UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES UCLA

BERKELEY · DAVIS · IRVINE · LOS ANGELES · RIVERSIDE · SAN DIEGO · SAN FRANCISCO · SANTA BARBARA · SANTA CRUZ

SCHOOL OF LAW

BOX 951476

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90095-1476

Kristine S. Knaplund

UCLA School of Law

June 8, 1996

"The Best Defense: Protecting Your Program in an Era of Budget Cuts and Anti-Affirmative Action Sentiment"

Kris Knaplund, UCLA

Goals of this session:

1. Strategies for strengthening your program

-- from within your law school

AND

-- from outside your law school

2. Introduce you to a few methods for evaluating

your program

3. Encourage you to think creatively about your job

and your role in the law school

Things You Can Do INSIDE Your Institution:

1. Document what you're doing

2. Be visible.

3. Think about your program' s viability beyond your tenure.

4. Evaluate your program.

5. Think broadly about how your program benefits non-participants.

6. Other ideas

-- Recruitment

-- Retention

-- Diagnosis

-- Enhancement

-- Bar Passage

-- Educate & change institution

STEPS FOR A RETENTION STUDY

1. Start with all students entering your school FOR THE FIRST TIME in Fall 19__.

-- OMIT students who withdrew earlier & returned. Keep all students with their original entering class.

2. Track separately:

--full time students

--part time students

3. Compute earliest graduation date & check grad records for that date.

-- AVOID THIS ERROR: Do not start your retention study by looking at grad lists: you've missed all the people who withdrew, were dismissed, etc!

4. Check the next semester's graduation list; keep working forward.

-- NOTE: Joint degree students will graduate a year "late" but are still counted as graduating "on time".

5. Check all graduation records for a period of 5 years after entry. You can now calculate how many students graduated.

6. Check individual files to determine why remaining students did not graduate. Code them separately for "withdrew/ no return", "dismissed", "transferred" etc.

BASIC EVALUATION QUESTIONS

-- Who is attending this program?

-- Why are they attending?

-- Who does not attend, and why?

-- How often do students attend?

-- How do the participants evaluate the program?

TOP TIPS FOR EVALUATING YOUR PROGRAM

1. Do some preliminary research

2. Establish goals of ASP and target populations

3. Use a variety of devices to measure the program

4. Keep good records

Things You Can Do OUTSIDE Your Institution.

1. WRITE!!!!!

2. Speak at conferences.

3. Be on organizing committees for conferences.

4. Join a regional ASP group.

5. Other ideas

UCLA enrolls -320 students each fall, all full-time. About 40% of those admitted are diversity students. All programs described in this chart are voluntary for first year students.

Academic Support Programs at UCLA School of Law

The essential components of UCLA's program are a nine-day summer program for entering diversity students, TA-led study groups and exam workshops designed to accommodate several hundred first year students, and two credit courses for a small number of students in academic difficulty: a course in legal analysis for first year students in the spring semester, and a special section of Wills & Trusts in the fall. Overall, the entire program allows us to accommodate a very large first year class, while saving the most labor-intensive courses for those with the most need. All of the components emphasize teaming skills rather than substance, and include quite a bit of writing.

1. Our nine day summer program provides 60 entering diversity students with the opportunity to work closely with law faculty in both skill development and law class components. About 25 full-time UCLA faculty teach in the summer program each year. The summer program allows participants to get an intensive orientation to the culture and expectations of the law school, to set up support networks, to get their housing and financial aid in order, and to assess whether they will need additional help in the fall. Participants are housed in the UCLA graduate dorm, Hershey Hall, which is within walking distance of the law school. All costs for the program are paid for by a grant from the Milken Family Foundations.

The summer program consists of a series of classes on essential skills, such as reading and briefing cases, reading statutes, and leaming the basics of legal analysis. A different faculty member teaches class each day, so that students are exposed to a range of teaching styles. Students also complete four writing exercises that build on skills introduced in the classes. Ten to twelve faculty members, in the role of writing instructors, evaluate the papers and give students same-day feedback, thus allowing students to incorporate comments into the next assignment. In addition, students form friendships with each other and with second and third year students, resolve financial aid questions, find housing, and learn about the UCLA campus. Thus the summer program explicitly seeks to reduce isolation and alienation to which incoming diversity students (especially those who belong to underrepresented groups) may be vulnerable.

2. For the TA-led study groups, we hire second and third year students to sit in on a particular class and lead a study group each week. In the fall, any first year student is eligible to attend, but the students must sign up, and the number can't exceed 25 per session. Diversity students have priority for seats in the study groups. In the spring semester, students with "C" averages are eligible to attend. About 200 students participate in the fall semester, and about 50 students participate in the spring. The TA-led study groups are an important vehicle for first year students to ask questions and seek reinforcement of core concepts. Students are asked to write at virtually every session.

3. First year students also attend exam workshops conducted by a faculty member. Students spend the first hour of the workshop discussing how to prepare for an exam, and walk through an actual UCLA exam question. In the second hour, students write out an answer to an exam question, which is critiqued and returned to the student. Workshops are conducted in all the large classes. Between 250 and 300 students participate in the workshops by attending the sessions and writing out a sample answer.

4. In the spring semester, UCLA adds a credit course in Legal Analysis for students in academic difficulty. Students with poor first semester grades can elect to take this intensive course in analysis and writing. About 25-30 students take the course each year for 3 units of credit (graded Pass/Unsatisfactory/No Credit). In spring 1997, this course will be offered in Torts.

5. In the fall semester of the first year, UCLA also offers written exercises in the students' small section, and a mentor program matching 1Ls with upper level students. These programs are open to all first year students.

6. Second and third year students can elect to take a special section of Wills and Trusts, for students in academic difficulty. This class focuses on learning legal analysis and writing in the context of a bar class, and includes weekly meetings with the course instructor and optional written exercises. In addition, several faculty offer weekly study groups for selected students in their bar courses, such as Community Property and Business Associations.

7. Finally, third year students can attend lectures on preparing for the California bar exam.

Two faculty members at UCLA, Kris Knaplund and Rick Sander, have done a multiple regression analysis on the effects of this program, and have found they can make a statistically significant difference in students' grades along with other effects. Their results are reported in their article, "The Art and Science of Academic Support," 45 Journal of Legal Education 157 (June 1995), which also describes our programs in more detail.