The university decided to adopt an experimental approach to our self-study following the WASC Self-Study Workshop of May 1997. Nine people from the faculty and administration were in attendance. They concluded, as a result of the discussions of the relative merits of different approaches to self-study, that a thematic orientation rather than a traditional, Standards-based analysis and presentation would be a greater learning experience for the university. In January 1998, we composed the proposal that eventually was accepted by representatives of the faculty and administration and then approved by our liaison at WASC (Annex A2). The composition of the Steering Committee, the tentative Plan of Action and timeline, and a rough outline of the Self-Study were also endorsed. Modifications to these have been made subsequently. By June 1998, the Self-Study Coordinator had implemented the data collection phase of the research and presented a specific division of the Steering Committee into task forces for the forthcoming phases of analysis and compilation/writing.

The broad conception of the thematic approach was to describe, account for, and evaluate the major change in the university in the recent era. We observed that this change has at least four principal faces: cultural and sociopolitical change in the institution; change in educational philosophy and practice; change in the resource base on which we do our business; and change in the relationship between the university and larger communities — a change in our sense of ourselves. Chapter IV details the aspects of these changes we explored in depth. Our attitude toward change was at the outset neutral: in and of itself, we felt it was neither good nor bad, until and unless it could be documented and assessed by those affected by its specific manifestations. There are many points of view on the subject of change. We attempt to capture these divergent views in the interpretation in the next chapters. The four faces of change are, of course, the themes around which we grouped our data, analysis, discussion, and recommendations.

Our thematic approach was also motivated by the desire to re-visit the issues considered most in need of attention in our last (1990) WASC Re-Accreditation Report (please see Chapter II).

We saw that the WASC team’s suggestions could all be addressed within one or more of the themes, and that they coincided with the interests and/or problems we were already uncovering in our conversations with elements of the campus population. These problematical matters to which our attention was drawn in the last WASC review are addressed in depth in relation to the appropriate themes (e.g., leadership and diversity are the core discussions in Theme One, general education is a significant focus in Theme Two, growth and planning are major issues in Theme Three, and the question of our polytechnic identity and our relationship with outside communities are deeply implicated in Theme Four). A few topics are of cross-thematic import and character. Technology, for instance, is examined from the standpoint of its impact on the communicative basis of institutional culture in Theme One, in its relation to educational philosophy and pedagogy in Theme Two, as a planning and resource issue in Theme Three. Likewise, the nest of issues around leadership and governance expands beyond the "Institutional Culture" theme into all of the others. Assessment in its various applications, the development of a culture of evidence, and assessment-based management arise as back- or foreground discussions in all of the themes. All four themes study the university as a community and are community-based, not narrow-gauge, studies.

The thematic approach gave us greater latitude to test our own presuppositions about our performance and how it is affected by the characteristics of students, the characteristics of faculty and staff, the features we have in common with other California State Universities, and other variables. We felt we could meet the challenge of complying with the nine Standards and also satisfy our need to know where we stand vis-à-vis our stated mission and goals. To be sure, then, that we were looking at the most useful indicators of progress, measuring things whose number would actually tell us something we could learn from, we also introduced the goals and objectives identified in the most recent university Strategic Planning Guidelines as an organizing principle (see Appendix A3). We needed to establish as a departure point what we already knew about ourselves and anchor our explorations and recommendations in the will of the community. We thought we could, reciprocally, further the strategic planning process by refining the definition of some of the content of the goals (what, for example, do we mean by "excellence" and how will we know when we achieve it?) and by making practical suggestions for the actualization of some of the strategies identified. The thematic approach also gave us the opportunity to ask ourselves the most difficult and interesting questions and the hope of being able eventually to answer them with some authority.

We do not pretend to have all the answers to these questions, or to the others that are posed throughout this study. However, we feel we have identified most of the right sets of evidence that will help the university community answer them together, and some of the best procedures that can be employed in that search for answers. The process of self-study itself has instigated the proper conversations, and we propose, as our number one recommendation, that the university embark on a course of continuous self-study to continue this communication.