News

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Time Off at the Grand Hotel?

Byuclafaculty

View from the ground. View from above. Yours truly went past the worksite of the UCLA Grand Hotel early Friday afternoon and as the photos above indicate, he found no one there and nothing happening. That was a surprise since – as blog readers will know – we recently had the grand groundbreaking for the Grand Hotel.  On the other hand, across the street at the engineering building construction site, work was clearly in progress for another building, as the photo below shows. Engineering: Click on the photo for a better view of the workers. Enlarged view of the previous…

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Golden Goose

Byuclafaculty

Inside Higher Ed pointed me today to the “Golden Goose” awards established by some folks in Congress and in major educational groups as an antidote to other listings that are made to put research in a bad light.  Old timers will remember the Golden Fleece awards of Senator William Proxmire – back in the day –  which made fun of research that seemed silly.  From time to time, such seemingly-silly research continues to be highlighted by Proxmire’s successors.    Of course, there is silly research and there are silly academics.  But not everything that seems silly, or abstract, or just…

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Listen to the University of California Regents, Afternoon, 9-18-2013, 2nd Part

Byuclafaculty

The audio for the Regents session of the afternoon of 9-18-13 through the meeting of the Committee on Finance has previously been posted.  The primary remaining business was discussion of selection of an outside auditor that turned out to be KPMG.  Beyond that, recommendations of the various committees were ratified by the full board.    Since the Thursday Regents schedule was in fact a tour of the Lawrence Livermore Lab, there is no audio for that date. A link to the audio described above can be found below:

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Now Some Students Can Be His Guest at a Brown Bag Lunch

Byuclafaculty

Be my guest! Or is it a Brown (pause) bag-lunch? In an earlier post on the Regents meeting, we mentioned the new “crowdsourcing” UC fundraising effort.  Now some students can be guests of the governor: University of California regents spent much of Wednesday morning cheering a new fundraising initiative to encourage faculty, students and other people to raise money through their social networks for students who demonstrate financial need.  Gov. Jerry Brown, who sits on the UC board and is attending its meeting in San Francisco, pledged to raise $10,000.  If successful, the Democratic governor promises to “host a ‘brown…

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More Traffic Headaches in the UCLA Area This Weekend

Byuclafaculty

A well-traveled but short section of Sepulveda Boulevard will be closed this weekend to accommodate work on the Sunset Boulevard interchange — part of the larger San Diego (405) Freeway carpool lane project.  Starting about 10 p.m. Friday, Sepulveda will be closed in both directions between Church Lane and Montana Avenue, according to Metro, which is overseeing the freeway construction. Sepulveda, often used as an alternative to the 405, is scheduled to be reopened by 5 a.m. Monday.  The work includes using heavy equipment to install of girders for the Sunset Boulevard off ramp from northbound freeway lanes… Full story…

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Listen to First Segment of Afternoon Session of UC Regents: 9-18-2013

Byuclafaculty

Summary: The afternoon session began with a presentation by the new president of the UC Students Assn.  He described a program to find jobs for graduate students whose careers are currently limited by the loose labor market.  He described a program focused on prisons vs. UC, the details of which were not clear.  He favored an oil severance tax and also divestment from fossil fuels.  (Some listeners might find those causes somewhat in conflict; depends on how you look at them.)    Much of the afternoon was then spent on budgetary issues.  Charts were shown indicating the volatility in tuition…

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Listen to the Morning Session of the Regents: 9-18-2013

Byuclafaculty

Summary: After a series of closed meetings, the Regents – including Gov. Jerry Brown – had a public comment session.  A rep from a union of residents complained that UC-irvine was not recognizing their organization.  A student suggested that the Regents should have a Facebook page.  Concerns were expressed about tuition increases.  There were complaints about high out-of-state tuition.  The students who complained the day before that they could not get an appointment with incoming UC president Napolitano reported that they now had an appointment.   There were requests for the Regents to meet in southern California.  A group of students…

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Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps…

Byuclafaculty

… in this petty pace from day to day.   Actually, Macbeth, it is not the daythat will creep tomorrow and the next few days.  It is the traffic around UCLA that will creep due to students arriving in their dorms for the fall quarter.  From Facilities Management: What: Residence Halls Move In When: Thursday, September 19 through Sunday, September 22. 8 am to 10 pm daily.  Where: Residence Halls area Impacts: Over 10,000 students will be moving in, along with their belongings, over this 4 day period. The current one-way condition on De Neve Drive will be extended to include…

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Listen to the Second Half of the Regents Meeting of 9-17-2013

Byuclafaculty

Our earlier post had the Regents audio for the first part of the meeting of 9-17-13.  There was then a closed session.  The audio link below picks up the meeting again when the public component resumed.  We also noted in the previous post that there was a inadvertent hot mike at the beginning of the meeting in a supposedly closed session which transmitted sensitive material online.  We have not archived that portion.  However, when the meeting reopened in a public session, apparently some Regents were not sensitive to what was going out.  The audio begins with one Regent telling another…

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Listen to the First Part of the Regents Meeting of 9-17-2013

Byuclafaculty

But before you listen, note that we have been archiving Regents audios because of regental policy not to archive them for more than one year.  Today, there was a bit of a mishap in the handling of the Regents live stream.  As a result, yours truly sent the email below to an official in the Regents’ office: As you may know, the UCLA Faculty Assn. posts the audios of regents meetings online since it is apparently regents policy not to archive the recordings for more than one year online.  As a result, I turned on my recorder at 1 pm…