perspectives on succession planning. A theoretical framework drawn from the field of sociology was used to better understand the perceptions and behavior of participant-ULs regarding this topic. This framework suggested examining the structure and culture of the context in which each UL worked, as well as the perceived agency of each participating UL. This study’s findings suggest that structure, culture, and agency can significantly impact how and why the ULs engage or do not engage in succession planning. For example, the retirement pension for UC employees encourages long-term retention, which leads to low employee turnover. A static population may resist a ULs’ attempts at cultural change. Thus, both low turnover and resistance to change can make succession planning a challenge for ULs. The results of this study contribute to both LIS literature and practice in at least two ways. First, this study’s findings could be useful to other academic library administrators, given that the study identifies potentially transferable strategies that the ULs in the study are utilizing to succession plan. Second, this study helps further a conversation in the disciplinary literature about how and why to develop future library leaders.

ABSTRACTThis study explores why African American first-year students admitted to the University of California Davis decline their offer of admissions. The objective is to help the University successfully achieve their goal of supporting greater diversity and representation of students from historically underrepresented minority communities and marginalized backgrounds, including African American students. This is also an effort to address the low representation of Black students in higher education nationally, through the close investigation of UC Davis—a top-tier Research 1 University with a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. This study is important because representation and access matters. The University of California (UC) has long expressed its commitment to enrolling a student body that reflects the state. UC Davis has also established similar diversity goals as part of its strategic plan, “To Boldly Go.” If we are to address barriers to access, we must understand what those barriers are, and also determine what students are looking for and what their needs and priorities are as they navigate through the college choice process by asking them. Adopting a mixed-methods approach, this study focused on the following research questions:1. In what ways do the characteristics of African American first-year students admitted to UC Davis differ between those who submit an SIR and those who do not? 2. What are the experiences that influence whether African American first-year students admitted to UC Davis submit an SIR? To address research question one, I conducted a quantitative analysis using existing administrative data on admission and enrollment by student characteristics as well as National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) data for first year African American students admitted to UC Davis in fall 2018. I compare the characteristics of admitted African American students who decide to enroll with those who decline their admissions offer. To address research question two, I conducted semi-structured interviews with seven African American first-year students admitted to UC Davis for fall 2020 who declined their offer of admission. These interviews were conducted to document student narratives about college choice, and to better understand “the why” in their decision not to attend UC Davis. The findings from this study will help inform institutional strategies, including recruiting and enrollment, about how to best support African American applicants considering UC Davis, particularly for Black students from the local region. Addressing enrollment growth will require an adjustment in strategy and collaborative efforts at all levels within and external to the University, including coordination with alumni, community-based organizations, schools, and other educational partners. Given this context, understanding why Black students who do gain admission to the University decide not to attend is crucial. This study also adds to the broader body of literature around student college choice, by highlighting the experience of African American students.

“Reckoning the Rural: Racial Capitalism, the San Joaquin Valley, and the University of California” is an interdisciplinary study of the socioeconomic and political connections between California’s agricultural industry and the San Joaquin Valley from 1862 to the early 2000s. In telling this narrative, my dissertation focuses on a lesser known feature of these connections by examining the production of knowledge at public research universities—namely, the University of California system. Rather than peripheral to dynamics of race, my dissertation argues that the University of California system and California agribusiness more broadly are intricately linked to racial capitalism as can be evidenced by the effects of settler colonialism, farm consolidation, and mechanization in the region. By interrogating the relationship between the state, racial capitalist economics, and knowledge production, this dissertation attempts to demonstrate how the production of rural geographies have been central to California as a settler colony and to perpetuating racialized oppression against various communities since the mid-19th Century. In order to tell this story, “Reckoning the Rural” begins in 1862 with the passage of the Morrill Land Grant Act. From there, it weaves together California state and national histories on through the early 2000s to think about the creation of agricultural rural areas in California, and the fate of one of the state’s most productive regions for agriculture in California—the San Joaquin Valley. While struggles over labor exploitation in the San Joaquin Valley are oftentimes remembered through figures and movements such as Cesar Chavez and the United Farmworkers, my dissertation attempts to give a longer account, or reckoning, of agriculture’s racially exploitative practices. It does this by focusing in on the University of California’s own history as an entangled player in settling the West, facilitating the consolidation of big agribusiness, and naturalizing the use of mechanization for agricultural harvesting—all projects that had produced and held detrimental effects for communities of color. In doing so, “Reckoning the Rural” argues that there was a co-constitutive relationship between the University of California and the white supremacist practices of agribusiness.

