University of California, Santa Barbara
AC-7: Incentives for Developing Courses

The UCSB Strategic Academic Plan lays out the framework by which UCSB will prioritize resource allocations available for academic departments and faculty in pursuance of its themes and goals. Within the plan three of the four identified priorities for Interdisciplinary teaching and research include:

Environment: Provided Santa Barbara’s history as a center for environmental concern, UCSB has long pursued the study of environmental issues with multiple academic programs such as the Bren School, the Department of Geography, and the Environmental Studies Programs pioneering new environmental research/studies. Building upon this existing strength, UCSB integrates environmental studies by examining it through multiple different lenses: utilizing the social sciences to review environmental policy and economics, developing environmental engineering to combat existing energy issues, etc. The current pursuit of sustainability as a campus practice grows from the long historical interest in the environment at UCSB

Global and International Issues: Like the environmental theme, concerns with global and international issues run through the entire campus. Amongst the creation of new graduate programs to enhance global and international studies, UCSB has social science departments developing a strong cohort of faculty who are examining exchange and social change on a global scale. Additionally, many programs in earth science, including for example the Institute of Computational Earth System Science, are essentially global in scope; and various programs in engineering such as the emerging International Materials Research Center develop international collaborations.

Academy and Society: This theme incorporates the three other themes to offer a holistic view of the new changes among many different UCSB programs and their effective influence on the immediate local environment, economy, community, etc, and on each other. Some examples include the College of Engineering’s development of the Technology Management Program which has great potential to impact, among other things, the local economy, and the Division of Social Sciences which has identified public policy studies as a central priority that unifies a range of its activities,

The UCSB Strategic Academic Plan drives funding allocations for new faculty positions, recruitment of new faculty, retention of existing faculty, and other funding needs of academic departments. It also sets the priorities for the development of new research centers. Having the campus prioritize a key area, can also help in grant applications.

It is also important to note that most of the new programs/projects/initiatives arising from the pursuit of these core themes have and will receive widespread publicity which may indirectly provide incentive for more faculty to participate.

The examples and content covered in each of the themes listed in the incentive programs only describe a minor part of the advances made within UC Santa Barbara and thus, do not cover the whole breadth of the achievements and progress UC Santa Barbara has made moving forward.