News

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Something to Think About While Waiting for the Governor and Regents

Byuclafaculty

Snow at UCLA in 1932 The governor is due to give his State of the State address today.  What, if anything, he will say that might have a connection to UC and higher ed is unknown.  The Regents are also meeting today (and tomorrow). Inside Higher Ed today is running a list of average annual snowfalls (in inches) at selected universities.  So whatever happens at the State of the State or the Regents meeting (or if you have followed weather reports for other parts of the country today), remember that things could be worse: 1. Michigan Technological University: 2002. Syracuse…

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UC Is Drying Up

Byuclafaculty

You’ve probably heard that Gov. Brown has declared a drought emergency.  So UC is there – Johnny on the spot – with a pledge to save water for the guv: University of California President Janet Napolitano today (Jan. 16) announced a goal of reducing per capita water use by 20 percent throughout the UC system by the year 2020.  As California experiences some of its driest weather on record, Napolitano said the university must step up and contribute to the preservation of the state’s most precious resource.  “The University of California has long been a leader in conservation efforts,” she…

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What a DC Fly on the Wall Probably Didn’t Hear

Byuclafaculty

UC prez Napolitano attended her former boss’s conference on higher ed in DC last week.  From the LA Times: Obama encourages economic diversity in higher education:  The president and first lady are joined at a White House summit by others who have made commitments to help increase college accessibility for low-income students. California schools are well represented. More than 100 colleges and universities, including several in California, promised Thursday to try to attract more low-income students by strengthening relationships with high schools and community colleges, increasing access to advisors and offering more remedial programs… Each of the nine University of…

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Let Me In, Please

Byuclafaculty

Apparently, freshman applications to UC are up significantly, especially to UCLA: …Once again, UCLA was the most popular choice in the system, garnering 86,472 freshman applications, up 7.5% from last year; next was UC Berkeley, 73,711; up 8.9%. San Diego was third with 73,437; Santa Barbara received 66,756; Irvine; 66,426; Davis, 60,496; Santa Cruz, 40,687; Riverside, 34,899; and Merced, 15,264… Latinos made up the largest share of UC frosh applicants who are California residents:  32.7%.  Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders made up 31.7% of that group; whites, 26.2%; African Americans, 5.9%. Full story at http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-uc-applicants-20140117,0,3710326.story

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Quake Response

Byuclafaculty

We noted in a prior post there would be increased attention to earthquake risks in LA around the 20th anniversary of the Jan. 27, 1994 Northridge quake.  One item that began to develop was an LA Times article indicating that various buildings were at risk in the LA area, even though they were thought safe when constructed.  One of the buildings in Westwood is owned by UCLA, which asserted that it had been upgraded.  It was also reported that a team of researchers at Berkeley had compiled a list of such buildings, but was not making the list available due…

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Demographic Shift

Byuclafaculty

News accounts have focused on this chart in Gov. Brown’s recent budget proposal which shows the Latino/Hispanic state population exceeding the white-Anglo population by July.  That the shift would occur sometime this decade was obvious from the 2010 Census.  A news account indicates that the shift will occur in March.  Clearly, putting an exact date on the shift is not really possible.  But the change will definitely have occurred by the next Census.  (Official state estimates for the California population at the time of the 2010 Census were way off.  So interim estimates between Census years always have a significant…

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New and Old at the UC Regents

Byuclafaculty

The Regents in 1964 1-17-2014 SACRAMENTO – Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today announced the following appointments. Richard C. Blum, 78, of San Francisco, has been appointed to the University of California Board of Regents effective March 2, 2014, where he has served since 2002 and was chair from 2007 to 2009. Blum founded Blum Capital Partners L.P. in 1975 and serves as chairman and president. He has been chairman of the CB Richard Ellis Group Inc. Board of Directors since 2001. Blum has been a member of the University of California, Berkeley Haas School of Business Advisory Board since…

Are You Available?

Byuclafaculty

No, this is not about office hours.  And it’s not about privacy issues raised in prior postings about public access to faculty emails and documents. Rather, it’s about access to research.  In the recent spending bill – yes, the same one mentioned in the previous post on the subway – there is direction and funding for federal agencies to establish mechanisms to make federally-funded research papers available to the public in digital format no later than 12 months after acceptance by a journal.  In most cases, researchers want their papers to be available and, if there is a roadblock, it…