News

  • Med at UC Merced

    Byadmin

    UC Merced picks 5 students for medical training (excerpts) Jul. 19, 2011, Yesenia Amaro / Merced Sun-star The doctor is not quite in. But he’s on the way. University of California at Merced on Tuesday announced its first group of five students in its medical program set to begin this fall. The new program to train doctors is intended to address the lack of physicians and health gaps in the San Joaquin Valley… The UC Merced San Joaquin Valley Program in Medical Education (PRIME) was born out of a partnership program between UC Davis and the UCSF’s Fresno facility. Students…

  • |

    UCLA History: 1964 Commencement

    Byadmin

    Lower photo shows Bernice Brown, wife of Gov. Pat Brown, Eva Sámano de López Mateos, wife of Mexican President Adolfo López Mateos, Lady Bird Johnson, wife of President Lyndon Johnson, and Catherine Kerr, wife of UC President Clark Kerr at 1964 UCLA commencement. Upper photo shows the three presidents with Gov. Brown in the background looking upwards. UCLA Chancellor Franklyn Murphy is on the left. Kerr is on the right. (There is a man behind Kerr who looks a lot like US Secretary of State Dean Rusk, although I have not checked whether he attended.)

  • |

    Governors’ (not Governor’s) Report on Public Higher Ed

    Byadmin

    At the recent National Governors Association conference – which Gov. Brown did not attend – there was a report on higher education, mainly public higher education. The general theme was that there would be budget pressures on public higher ed indefinitely but that higher ed was important for workforce reasons. The report emphasizes metrics for measuring the output of higher ed such as graduation rates, transfer rates, job finding of grads, etc. You can read the report below: Open publication – Free publishing – More governors

  • |

    “They Control Funding”

    Byadmin

    Bill to curb California college execs’ pay raises (excerpts) Nanette Asimov, San Francisco Chronicle, July 19, 2011 Days after California’s public universities handed lucrative new pay and bonuses to three executives and a chancellor while raising student tuition, a state senator has introduced a bill to make such pay increases illegal in tough economic times. The bill, filed Monday by state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, would prohibit executive pay increases at the University of California and California State University in years when the state does not raise its allocation to the schools… On Friday, UC regents gave a 24…

  • | |

    Raiding the Bank

    Byadmin

    California’s University of ATM Joe Mathews, PropZero (KNBC), 7-19-11 California’s public university systems aren’t cash machines. But the state is treating them as such. Consider what’s happened just this year to the University of California and the California State University systems. In March, the legislature and governor took $500 million from each system to balance the budget. Then in June’s budget agreement, the state took another $150 million each. But the withdrawals from this strange ATM doesn’t stop there. The budget includes provisions that could trigger another $100 million each in cuts in the likely event that tax revenues don’t…

  • |

    Recording of Phone Poll Concerning Hotel/Conference Center

    Byadmin

    A resident of the area around UCLA received a call from the pollster who has been posing questions about the proposed campus hotel/conference center to replace the Faculty Center. He made a recording of the call WITH PERMISSION OF THE POLLSTER. At the outset of the recording, the pollster acknowledges that the recipient has set up recording equipment to record the call. You can click on the option below and hear the call. The final questions which were for personal information have been omitted at the request of the call recipient. None of the omitted questions deal with the hotel/conference…

  • |

    Governor Brown, meet MIT President Susan Hockfield

    Byadmin

    Governor Brown did not attend the National Governors Association conference last week. Had he gone, he would have heard MIT President Susan Hockfield speaking on job creation and innovation related to higher ed and research. Of course, Brown hears from time to time about such matters from UC officials. But what they say can always be put aside as just pleading from another state agency. MIT is not a state agency, not even a public university, and is on the other side of the country. Here is the audio of Hockfield’s remarks:

  • |

    Dial H for Hotel? Part 3 – Questions from the Script

    Byadmin

    An earlier posting noted that the caller for the poll on the hotel/conference center, ostensibly being conducted on behalf of UCLA, refused to talk to a female neighborhood resident because there were too many women in the sample. Apparently, women are now being allowed to answer. Another recipient of a call (a woman) took notes on the questions and reported that it included the questions in italics below. She reported that the pollster was reading from a script and seemed to know nothing about the hotel/conference center other than what was on the script. In the script, the hotel/conference center…

  • |

    UCLA History: More on the 405 Closure and on UCLA Parking

    Byadmin

    The 1960 freeway planning map shown below on the left depicts the section of the 405 currently closed and just north of UCLA as still under construction then. (If you click on the map, you will see a clearer image.) The two men shown in the other picture – taken in 1964 on campus – are screenwriter David Rayfiel (l) and director Sidney Pollack (r). The photo appeared in connection with the former’s obituary last month. However, of interest is the background showing a substantial open parking area behind Royce Hall. I believe there was by then a modest charge…

  • |

    UCLA History: 405 Closure Perspectives

    Byadmin

    For those who feel deprived of easy passage to UCLA this weekend due to the closure of the 405 in the Sepulveda Pass area, here is some historical background. On the new Westwood campus, if you got there by car in 1929, parking was free and easy. There was no freeway on the Sepulveda Pass. But the road there, as shown in the 1930 photo was not very crowded. There were some public transit alternatives as this 1937 video suggests: By the way, the cheerful mayor of LA (Frank Shaw), who appears on the video, was recalled by voters the…