Email Exchange on Faculty Center Issue

Below is an exchange of emails between Ann Karagozian, chair of the Academic Senate, and various faculty members who wrote to her and others expressing concern about the proposed demolition of the Faculty Center and its replacement by a conference center/hotel. Various document links are noted in the email below.

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Dear Prof. Costa and other Senate colleagues,

Thank you for your email message, below. As you are aware, the Senate has received a number of presentations from the administration regarding the proposal to build a Residential Conference Center/Faculty Club on the site of the present Faculty Center. Presentations that were given over the past year are documented at our Senate website at http://www.senate.ucla.edu/ProposedRCC-FC.htm.

As you also may be aware, at the “Save the Faculty Center” meeting on January 24, I publicly issued an invitation for the UCLA administration as well as to Prof. Dick Weiss, the President of the Faculty Center Association, to provide our Senate’s Council on Planning and Budget with presentations on the financial feasibility plans for both entities. Our regulations are such that CPB “specifically reviews and formally articulates a Senate view regarding the campus budget and each major campus space-use and building project at each project’s proposal, planning, and building stages” (http://www.senate.ucla.edu/FormsDocs/bylaws/ch4-4-3.htm#b65_3 ). We are following our normal Senate procedures in having these presentations take place, so that all the financial information presently available is made known to the appropriate Senate body. Because of the relevance of this proposal to our Faculty Welfare Committee (FWC) and to our University Emeriti and Pre-Retirement Relations Committee (UEPRRC), the chairs of these committees, in addition to the Senate leadership (Andy Leuchter, Robin Garrell, and I) were also invited to attend the presentations with CPB. Both parties accepted my invitation to make presentations, and they took place at the CPB meeting on Monday, February 28, 2011. A large number of questions were posed at that meeting, and answers provided; these will be documented in the CPB meeting minutes when they are approved at the Council’s next meeting.

CPB is now in the process of evaluating the materials provided at the meeting, in addition to new materials, in order to articulate the Senate view on this proposed project. Most of the materials that were considered by CPB at the February 28 meeting are now posted on the Senate website at http://www.senate.ucla.edu/ProposedRCC-FC.htm . Just a few minutes ago, the Faculty Center Board requested that some materials considered by CPB on their current and recent budgets not be posted for public viewing, and we are respecting that request, although these data are being considered by CPB in their present deliberations. A letter dated November, 2008, from the Faculty Center Board President John Edmond to Chancellor Block, indicating support for the proposed Conference Center, is also included on the Senate website; this too is being discussed by CPB. A report by a consulting firm that UCLA employed to be able to provide estimates of cost projections, occupancy rates, and the like, which formed the basis for the financial pro formas in the administration’s presentation, is currently being redacted before dissemination. That process should be completed within the next 10 days and the report will be made available not only to CPB, but will be posted on our Senate website as soon as it is released. Some of the non-sensitive data from that report are in the process of being made available to CPB right now.

I hope that the above discussion is helpful to all of you in understanding the Senate process that we are following in evaluating this proposed building project for this campus. There have been a great many proposals that have come before the UCLA Academic Senate this year, some of them with profound implications for the future of our University and the way it operates. In evaluating these proposals, like the RCC/FC proposal, we follow procedures that have served UCLA well for over 90 years. More information on these many issues may be found on our Senate website at http://www.senate.ucla.edu/ .

Sincerely,

Ann Karagozian

Chair, UCLA Academic Senate

From: Dora Costa [mailto:costa@econ.ucla.edu]

Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2011 9:07 PM
To: karagozian@senate.ucla.edu; dlopez@soc.ucla.edu; Michael Shin; aberbach@polisci.ucla.edu; cochran@ucla.edu; tdrake@mednet.ucla.edu; ngarrett@dentistry.ucla.edu; bhayes@humnet.ucla.edu; Rosa Matzkin; morris@astro.ucla.edu; jfnagy@humnet.ucla.edu; jrichard@ucla.edu; avanidhar.subrahmanyam@anderson.ucla.edu; kntu@ucla.edu; wazzan@seas.ucla.edu
Cc: snwhite@dentistry.ucla.edu; ncacalano@mednet.ucla.edu; lieber@ucla.edu; markap@ucla.edu; shoup@ucla.edu; Megan Sweeney; lvavreck@polisci.ucla.edu; romannguyen@gmail.com; tran.malina@gmail.com; mckinney2012@lawnet.ucla.edu; seinenu@ucla.edu; lkruger@ucla.edu; junrdizon@gmail.com; dkmucla@yahoo.com

Subject: petition to CPB and FW on proposed RCC/hotel

The current faculty center is scheduled to be demolished in April 2012 to make room for a 282 room residential conference facility/hotel. The faculty center has been instructed to accept no reservations after December 2011.

The financial feasibility report on the residential conference facility has not yet been released, nor has the university released information on the nightly cost of a room. A recent gift of $40 million will go to construction but the remaining $120 million will be financed by bonds that are expected to be repaid through rental and room revenue.

The current faculty center has been a remarkably effective tool in recruiting new faculty and in fostering department cohesion. There are few other universities where department members regularly go as a group to lunch, and even fewer where potential junior and senior recruits can eat outside in January and February.

There has been no public discussion of what temporary space for the faculty center would look like, what space in the new faculty center would look like, and whether the proposed residential conference facility makes financial sense.

