News

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Noted UCLA Sociologist Suzanne Bianchi Dies

Byuclafaculty

Suzanne M. Bianchi, a UCLA sociologist who helped alter perceptions of working mothers during three decades investigating changes in American family life, died Nov. 4 at her home in Santa Monica. She was 61. The cause was pancreatic cancer, said her daughter Jennifer Browning. An expert on gender, work and families, Bianchi was best known for her research examining the amount of time mothers spent with their children. Most surprising was the finding she reported in 2000 that despite a dramatic influx of women into the workforce, the amount of time spent with children was relatively unchanged… She began her…

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Listen to Regents Discuss Retiree Health on Nov. 14, 2013

Byuclafaculty

We’ll post the audio for the entire Nov. 14 Regents meeting subsequently.  However, below is a link just to a discussion of the issue of retiree health.  As blog readers will likely know, as part of the open enrollment, UC retirees who are out of state are being dropped from UC programs and given a flat dollar contribution to buy their own policies from local exchanges.  An external contractor – Extend Health – has been engaged to provide counseling for out-of-state retirees. According to the back and forth between regents and UC administrators, this change will drop the liability to…

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New Nurse Contract Said to Avert Participation in Nov. 20 Strike

Byuclafaculty

Nurses at UCLA Hospital, 1955 From the LA Now blog of the LA Times: The University of California reached a tentative contract agreement with unionized nurses at its medical and student-health facilities, averting a one-day walkout that had been scheduled for Wednesday. The four-year agreement still needs to be voted on by the 11,700 UC nurses who belong to the California Nurses Assn., or CNA. Contract highlights released by UC call for annual 4% pay increases through 2017. The nurses have agreed not to join in a one-day strike on Wednesday in sympathy with a walkout still scheduled by the…

FYI

Byuclafaculty

[Neuroscientist and Nobel laureate Eric R.] Kandel, a professor at Columbia University and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, was in Southern California for the recent Society for Neuroscience conference in San Diego and the Leo Rangell Lecture at UCLA’s Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, where he is a visiting scholar. He sat down to talk about his books, his work and the state of neuroscience… Q: Is there anything being lost in the effort to map the brain, as proposed by the Obama administration?A: There was a worry in the beginning, when terms like this were being…

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Info Needed on Open Enrollment Issues

Byuclafaculty

We are getting anecdotal reports of problems encountered during the UC open enrollment period for the various health plans.  If you are having problems at any UC campus, either with the actual plans that are now available or with the process of obtaining information and enrollment, let us know.  We are aware of problems with access to hospitals at Santa Barbara and Riverside and with out-of-California retirees who are being bumped off UC plans and given the phone number of an external consultant.  But if you have more detailed points on any of those issues, we would like to know….

Known Unknowns at the Regents

Byuclafaculty

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was famous for his known unknowns.  One of the known unknowns apparently is what went on at last Wednesday’s afternoon Regents meeting which had an open session as you can see from the agenda for that day/time below: 1:00 pm Special Meeting: Committee on Finance (Regents only session) 2:30 pm Board (Regents only session) 3:00 pm Committee on Investments (open session, followed by closed)  The open session was supposed to discuss criteria for the next Chief Investment Officer and Vice President for Investments.  But when you look at the archives now posted for Wednesday,…

For Your Information: Request from Berkeley Faculty Assn.

Byuclafaculty

The request to circulate the item below was received by Prof. Meranze of the UCLA Faculty Assn. board from the UC-Berkeley Faculty Assn.: Berkeley Faculty Association Calls for Increased Support of Grad Student Employees: At the end of September, the current 3 year-contract of UAW 2865 representing UC Academic Student Employees (GSIs, readers and tutors) expired and ASEs are now working without a contract. UCOP Labor Relations and UAW 2865 have not yet reached an official “impasse.” But the Berkeley Faculty Association is concerned that UCOP’s last offer of a 2% rise doesn’t come close to eliminating the gap with…

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Did Wiseman Catch This? (Check Prior Post)

Byuclafaculty

UC Berkeley, the world’s top-ranked public university, is admitting student athletes with shockingly low grades and scores if they show promise as revenue-generating football or basketball players, say two Cal scholars whose new study helps explain why athletes on campus have the worst graduation rates in the country. While the highly competitive university routinely turns away applicants who earn straight A’s in high school, it has also been admitting student athletes on full scholarship even if their average high school grade was a B-minus. Its policy, in fact, permits a C average.Also disparate is the way Cal evaluates students’ scores on the…

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“At Berkeley” Opens

Byuclafaculty

The Frederick Wiseman documentary, “At Berkeley,” opens at the Royal Theater in West LA.  Warning, it runs over four hours!  Yours truly suspects the theater opening is a prelude for a public TV showing later.  Running as a movie in a theater is probably to qualify for an Academy Award.  (That’s a guess!)  From the Kenneth Turan review in the LA Times: Master documentarian Frederick Wiseman makes his films his way, and the way he makes them is reflected in how we experience them. “At Berkeley” is Wiseman’s 38th doc in 43 years, and each of them, as titles like…