This historical examination of private California colleges between 1851 and 1900 presents the argument that the related projects of Anglo-Protestant moral reform and higher education were concerned not only with sacred space, but also sacred time. Secondarily, it draws an examination of California higher education in the early decades of the state into a national, rather than simply regional, narrative. Drawing on newspapers, images, student publications, college catalogues and handbooks, and missionary reports, I argue that educators conceived of campuses as spaces of moral safety from the corrupting influences of urban society, as well as temporal havens that stayed the tide of secular change. This endeavor to temporally and spatially protect Christian morality found its culmination in regulations for Sunday Sabbath-keeping and chapel attendance enforced upon students at Mills College, the University of the Pacific, Occidental College, and antecedents of the University of California, Santa Barbara.

A structured conceptualization evaluation is made on the community- based education program called Mini Medical School at the University of California, Riverside. Two surveys were created with the intention of characterizing the socioeconomic and health background of the population that attends the Mini Medical School events in Riverside County. The surveys were distributed to general Mini Medical School venues as well as a School of Medicine Open House event held in spring of 2016. Results of the survey are then compared to similar socioeconomic and health reports of Riverside County through various online databases. We found significant statistical differences in the racial and ethnic breakdown of the Mini Medical School population and Riverside County. We found no statistical differences in the poverty levels between the Mini Medical School population and Riverside County. We found mixed results on the prevalence of each of the health conditions listed on the survey. Further formative and summative evaluations need to be completed on both the population that attends the Mini Medical School events as well as the pre-health students who volunteer for the program to ensure that goals laid out are being met and that the program is being delivered as intended.

The goal for this paper and my research is to reduce overall cost associated with electricity use at UC Merced. UC Merced presents itself as a unique opportunity for to model integration and optimization of renewable energy sources. It will be discussed exactly what makes UC Merced unique and how UC Merced has set a path towards higher energy efficiency on a community level. Furthermore, I will discuss difficulties involved with integrating renewable resources and then proceed to analyze techniques for further optimization as UC Merced continues its path towards zero net energy. One of these optimization techniques, genetic algorithms; I will discuss in some detail as it was the technique chose to verify the results of the optimization. The main goal of this study is to determine the effect of moving UC Merced‘s Central Plant load closer to or completely during daylight hours when there is inexpensive (solar) energy available or during the night time when energy pricing is minimum. While it seems logical to shift the cooling load, it has yet to be quantitatively shown that such load shifting would be more cost effective. Genetic algorithm (GA)-based Artificial Neural Network (ANN) models are used for demand and energy production forecasting and then GA based cost optimization is performed to find optimum time window for load shifting. We determined that loading shifting can be beneficial and the associated savings are presented for both summer and winter seasons.

