Mission

Our mission:

The mission of UC Berkeley outreach activities and programs is:

1. To create strategies to make the University's resources more available to the community at large and to our educational partners;
2. To provide leadership in research, evaluation and practice that advances knowledge about how and why students excel;
3. To work with K-12, community colleges, the CSU system, and other public and private sector partners to address significant educational issues; and
4. To address the challenge of diversity by increasing the enrollment of African American, Chicano/Latino, and Native American students at Berkeley and throughout the University of California system.

Our challenge:

The University of California, Berkeley's outreach activities are at a "new beginning." Recent state-wide and regental mandates regarding admissions, recruitment and outreach, together with a state-wide call for renewed collaboration between educational sectors, require the University to build on previous traditions and successes while taking on a new and reinvigorated mission.

Development of previous UCB outreach programs and activities has not been as integrated as it should have been. New efforts must highlight endeavors that are strategic, integrated, comprehensive and sustainable in the long term. This change leads to a significant and urgent challenge for Berkeley and the broader educational community.

Our guiding principles:

1. Outreach activities should be seen as a central part of the campus's mission. Participation in outreach work should be fostered at all levels of the organization and accountability for the success of this work should be seen as a campus-wide responsibility. The campus infrastructure for outreach should support:

• Involvement of faculty across all academic disciplines and formal recognition of the importance of faculty efforts in this area;
• Strong and productive interactions among faculty, students, and staff in pursuit of the campus's outreach mission;
• Involvement of Academic Departments in outreach initiatives that are integrated with the departments' research, instructional, and public service programs and mission.
• Involvement of both undergraduate and graduate students and recognition of students' value as ambassadors of the campus and role models and mentors, as well as the contribution that outreach work can make to career opportunities and personal development for all students and to the development of graduate students as future teachers, researchers, and members of the larger education community.

2. Outreach work should be structured to enable and support productive, meaningful collaborations among campus units and our education partners that:

• Eliminate divisions between "school"- centered and "student"-centered work;
• Increase opportunity for students to enroll at Berkeley by maintaining and enhancing the connections between outreach, admissions, and financial aid;
• Place priority in our educational partnership activities on the needs of our K-12 partners;
• Recognize the key role that community colleges play in the education continuum within California and aim to increase the number of students who transfer from community colleges to the University of California.
• Embed professional development opportunities for teachers within all of our programs;
• Recognize that each educational setting is unique and partnership programs must be tailored to the particular characteristics of our partner districts and schools;
• Promote decision-making where ever it is most relevant to achieving articulated goals and use collaborative structures at all levels.

3. Outreach programs at Berkeley should build on the unique values, qualities and characteristics of Berkeley as an institution and a community. In particular, Berkeley's outreach mission must pay particular attention to:

• Contributing to the creation of new knowledge by pursuing a focused research agenda and conducting careful evaluation and analysis of all programs;
• Articulating the intellectual premises that underlie our outreach work and organizing our work around a set of intellectual themes regarding the educational, social, and other factors that affect student achievement;
• Playing a leadership role in public policy discussions regarding access to higher education, the achievement of minority students, and the transformation of education in California and across the nation;
• Recognizing that Berkeley has a special responsibility to serve the needs of the Bay Area, particularly the City of Oakland, in which the University of California was founded, and the cities of Berkeley, Richmond and San Francisco which, together with Oakland, were our original partners in the Berkeley Pledge.

4. In designing and building a new campus infrastructure for outreach programs, the campus should seek both clarity and flexibility. New organizational models should:

• Create a clear identity and location for outreach that is widely understood both within and beyond the campus;
• Identify a leader and spokesperson that can convene, integrate and maximize outreach efforts;
• Be flexible and adaptive with respect to organizational units, evaluating and redefining periodically the number and focus of those units;
• Emphasize the need for rigorous evaluation and measurable results.
• Promote excellence along with administrative efficiency.

Approved by Chancellor's Administrative Policy Committee on Outreach