The Intersegmental Committee of Academic Senates (ICAS), representing the faculty of the University of California, California State University, and the California Community Colleges, has been working over the past year on a very important project on articulation and transfer. Based on faculty-to-faculty dialogues across the state, the project will address issues related to lower division, pretransfer major preparation. Conceived of as an ongoing project that will systematically address clusters of disciplines on a five-year cycle, the project has first begun to address the sciences. The first cluster addresses majors in biology, chemistry, mathematics and physics. Appropriate discipline faculty on your campus have recently been invited to attend regional meetings for the IMPAC project.
The Intersegmental Major Preparation Articulated Curriculum (IMPAC) is a collaborative effort of ICAS and has two objectives:
1) the creation of a common understanding of and communication about the major preparation, including key components of the lower division curriculum; and
2) the establishment of a system of state and regional intersegmental faculty dialogues, by discipline and among related disciplines, to address curriculum issues related to articulation and transfer.
Through IMPAC, ICAS seeks to achieve the general objectives of increasing intersegmental collaboration, strengthening the alignment of curriculum and the rigor of its delivery, building trust among faculty of the three segments, and serving students whose education is a shared mission of both the sending and receiving institutions. Important goals of IMPAC are to ensure that students are able to avoid unnecessary course work prior to transfer, ensure that all required courses are taken before transfer, and ensure that students do not have to repeat after transfer courses taken at the community college in preparation for the major.
The regional meetings are opportunities to bring faculty together in the disciplines to discuss the major preparation requirements at each of the UC and CSU campuses. Last April, a group of faculty members met in Los Angeles to come to an initial understanding about the courses needed for lower division major preparation in four disciplines: biology, chemistry, mathematics, and physics at UC and CSU.
A statewide meeting will be held on May 12-13, 2000, at the Los Angeles Westin. At this meeting, regional representatives will be able to address the issues and concerns regarding Science Cluster I, discussed at the regional meetings. In addition, the second cluster will begin. The second Science Cluster is designed to address the following disciplines: Agriculture, Computer Science, Earth Sciences, Home Economics/Child Development, and Nursing. We encourage you to inform your faculty in the above discipline areas. If you know faculty in these areas that would like to participate on the IMPAC project, please contact the Senate Office. You can also check out the IMPAC website at: http://www.cal-impac.org.
This is a faculty driven project funded by a state budget allocation administered through and based upon a proposal submitted by the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges. The Academic Senates of all three segments are united in working to ensure that IMPAC deliberations are based upon the expertise of appropriate faculty. We look forward to the many opportunities IMPAC will offer for the enhanced professional collaboration between faculty of the community colleges.