Author: uclafaculty

Just Wondering

Byuclafaculty

Inside Higher Ed today carries a story about the Office of Civil Right of the U.S. Dept. of Education requiring a South Carolina educational institution to make its websites accessible to those with vision impairments or blindness.  Do the current crop of MOOCs (online courses) comply with that requirement?  Has anyone thought that issue through?  The Inside Higher Ed article is athttp://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2013/03/26/colleges-agree-make-websites-accessible-those-visual-disabilities It links to a press release from the Dept. of Education athttp://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/civil-rights-agreement-reached-south-carolina-technical-college-system-accessibi

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Banned in DC

Byuclafaculty

Inside Higher Ed today has a lengthy article on debate within political science over what to do about the U.S. Senate vote to ban NSF support for most research in the field. …A number of political scientists are calling for a new approach to lobbying, and for the discipline to become more engaged in … politics. Why, they are asking, was a field devoted to the study of government unable to win support for keeping a mere $13 million in the budget? Could a different lobbying or public relations strategy have changed things — and might it change things going…

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Help Wanted

Byuclafaculty

SPECIAL COMMITTEE TO CONSIDER THE SELECTION OF A PRESIDENT, March 14, 2013 TO THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA The Committee presents the following from its meeting of March 13, 2013 CRITERIA FOR SELECTION OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY LEADERSHIP The President of the University of California must be a visionary leader with the judgment, creativity, and courage to enhance the quality and reputation of the University as one of the preeminent public research universities in the world. The President represents the University in its role as an international, national, and state exemplar in the education policy arena….

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Hospital Takeover?

Byuclafaculty

The original St. John’s Hospital in the early 1940s A report in the LA Times today suggests UCLA is considering a bid to take over St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica.  St. John’s is only a few blocks from Santa Monica Hospital which UCLA previously acquired. UCLA and the nation’s largest Catholic healthcare system are teaming up on a potential acquisition of St. John’s Health Center, a storied Santa Monica hospital up for sale after a recent management shake-up. The partnership between UCLA Health System and Ascension Health Alliance in St. Louis is one proposal under consideration by St. John’s…

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New Beginnings, Courtesy of LBNL

Byuclafaculty

A supercomputer in downtown Oakland has identified the most ancient light in the universe, assembling an image that reveals that the universe is older, and slower, than we thought. The powerful Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory computer, housed in a former Wells Fargo Bank vault near the Paramount Theatre, analyzed data sent by NASA from Europe’s Planck space telescope. It compiled a portrait of an infant cosmos that was hot, small and crowded — and traced our creation back 13.8 billion years, about 100 million years older than previous estimates. Its analysis also revealed a rate of expansion that is slower than seen…

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Divergent Views (and that’s all we know)

Byuclafaculty

Apparently, a meeting on the legislative proposal to create some kind of commission for approving online courses at UC, CSU, and the community colleges took place Tuesday.  Exactly what transpired at that meeting, however, is unclear.  The only comment so far has come from the legislative side.  Excerpt from the Contra Costa Times: …(State Senate President Darrell) Steinberg, D-Sacramento, said the first-of-its-kind legislation is aimed at relieving classroom bottlenecks that are making it more difficult to graduate. Faculty leaders counter that course access is not an acute issue within the UC system, which has some of the highest graduation rates…

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LAO on Cost of College and Cost to State of Cal Grants

Byuclafaculty

The chart above is self-explanatory.  The chart below shows that budget cuts produce tuition increases which then increase the cost of the state’s Cal Grant program. The LAO’s full report is at:http://www.lao.ca.gov/handouts/education/2013/Financial-Aid-and-the-State-Budget031313.pdf

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Timberrr!!!

Byuclafaculty

Awhile back, we posted about a plan by the Westwood Business Improvement District to remove eighteen trees.  The proposal had sparked controversy. Now LAObserved has posted a photo showing that the trees in question have indeed been cut down. No additional information is given with the photo. So it looks as if that’s it for the lumber: The earlier posts can be found at:http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-westwood-tree-issue-continues.htmlandhttp://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-tree-may-or-may-not-grow-in-westwood.html

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The Never-Ending Story of the UC-Riverside Med School

Byuclafaculty

UC-Riverside’s quest for $15 million from the state budget – not supported by the governor – seems unending.  From the Desert Sun: An Inland Empire lawmaker’s bill to secure $15 million in annual state funding for the UC Riverside School of Medicine cleared its first legislative hurdle Tuesday. AB 27, sponsored by Assemblyman Jose Medina, D-Riverside, was approved by the Assembly Higher Education Committee and is now bound for the Assembly Appropriations Committee… Much of the school’s start-up funding has come from philanthropic and other non-state sources, though the county committed $20 million over the last two years. Full story…