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Mystery Email Seems Legit

Byuclafaculty

We have cautioned on this blog about responding to emails that purport to come from university sources but may actually be email spam or worse.  Yours truly – and probably many other UCLA faculty – received the email in italics below.  I was cautious because it did not come from a UCLA or UC source.  It came from
member@surveymonkey.com and had a reply address of survey@acrd.us.

After a little snooping and Googling, however, it appears to be legit.  

============================
Dear University of California Colleague,
The UC Office of the President funded researchers at UC Merced to conduct a system-wide survey of community engaged research. Please join us on Monday, October 14th, from 2-4pm in Public Affairs 5391 for a campus-wide discussion about the survey results. The discussion will include findings across the system and for your specific campus. Your recommendations for how to support community engaged research will be shared as part of a system-wide report to enhance support for community engaged research.
Please follow the link below to RSVP.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=XOOCr388c98uVsY3UjIubA_3d_3d
We look forward to meeting with you soon!  Please contact us if you have any questions or comments.
Stergios (Steve) Roussos, PhD, MPH, Community Research Director, Health Sciences Research Institute (HSRI)sroussos@ucmerced.edu, 209-489-9913
Robin DeLugan, PhD, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Mercedrdelugan@ucmerced.edu, 209-228-4032
============================ 
A modest proposal for those sponsoring this particular survey (or any others that may be coming down the pike) is that the message should come from a clear-cut UC or UCLA source.  Perhaps a university official such as the VC for research might have been the sender, for example.

If you are wondering what “community engaged research” is, you might look at some examples I found at http://communityresearch.ucmerced.edu/research/developing-projects and http://communityresearch.ucmerced.edu/.

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