The purpose of this study was to assess the opportunities available to adults for continuing their education part-time to complete a Bachelor's degree and to assess a California research institution's perception of part-time study. Adult student enrollments in postsecondary education have increased 114 percent between 1970 and 1985. Part-time student enrollments rose nearly 87 percent during the same time frame and part-time students now comprise approximately 42 percent of the enrollment in postsecondary education. California research institutions are typically still providing services for the traditional day-time student. There is a persistent resistance to change by faculty. Changing the way the institution provides services to adults attending part-time and introducing new teaching methods requires campus and University of California systemwide approvals. These approvals are highly capital intensive and their procedures time consuming. Thus, responding to rapidly changing social and economic conditions is difficult. A survey of part-time students at a research institution provided data for descriptive statistics. Interviews with part-time degree administrators and faculty at research institutions provided their viewpoints regarding part-time students. This qualitative study utilized the interpretive paradigm. Data clearly indicated the need for development of part-time education at California public research institutions that would provide an opportunity for academic, personal and social growth. Working adults see themselves more as consumers of educational products than do most traditional college students. Their educational objectives are often more focused and they expect specific results from their educational investment (e.g., job advancement, career change). Public research institutions need to embrace two goals: First, change the current traditional approach by leaders of California public research institutions to create an educational environment responsive to the diverse characteristics, conditions and needs of adults. Second, increase access for the hundreds of adults seeking part-time study to obtain a Bachelor's degree at a California public research institution. An important component of leadership responsibility is to constantly re-evaluate assumptions based on routine practice, which are comfortable, and to strive to implement effective new ways of educating all students--youth, young adults and older adults. A model part-time degree program was developed to provide guidance for higher education administrators.

This study provides an in-depth description of mixed gender working partnerships in a collaborative effort over a one year period. The research identified differences between men and women in mutually collaborative working partnerships at the undergraduate level in order to also discover what was productive or problematic between those women and men in the partnerships. The research studied twenty-two UCSD undergraduate women and men who worked together in partnerships with mutual goals. The research utilized phenomenological interviewing techniques. The focus was the perceptions and experiences of the participants. The interviews were designed to address two primary research questions: 1) What contributes to a mutually agreeable and productive partnership between women and men engaged in collaborative work? 2) What is problematic between women and men engaged in collaborative work? The findings indicated that positive components for effective mixed gender partnerships included good communication, empowerment, constructive feedback, friendship, humor, common ground and intellectual growth and openness. Elements that were problematic were lack of initiative, poor communication, violation of confidentiality, sensitivity difference, relationships, different "wavelengths", and sexist stereotypes. Gender differences figured prominently in partnership difficulties. Men were generally perceived as being less responsible, nurturing, detail oriented and self-starting than women. The specific work tasks required by the partnerships seemed to influence the outcomes. Recommendations based on the findings were to support mixed gender partnerships through gender awareness training, mediation, more accountability and supervisory intervention, facilitating an environment for common ground, reducing gender bias in performance standards, opportunities for social events, encouraging empowerment, and a commitment to affirmative action.

This study investigated an empirical example of a Vaill's high performance system within the university-higher education organization with the purpose of assisting leaders within colleges and universities in having a greater understanding of the organizational structure of their own institutions. The results are analyzed with the prospects of utilizing this information to address such theoretical questions as: how did the athletic department achieve this high level of performance and how was the athletic department able to exist as a high performance system within the university organization? This study, which extended from January, 1986 to May, 1986, was conducted using the athletic department of the University of California, San Diego. The sample consisted of forty-one subjects: The Athletic Director, ten coaches, and thirty athletes. The research design was a case study that used the focused interview technique. An interview guide, that was designed by the researcher, was used during the interview portion of this research. It consisted of 34 questions. Each of these questions were designed to reflect a specific criterion and/or characteristic of a high performance system as defined by Vaill. Each of the questions were analyzed to see whether or not the response was in agreement with the response given by the Athletic Director. A 70 percent level of agreement was established. Each question had to achieve this 70 percent agreement between the Athletic Director's response and the responses of the forty coaches and athletes in order for a question to be used in the analysis of data. The researcher concluded that the athletic department could be identified as a high performance system. In addressing the question of how the athletic department achieved this level of excellence the findings suggest that the environment outside the university played a significant role in influencing the successful development of the department. The findings also suggest that the athletic department was able to exist as a high performance system within the university organization because of the ability of an organized anarchy and a loosely coupled system to tolerate novel solutions, local accommodations, and a great deal of ambiguity while still maintaining its own unique identity. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.)