News reports say that Chancellor Michael Drake of UC-Irvine is leaving to head Ohio State U. http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-uci-chancellor-20140131,0,858740.story Maybe he hasn’t been reading weather forecasts: Or maybe it was just irresistible: [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ9x4nP625U?feature=player_detailpage]
Christmas day tends to be a slow news day. However, for those who didn’t see it, the LA Times carried a front page story about UC’s online offerings which allow cross-campus credits. You can find the article at: http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-me-uc-online-20131222,0,6798231.story Blog readers will be familiar with these offerings. We noted in a prior post that UCLA seems to be a taker rather than a giver in this endeavor. That is, other campuses’ online courses are available to UCLA students. But UCLA is not offering courses to the other campuses. Berkeley, Irvine, Davis, and Riverside seem to be the offerers. Now, how…
We’ll just let you read about it: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/showtracker/la-et-st-walking-dead-uc-irvine-course,0,2291650.story And then we’ll hear what Ethel has to say:[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFLM1z4v1pI?feature=player_detailpage]
Inside Higher Ed reported yesterday that UC campuses at Berkeley and Santa Cruz had been cleared of charges of allowing an anti-Semitic atmosphere due to anti-Israel student activities. The campuses received letters from the US Dept. of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) clearing them on free speech grounds. An article appeared later in the LA Times indicating the same conclusion was reached for UC-Irvine. The Inside Higher Ed article is at http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2013/08/28/education-dept-rejects-charges-anti-jewish-bias-u-calif-campuses The LA Times article is at http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-uc-fed-probe-20130829,0,936811.story You can find an official letter to one of the campuses from OCR through the first link. But the unofficial…
The story above can be found in more detail at http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2013/04/26/uc-irvine-fraternity-issues-apology-after-blackface-video-sparks-outrage/. So far, yours truly found no official response on the UC-Irvine website. Blog readers may recall a somewhat-related video that became known as “Asians in the Library” at UCLA and which sparked an official reaction from Chancellor Block. Possibly, this matter will be discussed at the upcoming May Regents meeting, possibly in conjunction with results – are there any yet? – from the campus climate survey taken this past winter.
Note: In the future, there are likely to be more such questions – of the type excerpted below – about campus plans for new programs, schools, and even grand hotels. Dan Walters today in the Sacramento Bee: Was UC-Irvine’s Law School Strictly Necessary? Six years ago, yours truly wrote a column about a proposed law school at the University of California’s Irvine campus, suggesting that it was more about academic ego and Orange County boosterism than a shortage of lawyers. The column pointed out that the state already had 25 accredited law schools and the number of graduates taking the…
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……
UC-Irvine has put a chemistry course on the web. But it doesn’t give credit for it and isn’t using the Coursera website (although UC-Irvine is affiliated with Coursera) because it wants to give the course away free. As for labs, it says that if some other institution wants to offer the course, it will have to provide the labs, etc. We are likely to see a bunch of such offerings from the campus. They show the campus is up-to-date, complying with the Regents/governor desires, and yet – in the end – they commit to nothing. Actually, yours truly has put…
Warm welcome to University of California Irvine By Anat Maor, Jerusalem Post, 2-17-13 When I first arrived at the University of California in Irvine, I didn’t know a single person there. To tell you the truth, I was feeling apprehensive about my new role as a professor in Israel studies here, especially given the reputation of the school. This was the same university which saw confrontations between student protesters and Israeli ambassador Michael Oren in 2010, which culminated in arrests and the Zionist Organization of America branding UCI as “a campus that permitted bigotry.” Yet after just one month I…
From the Chronicle of Higher Education: Professor Leaves a MOOC in Mid-Course in Dispute Over Teaching Students regularly drop out of massive open online courses before they come to term. For a professor to drop out is less common. But that is what happened on Saturday in “Microeconomics for Managers,” a MOOC offered by the University of California at Irvine through Coursera. Richard A. McKenzie, an emeritus professor of enterprise and society at the university’s business school, sent a note to his students announcing that he would no longer be teaching the course, which was about to enter its fifth week. “Because…
