News

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    Diversity Requirement Debate Returns

    Byuclafaculty

    The question of a diversity requirement for undergraduate students in the UCLA College of Letters and Sciences is back on the agenda, this time apparently heading for a vote of the entire UCLA faculty. Last October, faculty in the College of Letters and Sciences voted to adopt an undergraduate diversity requirement, and the measure was approved by the Senate Legislative Assembly. According to a January 26 email to Legislative Assembly members, in December, a group of 59 faculty members petitioned Senate Chair Joel Aberbach asking him to set aside the votes under a little used provision of the Senate Bylaws,…

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    Text of College FEC Letter to Senate LgA Members

    Byuclafaculty

    The following is the full text of an email from the College Faculty Executive Committee (FEC) to members of the Senate Legislative Assembly (LgA) concerning the requirement for diversity-related courses.   From: FEC Chair Sent: Monday, January 26, 2015 8:01 AM To: FEC Chair Subject: College FEC: Message to LgA Members Dear Colleague, Since you are a member of the Legislative Assembly of the Academic Senate, we wanted to inform you about a recent development related to a vote made by the LgA on November 20, 2014 to Amend Divisional Regulation A-458(C) in the College of Letters and Science, which…

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    College Diversity Requirement Gathers Support

    Byuclafaculty

    The following statement has been circulating among faculty today and has about 80 co-signers as of Wednesday afternoon. We Support the College Diversity Requirement We, the undersigned faculty of the University of California, Los Angeles, express our enthusiastic support for a College Diversity Requirement for students within the College of Letters and Science. Our signatures reflect our confidence in the process, proposal, and the expected benefits of such a requirement for our students and our campus more generally. We recognize fully that for over 30 years, generations of students have worked hard alongside faculty in achieving this goal and now…

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    College of Letters and Science Faculty Vote on Diversity Requirement

    Byuclafaculty

    UCLA faculty with appointments in the College of Letters and Science are voting this week on a proposed Diversity Requirement for undergraduate students  in the College. The vote is open between October 24th and October 31st. The Academic Senate has an extensive informational site (votediversity.ucla.edu) that includes documentation on the requirement, a frequently asked questions section, and a forum for faculty to share information and views on the requirement. The forum includes six separate faculty statements in support of the requirement, and one statement in opposition. An additional statement in support circulating on Wednesday has garnered about 80 co-signers. The…

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    CUCFA Statement on “Civility” and Academic Freedom

    Byhigbie

    This week the Council of University of California Faculty Associations (CUCFA), with representatives from 9 UC campuses including UCLA, issued the a statement reflecting concern over academic freedom cases around the country: Statement on “Civility” and Academic Freedom On Friday Sept. 5, Chancellor Dirks of UC Berkeley circulated an open statement to his campus community that sought to define the limits of appropriate debate at Berkeley. Issued as the campus approaches the 50th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement, Chancellor Dirks’ statement, with its evocation of civility, echoes language recently used by the Chancellor of the University of Illinois, Urbana…

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    UCLA FA to Rejoin CUCFA

    Byhigbie

    Some years ago the UCLA Faculty Association was a member of Council of University of California Faculty Associations (CUCFA), but dropped out.  With new leadership at CUCFA and the UCLA FA, it seemed like a good time to revisit our membership in the Council, and recently the Executive Board voted unanimously to pursue a renewed membership with CUCFA. What is CUCFA you ask? CUCFA (or “the Council”) is a coalition of the faculty associations at University of California campuses.  Each campus chapter is an independent organization with the Council serving as a coordinating and information sharing body.  Each campus chapter…

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    The Degradation of Faculty Welfare and Compensation

    Byuclafaculty

    Colleen Lye and James Vernon (UC Berkeley Faculty Association) UC faculty need to wake up to the systematic degradation of their pay and benefits.  In 2009, when the salary furlough temporarily cut faculty salaries between 6 and 10%, faculty were outraged.  Yet since then our compensation has been hit by a more serious, and seemingly permanent, double blow. First, despite modest salary rises of 3% and 2% in October 2011 and July 2013, faculty take-home pay has been effectively cut as employee contributions to pension and healthcare have escalated.  Faculty now pay more for retirement and healthcare programs that offer less.  Secondly, faculty are…

  • How to respond to eroding pay and benefits?

    Byuclafaculty

    In case you missed it, UC Berkeley Faculty Association co-chairs Coleen Lye and James Vernon have penned a sobering letter to their colleagues across the UC system.  It’s time to wake up and take notice of the piecemeal erosion of our pay and benefits, they say.  More specifically: Despite modest pay bumps in 2011 and 2013, increases in pension and health insurance payments mean our take home pay is going down. The new two-tiered pension means faculty hired after 2013 get less generous retirement benefits for roughly the same cost as everyone else Current retirees are now paying 30% of…

  • Teaching & Learning in the Digital Age: Feb. 27

    Byuclafaculty

    While the Revolutionary Year of the MOOC has crashed and burned in a flaming heap of venture capital, actually existing online instruction has continued to develop in a more deliberate way at UCLA.  Out of the limelight, and mostly outside the much-maligned UC-Online system, departments and individual professors have been piloting online courses in many different flavors. On Thursday, February 27, the campus community will have a chance to take stock in these developments at the second “Online Summit” sponsored by the  Academic Senate, the Library, and other campus units.  With the theme Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age–Making…

  • Faculty Strike at University of Illinois Chicago

    Byuclafaculty

    Faculty at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) launched a two-day strike today citing stalled negotiations with university administrators.  Several hundred people rallied on the Chicago campus this morning, and picketed classrooms throughout the day.  Faculty decided to unionize in 2012 citing lack of pay raises and temporary pay cuts during the recent financial crisis, among other issues.  Adjunct faculty, who are coordinating bargaining with tenure-system faculty, are seeking multi-year contracts as well as better pay and benefits.  As evidence that the university can afford their demands, faculty cite a 25% increase in tuition since 2007, rising enrollments, and a…