We are proposing that there be a period of open public discussion with all financial data and plans available on the web for viewing and commenting. To maintain the faculty center on a sound financial footing, we are asking that the faculty center be allowed to accept reservations until a faculty vote in the Academic Senate decides in favor of the Residential Learning/conference center. We risk losing one of the most effective parts of UCLA for a future financial drain. In this era of budget cuts and increased student fees it is incumbent on the faculty to be proactive in leading this debate. The Academic Senate must allow a public discussion for its members and it must let the Faculty Center resume operations until all concerned parties have come to an informed decision.

Ambrose	Richard	Professor of Environmental Health Sciences
Balmer	Paul	Professor of Mathematics
Bjork	Robert	Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Psychology
Carney	Judith	Professor of Geography
Clark	William	Professor Emeritus, Geography
Coroniti	Ferdinand	Professor of Physics and Astronomy
Costa	Dora	Professor of Economics
Courey	Albert	Professor and Chair, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Cumberland	WG	Professor and Chair, Biostatistics
Dasgenais	John	Professor of Spanish and Portuguese
de Leeuw	Jan	Distinguished Professor and Chair of Statistics
Detels	Roger	Distinguished Professor of Epidemiology and Infectious Diseases and Chair, Department of Epidemiology
Downey	Susan	Professor of Art History
Dubois	Ellen	Professor of History
Eisenberg	David	Paul D. Boyer Professor of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, Molecular Biology Institute/Director, UCLA-DOE Institute for Genomics & Proteomics	/Distinguished Professor Biological Chemistry/Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry
Gandara	Patricia	Professor of Education
Gans	Eric	Professor of French and Francophone Studies
Garnett	John	Professor of Mathematics
Gatti	Richard	Rebecca Smith Distinguished Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Grinnell	Alan	Professor of Physiology
Grody	Wayne	Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine /Pediatrics/Human Genetics; Director, Diagnostic Molecular Pathology Laboratory and Director, Orphan Disease Testing Center
Hasenfeld	Yeheskel	Professor of Social Welfare
Hecht	Susanna	Professor of Urban Planning
Hicks	Robert	Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Hopenhayn	Hugo	Professor of Economics
Howe	Daniel	Professor Emeritus of History, and 2008 Pulitzer Prize Winner
Ito	Tatsuo	Professor of Electrical Engineering and Northrop Grumman Chair, Microwave and Millimeter Wave Electronics
Jura	Michael	Professor of Physics and Astronomy
Kaback	H. Ronald	Distinguished Professor of Physiology
Kahn	Matthew	Professor, Institute of the Environment and Sustainability/Professor in Economics and Public Affairs
Klein	Cecilia	Professor of Art History
Krasne	Frank	Professor Emeritus on Recall, Dept of Psychology, Area Chair, Behavioral Neuroscience
Kreiman	Jody	Professor in Residence, Surgery — Head and Neck
Krogstad	Paul	Professor of Pediatrics and Molecular and Medical Pharmacology
Kruger	Lawrence	Distinguished Professor Recalled, Neurobiology
Lake	James	Distinguished Professor of Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology, and Human Genetics
Leamer	Edward	Chauncey J. Medberry Chair in Management, Anderson/ Professor in Economics and Statistics/ Director, Anderson Forecast
Lewis	Mary Ann	Professor of Nursing
Lionnet	Francoise	Professor of French and Francophone Studies
Mare	Robert	Distinguished Professor of Sociology
Mason	Thomas	Professor of Chemistry
McCumber	John	Professor of Germanic Languages
McWilliams	James	Professor of Atmospheric and Ocean Science
Miller	Bruce	Professor of Accounting, Anderson
Mitchell	Daniel JB	Professor Emeritus on Recall of Human Resources and Organizational Behavior, Anderson and School of Public Affairs
Munro	Pamela	Professor of Linguistics
Nagy	Joseph	Professor of English
Narins	Peter	Distinguished Professor of Integrative Biology and Physiology
Newman	William	Professor of Earth and Space Sciences
Paulson	Suzanne	Professor of Atmospheric and Ocean Science
Pebley	Anne	Fred H. Bixby Chair, Department of Community Health Science/Professor in Sociology
Read	Dwight	Professor of Anthropology
Rogowski	Ronald	Professor of Political Science
Rozengurt	Nora	Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Rozengurt	Enrique	Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Hirshberg Chair in Pancreatic Cancer Research/Director, CURE: Digestive Diseases Research Center/Chief of Research, Division of Digestive Diseases,
Sears	David	Professor of Political Science and Psychology
Simpson	Larry	Professor of Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics
Stafsudd	Oscar	Professor of Electrical Engineering
Stefanovska	Malina	Professor of French and Francophone Studies
Stein	Sarah	Professor of History and Maurice Amado Chair in Sephardic Studies
Stolzenbach	Keith	Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Stout	Lynn	Paul Hastings Professor of Corporate and Securities Law
Sutre	Giullame	Professor of French and Francophone Studies
Taylor	Charles	Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Trachtenberg	Marc	Professor of Political Science
Uittenbogaart	Christel	Professor of Pediatrics/Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics
Vroon	Ronald	Professor and Chair, Slavic Languages and Literature
Waldinger	Richard	Distinguished Professor of Sociology
Yang	Yang	Professor of Material Science and Engineering
Yao	Kung	Professor of Electrical Engineering
Young	Edward	Professor of Earth and Space Sciences
Zack	Jerome	Professor of Medicine — Hematology and Oncology/MIMG
Zame	William	Distinguished Professor of Economics
Zeitlin	Maurice	Distinguished Professor of Sociology
Zimmerman	Frederick	Professor and Chair, Health Services

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