The Bay View Alliance (BVA) arose from conversations among a group of academics committed to raising the adoption rate of effective pedagogical practices by faculty in colleges and universities. The work of Carl Wieman in science departments at the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of British Columbia provided inspiration for the group.
Lorne Whitehead, former UBC Provost, was charged by these colleagues with finding ways to adapt some of these ideas beyond the sciences and beyond the university. A network of like-minded research universities was proposed to achieve this objective. The Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Teagle Foundation provided grants to support a series of workshops to design of this network.
The outcome was the formation of the Bay View Alliance including the first six members of the BVA (University of British Columbia, Indiana University, University of Kansas, University of Saskatchewan, Queens University, University of Texas Austin) and the Steering Committee and the Hub.
The BVA got its name from a meeting held at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching where the group had a view of the San Francisco Bay – so we became the Bay View Alliance.
The BVA was able to secure seed grants to start the work, from the Sloan Foundation, Teagle Foundation, Spencer Foundation, and the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario. The BVA secured a multi-year grant to support its work from the Sloan Foundation in 2012.
Seven new member campuses joined the BVA between 2012-2020. They include the University of California, Davis, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), University of Colorado Boulder, University of Massachusetts Amherst, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the University of South Florida. Two campuses are now former members—the University of California, Davis, and the University of Texas at Austin.
The BVA has broadened and deepened its reach beyond its ten member campuses. The BVA’s ad hoc members include colleagues working from the Association of American Universities (AAU), the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU), and the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO); other colleges and universities have participated in the BVA’s Research Action Clusters; and our RACs have collaborated with other organizations, such as the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine.