UCLA History: Westwood Site
The same 1937 “California of the Southland” book that was the source of yesterday’s post contained this photo of the rustic site of the Westwood campus of UCLA prior to the university’s move there.
Month: August 2013
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UCLA History: Moore
Portrait of Ernest Carroll Moore who became the first “director” of the Southern Branch of the University of California, now UCLA. Moore had been head of the State Normal School on Vermont Avenue which UCLA took over as its first campus. He oversaw the later move to Westwood. (From a book published by the UCLA Alumni Assn. in 1937 entitled California of the Southland, a history of UCLA to that point.)
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The CalPERS Long-Term Care Affair
We have noted in earlier posts that although UC employees are not covered by CalPERS, at one point in the past, they were offered the “opportunity” to buy long-term care insurance through CalPERS. But then CalPERS began jacking up the cost and, for those who protested, offering inferior alternative policies. CalPERS position is that it didn’t deliberately lowball the initial premiums but instead just underestimated what the costs would be. But some subscribers disagree and now there is a lawsuit. From the Sacramento Bee: CalPERS was sued Tuesday over the big rate hikes it imposed on its long-term care insurance…
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Rank Congratulations to Our Colleagues at UC-SB
From time to time on this blog, we have said skeptical things about the various rankings that occur in the world of higher education. But we do want to take the opportunity of congratulating our colleagues at Santa Barbara for their number 2 ranking among the top 10 party schools by the Princeton Review. From Inside Higher Ed today comes the story and here are the rankings: Princeton Review’s Top 10 “Party Schools”1. University of Iowa2. University of California, Santa Barbara3. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign4. West Virginia University5. Syracuse University6. University of Florida7. Ohio University at Athens8. University of…
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ObamaJam May Be ObamaJelly
It looks like the ObamaJam that we mentioned as a possibility for today and tomorrow in an earlier post will turn out to be more like ObamaJelly – at least in the Westside area near UCLA. The President is coming but it appears most of his traveling will be by helicopter and what street closings there may be won’t be close to campus. More details at http://centurycity.patch.com/groups/around-town/p/officials-warn-of-clogged-traffic-as-president-visits-tuesday
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The High Cost of Pepper
UC Davis officials are making an expensive investment toward improving the college’s image. The university hired Luanne Lawrence, formerly of the University of South Carolina, as associate chancellor for strategic communications earlier this year. She will make an annual salary of $260,000, more than any other campus communications chief in the University of California system…Lawrence steps into her role as the university tries to put a public relations nightmare behind it: the 2011 incident in which campus police officers used pepper spray against students during a protest largely focused on tuition hikes… Full story at http://www.sacbee.com/2013/08/05/5624083/ucd-pays-top-dollar-for-communications.html Things are definitely getting…
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ObamaJam Possible Tuesday-Wednesday
From LAObserved yesterday: There are a few more details now about President Obama’s trip to the Los Angeles area on Tuesday to appear on the Jay Leno show. According to the White House schedule, Air Force One will arrive from Phoenix and land at LAX about 3:30 p.m. The president will be staying overnight… On Wednesday the president is scheduled to fly to Camp Pendleton to visit with military families and deliver remarks to troops, then make an mid-afternoon departure from LAX. Full story at http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2013/08/obamas_arrival_on_tuesday.php Since the ground routes have not been announced, the impact on Westside traffic near…
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Rank Order or Rank Odor
From today’s Sacramento Bee: On the surface, it might seem self-serving for UC Davis School of Medicine to rip into the annual U.S. News & World Report rankings that rate it below the nation’s elite primary care schools. One might suspect it was sour grapes by a medical school unhappy with its rankings.The school poured four years of research and almost $10,000 of its own grant funding into a stinging academic critique of the news magazine’s ranking methodology.”These findings raise questions regarding the ranking’s validity and usefulness,” said the paper, published this month in the journal Academic Medicine. A primary…
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UCLA History: Pauley Pavilion (and a report of a bomb threat yesterday)
The photo shows the original Pauley Pavilion under construction in 1964. It opened in 1965. The Daily Bruin yesterday evening posted a short article at about a bomb threat that closed Pauley Pavilion and other buildings in the area for a time. Nothing was found. See http://dailybruin.com/2013/08/03/pauley-pavilion-wooden-center-evacuated-reopened-following-bomb-threat-investigation/ Pauley Pavilion was substantially reconstructed and reopened in November 2012. A promotional video released for the reopening is below:[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/57012095 w=250&h=141] Pauley Pavilion Through the Years 1965-2012 from Ariana Berlin on Vimeo. The video has some historical photos of the origins and original construction. It omits reference to the fact that H.R. Haldeman…
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Change is Coming
Articles published in professional journals are often not readily available online, particularly as journal publication has been taken over by commercial publishers. Many blog readers will undoubtedly have looked for an article and found only an abstract online, as per the accompanying picture. But change is (hopefully) coming: MEDIA RELEASEFriday, August 2, 2013UC Office of the Academic Senate The Academic Senate of the University of California has passed an Open Access Policy, ensuring that future research articles authored by faculty at all 10 campuses of UC will be made available to the public at no charge. “The Academic Council’s adoption…