Author: uclafaculty

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Who Owns It?

Byuclafaculty

As the 1951 fundraising letter above indicates, the UCLA Faculty Center began with contributions from various sources. (Click on the image for a clearer look.) The Regents apparently contributed less than half, perhaps a third, of the original funding. However, documents available do not make it clear who owns the building (as opposed to the land under it which clearly is university property). What is known is that over the years, there were discussions of a formal contract (Memorandum of Understanding – MOU) between UCLA and the Board of the Faculty Center. Below you can find a draft of an…

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UCLA History: Jackie Robinson

Byuclafaculty

Jackie Robinson at UCLA in 1941. “At UCLA, Jackie became the first athlete to win varsity letters in four sports: baseball, basketball, football and track. In 1941, he was named to the All-American football team. Due to financial difficulties, he was forced to leave college, and eventually decided to enlist in the U.S. Army.” Source: http://www.jackierobinson.com/about/bio.html

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Live West of the 405? Don’t bother to come to UCLA

Byuclafaculty

From LA County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky: Sometime this fall, two Wilshire on- and off-ramps to the 405 Freeway will be closed for 90 days. That work will be followed by a series of closures of the other Wilshire ramps, each expected to last from 14 to 90 days. (There are eight ramps in all, and they will be worked on two at a time.) The end result should be sweet: modern, swooping flyover ramps that will make it easier to navigate the notoriously jammed intersection. But getting to that point may be considerably less so, in the view of residents…

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How to Have a Major Conference Without a Campus Hotel

Byuclafaculty

As a follow up, readers of this blog will recall an earlier entry about the 2-day Governor’s Conference on Local Renewable Energy Resources which was held at UCLA recently without the need for a new hotel/conference center. If you don’t recall it, check out http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2011/07/rooms-at-inns.html The first day of the governor’s conference was held at Covel and the second at the Faculty Center, the very Faculty Center that was slated to be demolished for the hotel/conference center. For a more complete photo montage, below is a full collection of pictures of the event. Click on the arrow to start the…

Oops! Are We Missing from the Open Access Group?

Byuclafaculty

Inside Higher Ed today notes that various universities, public and private, have formed the Coalition of Open Access Policies. Among the members are such institutions as MIT, Columbia, Harvard, and Stanford. But no UCs are listed, although – as noted above – public universities in other states are members. Apparently, the Coalition was started at the U of Kansas. If you click on the link at the end of this entry, it will in turn send you to a link to a press release at that university which says: In 2009, KU was the first public university in the United…

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Confusing Signs on Prospects for a Pension Initiative (& Everything Else)

Byuclafaculty

Earlier posts on this blog have outlined the possibility that some pension initiative could end up on the 2012 ballot that would override the Regents’ December 2010 decision on the UC pension. There are two “legacy” organizations that descend from the Prop 13 property tax initiative of 1978. In a previous post, we noted that one of them – Peoples Advocate – has filed a pension initiative and seems to be fishing for someone or some group to provide financial backing for a signature and election campaign. But now the other group, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, has said it…

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Debt Deal (if there really is one) and Higher Ed

Byuclafaculty

Excerpt from Inside Higher Ed: Short-Term Stability, But … August 1, 2011 Congressional leaders appeared late Sunday to have reached a deal on increasing the nation’s debt limit that would avoid many of higher education’s worst-case scenarios: cuts to Pell Grants, the end of subsidized student loans, or a government default that would leave student financial aid and other funding for colleges in limbo going into the fall semester. But as details about the deal began to emerge Sunday evening, it became clear that the plan leaves colleges and universities with plenty of long-term uncertainty. The plan, which will be…

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UCLA’s Contribution to the Art of the Cinema

Byuclafaculty

UCLA’s campus is often used for scenes in movies, TV shows, and commercials. Only one movie centers on UCLA and it has to be one of the worst movies ever made. But for your summer enjoyment, this blog makes it available. Much of it was filmed at UCLA with some scenes at LA City Hall, Westside Pavilion, the Natural History Museum and vicinity, and other parts of LA. Big Man on Campus (1989) In this version of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”, a hunchback is found living in the bell tower of UCLA. He is put on trial and made…

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More on Pension Initiatives: All Kinds of Clever Ideas Out There

Byuclafaculty

Yesterday, this blog featured some developments that might impede public pension ballot initiatives getting on the ballot that could potentially override the Regents’ action last December revamping the UC pension system. It only costs $200 to file initiatives. For that modest sum, the filer gets an analysis from the Attorney General (including summary description and title) and a fiscal analysis from the Legislative Analyst. Even initiatives that have a snowball’s chance in Hell get the same treatment – which clearly costs the state a lot more than $200. Here is a summary of snowball-type pension initiative that someone thought was…