It looks like the ObamaJam that we mentioned as a possibility for today and tomorrow in an earlier post will turn out to be more like ObamaJelly – at least in the Westside area near UCLA. The President is coming but it appears most of his traveling will be by helicopter and what street closings there may be won’t be close to campus. More details at http://centurycity.patch.com/groups/around-town/p/officials-warn-of-clogged-traffic-as-president-visits-tuesday
UC Davis officials are making an expensive investment toward improving the college’s image. The university hired Luanne Lawrence, formerly of the University of South Carolina, as associate chancellor for strategic communications earlier this year. She will make an annual salary of $260,000, more than any other campus communications chief in the University of California system…Lawrence steps into her role as the university tries to put a public relations nightmare behind it: the 2011 incident in which campus police officers used pepper spray against students during a protest largely focused on tuition hikes… Full story at http://www.sacbee.com/2013/08/05/5624083/ucd-pays-top-dollar-for-communications.html Things are definitely getting…
From LAObserved yesterday: There are a few more details now about President Obama’s trip to the Los Angeles area on Tuesday to appear on the Jay Leno show. According to the White House schedule, Air Force One will arrive from Phoenix and land at LAX about 3:30 p.m. The president will be staying overnight… On Wednesday the president is scheduled to fly to Camp Pendleton to visit with military families and deliver remarks to troops, then make an mid-afternoon departure from LAX. Full story at http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2013/08/obamas_arrival_on_tuesday.php Since the ground routes have not been announced, the impact on Westside traffic near…
From today’s Sacramento Bee: On the surface, it might seem self-serving for UC Davis School of Medicine to rip into the annual U.S. News & World Report rankings that rate it below the nation’s elite primary care schools. One might suspect it was sour grapes by a medical school unhappy with its rankings.The school poured four years of research and almost $10,000 of its own grant funding into a stinging academic critique of the news magazine’s ranking methodology.”These findings raise questions regarding the ranking’s validity and usefulness,” said the paper, published this month in the journal Academic Medicine. A primary…
The photo shows the original Pauley Pavilion under construction in 1964. It opened in 1965. The Daily Bruin yesterday evening posted a short article at about a bomb threat that closed Pauley Pavilion and other buildings in the area for a time. Nothing was found. See http://dailybruin.com/2013/08/03/pauley-pavilion-wooden-center-evacuated-reopened-following-bomb-threat-investigation/ Pauley Pavilion was substantially reconstructed and reopened in November 2012. A promotional video released for the reopening is below:[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/57012095 w=250&h=141] Pauley Pavilion Through the Years 1965-2012 from Ariana Berlin on Vimeo. The video has some historical photos of the origins and original construction. It omits reference to the fact that H.R. Haldeman…
Articles published in professional journals are often not readily available online, particularly as journal publication has been taken over by commercial publishers. Many blog readers will undoubtedly have looked for an article and found only an abstract online, as per the accompanying picture. But change is (hopefully) coming: MEDIA RELEASEFriday, August 2, 2013UC Office of the Academic Senate The Academic Senate of the University of California has passed an Open Access Policy, ensuring that future research articles authored by faculty at all 10 campuses of UC will be made available to the public at no charge. “The Academic Council’s adoption…
Yours truly went by the “work” site of the UCLA Grand Hotel at the former Ackerman bus turnaround. Seems like the main accomplishment since it was closed off July 8 was putting a fence around it (gradually) and digging up some landscaping dirt. I didn’t see anyone actually doing anything at the site when I went by yesterday. Last week I hypothesized that maybe everyone was taking an extended lunch. I was a little later yesterday so maybe it was an early dinner. But come to think of it, I did hear some voices from inside the site:[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GMZPek0ABs?feature=player_detailpage]
Readers of this blog will recall that at the last Regents meeting in July, there was a controversy over the appointment of a new student regent-delegate due to her support of a campaign to divest UC funds from Israel. Several regents spoke on the issue. One abstained from voting for her.During the debate, outgoing President Yudof didn’t have much to say about the issue. That might not be surprising except for his remarks at a conference about a month before the meeting: [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoyXqoJH7Ak?feature=player_detailpage]
The San Diego Union-Tribune is running a story researched by the Center for Investigative Reporting on UCLA travel expenses for administrators: Excerpt: Thirteen years ago, the University of California changed its ban on flying business or first class on the university’s dime, adding a special exception for employees with a medical need. What followed at UCLA was an acute outbreak of medical need. Over the past several years, six of 17 academic deans at the Westwood campus routinely have submitted doctors’ notes stating they have a medical need to fly in a class other than economy, costing the university $234,000…
So reports today’s edition of Inside Higher Ed about state senate leader Darrell Steinberg’s bill to mandate MOOCs at UC, CSU, and the community colleges. You can find the article at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/08/01/controversial-california-bill-outsource-student-learning-dead-until-2014-or-later
