Year: 2013

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    Possible strike at UC hospitals (including UCLA)

    Byuclafaculty

    2008 strike at UCLA hospital From the State Worker blog of the Sacramento Bee: The University of California said today that it will ask a judge to keep hospital workers from striking later this month. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299 says its members will walk off the job at the university system’s five hospitals May 21 and May 22. UC officials and the union have been in negotiations since last summer for a new contract covering some 13,000 patient care workers. The contract expired Oct. 1, and the contentious talks deadlocked earlier this year. AFSCME…

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    Lessons to be Learned

    Byuclafaculty

    Today’s LA Times carries the story of two neuroscientists recruited by USC from UCLA: Arthur Toga and Paul Thompson will move to the USC Keck School of Medicine campus next fall, along with scores of graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and staffers who now work at UCLA’s Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, known as LONI. In establishing a new institute at the USC campus in Boyle Heights, they will also move substantial government and private grants that fund the lab’s $12-million annual budget as well as some of the highly sophisticated equipment used to investigate the brain’s inner workings.  (The move)…raises concerns…

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    Compare and Contrast

    Byuclafaculty

    Blog readers might be interested in comparing the generous program of free Big Blue Bus service offered by Santa Monica College (Any Line – Any Time) with the more restrictive and more costly UCLA program (BruinGo). Santa Monica College: http://www2.smc.edu/swipe/ UCLA: http://map.ais.ucla.edu/go/1000521 Note that Santa Monica College is about to have its arrangement with the City of Santa Monica renewed:http://www.smgov.net/departments/council/agendas/2013/20130514/s2013051403-C.htm

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    MOOC Moratorium at American University

    Byuclafaculty

    MEMORANDUM [American University] May 8, 2013 To: AU Faculty and Staff From: Scott A. Bass, Provost Re: MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) Moratorium at AU On January 9, 2013, I issued to the deans a moratorium on MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) at AU. Recently, the Faculty Senate asked that I write to the campus community to clarify the current moratorium. In collaboration with the Faculty Senate, we are exploring the development of a policy regarding MOOCs at AU. The policy we craft will eventually be reviewed by the Board of Trustees. In the interim, there are many creative online…

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    Not Clear on the Concept

    Byuclafaculty

    You may have seen the LA Times article today which reports that UCLA’s Reagan hospital received a D grade for patient safety, albeit up from F in the prior survey of the Leapfrog Group.  We reported on the F last November: http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2012/11/whatever-happened-to-grade-inflation.html The new report says UCLA’s Santa Monica Hospital, in contrast, received a top grade.  I get nervous about composite rating systems so I went on the Leapfrog website [http://www.leapfroggroup.org/cp] which allows comparisons of hospitals and compared Reagan with Santa Monica.  The two look pretty much the same as the image above shows. [Click on the image to enlarge.] …

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    UCLA’s Hammer Museum Nailed It

    Byuclafaculty

    Some readers may recall our blog entry of April 13 with the image above which involved the quest by UCLA’s Hammer Museum for a grant for a project to use the many empty Westwood stores and, hopefully, to rejuvenate the area.  The Museum was successful in obtaining the LA2050 grant.  From the Museum: We are pleased to announce that the Hammer Museum will receive a $100,000 grant from the Goldhirsh Foundation to implement our urban renewal project Arts ReStore LA: Westwood. Thank you for the overwhelming support and to everyone who made this possible. The Hammer was one of ten…

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    Once Burned – Something Learned?

    Byuclafaculty

    Like higher education institutions everywhere, the University of California is moving to expand its online course offerings, albeit slowly. The UC may be cautious for a reason: An earlier digital foray didn’t work out so well.UC Online Education launched as a pilot in 2010 with the expectation it would attract thousands of non-UC students willing to pay $1,400 to $2,100 per class. But the development and approval of courses were slow and the timing of the effort coincided with the growing enrollment in free online courses offered by elite universities, known as massive open online courses, or MOOCs. While more…

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    Underpaid

    Byuclafaculty

    De Neve Plaza California’s labor commissioner announced today that she has ordered three contractors to pay more than $1.8 million forviolations in public works projects at UCLA, Saddleback Community College in Orange County and the Global Green Generational Charter School in Pacoima… Tile contractor B.A. Marble Granite Inc. was ordered to pay $539,051 in wages, $4,693 in apprenticeship training funds and $652,600 in fines for the failure to pay 55 employees the proper wage for installing tile in bathrooms at the De Neve Residence Halls project at the UCLA campus… Full story at http://business-news.thestreet.com/daily-news/story/north-hollywood-tile-contractor-ordered-pay-nearly-12m-labor-violations-work-ucla-housing/1  The official statement from the labor…

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    Trends

    Byuclafaculty

    A report to the Regents’ Committee on Educational Policy for the May 15 meeting highlights the growth in the student/faculty ratio at UC.  [Click on the images above and below to enlarge them.] The report – entitled “Academic Performance Indicators at the University of California – more generally appears to be an attempt to respond to the governor’s push to make the UC budget contingent on meeting various performance measures such as graduation rates.  You can find it at http://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/may13/e1.pdf Note: An earlier post at http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2013/05/may-regents-meeting-preliminary-agenda.html provided the general agenda for the upcoming Regents meeting.  Apart from the item in…