News

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You can’t take it to the bank exactly, but…

Byuclafaculty

The state auditor prepares a kind of balance sheet for the state as a whole and for individual components of the state such as UC. For the year ending last June 30, the accounts show that UC had assets of $58.0 billion (including buildings – construction costs minus depreciation) and liabilities of $34.6 billion for a net asset total of $23.4 billion. (pages 58-60)There is an ongoing issue of the degree to which the state is responsible for the UC pension.  The report indicates that $6.4 billion of the liabilities of UC are “net other postemployment benefits obligations” which probably…

Complicated Monkey Business Involving UCLA

Byuclafaculty

No, I don’t know the full story behind the matter described below:From the Winston-Salem Journal: The board of regents for the University of California system is accusing Wake Forest University Health Sciences of stalling through recent legal actions that seek the dismissal of a countersuit related to a primate colony in southern Forsyth County. The Wake Forest group and the University of California at Los Angeles are involved in a legal fight to end their joint venture in the research center in the Friedberg community. The primate center is based on a 200-acre farm and has about 80 employees, including 12 veterinarians, according…

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Thanks, But No Thanks

Byuclafaculty

Inside Higher Ed today notes that it appears that the Academic Senates of the three tiers of California public higher ed are decidedly unenthusiastic about the proposed legislation to mandate online courses under certain conditions.  Previous posts on this blog have reported on the controversy.…Academic senate leaders from all three public higher ed systems – UC, Cal State and the California Community Colleges — now outright oppose the efforts, though their full senates have yet to take formal votes…In particular, faculty representatives are concerned California lawmakers are preparing to hand over untold thousands of students to for-profit companies that have not proven…

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Emisions Remissions?

Byuclafaculty

UCLA co-generation plant California’s cash-strapped public universities would save millions of dollars under legislation by Orange County state Sen. Mimi Walters, but the bill’s prospects are uncertain because it would alter a landmark global warming law beloved by environmentalists. Walters’ proposal seeks to exempt University of California and California State University campuses from the new cap-and-trade program established under the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, otherwise known as Assembly Bill 32 or AB32, one of the nation’s most ambitious environmental laws… At least five UC campuses, including Irvine, UCLA and San Diego, qualify for the cap-and-trade program in 2013……

Just Wondering

Byuclafaculty

Inside Higher Ed today carries a story about the Office of Civil Right of the U.S. Dept. of Education requiring a South Carolina educational institution to make its websites accessible to those with vision impairments or blindness.  Do the current crop of MOOCs (online courses) comply with that requirement?  Has anyone thought that issue through?  The Inside Higher Ed article is athttp://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2013/03/26/colleges-agree-make-websites-accessible-those-visual-disabilities It links to a press release from the Dept. of Education athttp://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/civil-rights-agreement-reached-south-carolina-technical-college-system-accessibi

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Banned in DC

Byuclafaculty

Inside Higher Ed today has a lengthy article on debate within political science over what to do about the U.S. Senate vote to ban NSF support for most research in the field. …A number of political scientists are calling for a new approach to lobbying, and for the discipline to become more engaged in … politics. Why, they are asking, was a field devoted to the study of government unable to win support for keeping a mere $13 million in the budget? Could a different lobbying or public relations strategy have changed things — and might it change things going…

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Help Wanted

Byuclafaculty

SPECIAL COMMITTEE TO CONSIDER THE SELECTION OF A PRESIDENT, March 14, 2013 TO THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA The Committee presents the following from its meeting of March 13, 2013 CRITERIA FOR SELECTION OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY LEADERSHIP The President of the University of California must be a visionary leader with the judgment, creativity, and courage to enhance the quality and reputation of the University as one of the preeminent public research universities in the world. The President represents the University in its role as an international, national, and state exemplar in the education policy arena….

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Hospital Takeover?

Byuclafaculty

The original St. John’s Hospital in the early 1940s A report in the LA Times today suggests UCLA is considering a bid to take over St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica.  St. John’s is only a few blocks from Santa Monica Hospital which UCLA previously acquired. UCLA and the nation’s largest Catholic healthcare system are teaming up on a potential acquisition of St. John’s Health Center, a storied Santa Monica hospital up for sale after a recent management shake-up. The partnership between UCLA Health System and Ascension Health Alliance in St. Louis is one proposal under consideration by St. John’s…

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New Beginnings, Courtesy of LBNL

Byuclafaculty

A supercomputer in downtown Oakland has identified the most ancient light in the universe, assembling an image that reveals that the universe is older, and slower, than we thought. The powerful Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory computer, housed in a former Wells Fargo Bank vault near the Paramount Theatre, analyzed data sent by NASA from Europe’s Planck space telescope. It compiled a portrait of an infant cosmos that was hot, small and crowded — and traced our creation back 13.8 billion years, about 100 million years older than previous estimates. Its analysis also revealed a rate of expansion that is slower than seen…