The website California’s Capitol reports that UC-Davis and UC-Merced have applied to the FAA to have drones. http://www.californiascapitol.com/2013/10/californias-drone-applicants/ and https://www.eff.org/files/filenode/faa_coa_list-2012.pdf. Obviously, the rest of us will be falling behind in this technology. But at least we have Prof. Snodgrass who drones on and on, as former UC president Yudof once reminded us in his soliloquy on online higher ed:
We have cautioned on this blog about responding to emails that purport to come from university sources but may actually be email spam or worse. Yours truly – and probably many other UCLA faculty – received the email in italics below. I was cautious because it did not come from a UCLA or UC source. It came from
member@surveymonkey.com and had a reply address of survey@acrd.us.
After a little snooping and Googling, however, it appears to be legit.
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Dear University of California Colleague,
The UC Office of the President funded researchers at UC Merced to conduct a system-wide survey of community engaged research. Please join us on Monday, October 14th, from 2-4pm in Public Affairs 5391 for a campus-wide discussion about the survey results. The discussion will include findings across the system and for your specific campus. Your recommendations for how to support community engaged research will be shared as part of a system-wide report to enhance support for community engaged research.
Please follow the link below to RSVP.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=XOOCr388c98uVsY3UjIubA_3d_3d
We look forward to meeting with you soon! Please contact us if you have any questions or comments.
Stergios (Steve) Roussos, PhD, MPH, Community Research Director, Health Sciences Research Institute (HSRI)sroussos@ucmerced.edu, 209-489-9913
Robin DeLugan, PhD, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Mercedrdelugan@ucmerced.edu, 209-228-4032
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A modest proposal for those sponsoring this particular survey (or any others that may be coming down the pike) is that the message should come from a clear-cut UC or UCLA source. Perhaps a university official such as the VC for research might have been the sender, for example.
If you are wondering what “community engaged research” is, you might look at some examples I found at http://communityresearch.ucmerced.edu/research/developing-projects and http://communityresearch.ucmerced.edu/.
As expected, the Regents adopted the budget – which the governor on Wednesday termed a wishlist – yesterday. The value of adopting a wishlist budget which will not be funded as requested was debated on Wednesday but adopted by the Committee on Finance of the Regents. We posted the audio of that meeting, including the governor’s comments.
Yours truly was in transit yesterday and so could not record the Regents’ live stream audio. We will, as usual, request the recording as a public document and post it when received. (And [sigh] again we ask why the Regents audios are not archived by their office. Why only a live stream which vanishes?)
The LA Times carries the story: Two UC campuses received important endorsements Thursday for long-stalled projects: a new medical school at Riverside and a major classroom building at Merced. The UC regents included a proposed $15 million to help run the medical school and $45 million for the Merced building in their 2013-14 budget request to the governor and Legislature. The regents said they were more optimistic than in the past about their chances since state tax revenues are improving…
Full article at http://www.latimes.com/health/la-me-1116-uc-regents-20121116,0,5719809.story
I suspect the attitude of the state will be that we give you X dollars and if you want to spend them on, say, a Riverside med school or a Merced building, go right ahead. However, the governor warned that the proposed budget in total, projected out into the future, assumed allocations from the state of a magnitude that would not be forthcoming.
Despite the warning, I suppose wishing can’t hurt:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKh6XxYbbIc?feature=player_detailpage]
But wishing might not help, either.
From the LA Times, Larry Gordon 7/16/12 (excerpt):
…UC Riverside‘s long-held dream to have a full medical school was badly battered last year when the state refused to pay for it and then national accreditors wouldn’t allow it to open. Those denials were a blow to the UC system’s proud tradition of adding campuses and programs to serve a growing state. Now, UC Riverside is making what national experts say is a rare second attempt to gain approval for a medical school. Campus officials say they have obtained alternative financial backing, worth about $10 million a year for a decade, from private donors, local government and the UC system in hopes that the medical school can enroll its first 50 students in fall 2013.
…The medical school would be UC’s sixth and its first to open since the late 1960s. The school would be the only one in UC without its own hospital, vastly cutting down on costs. UC’s medical centers and its health education programs constitute about half of the system’s $22-billion annual budget.
…For three decades, UC Riverside has operated a joint medical school program with UCLA. Its entering classes of about 25 students spend their first two years in Riverside and finish in Westwood.
…Last year, the UC system unsuccessfully sought $10 million in startup costs from the state but instead had to use other funds. Since then, Olds and UC Riverside Chancellor Timothy P. White began knocking on doors for support. As a result, the UC president’s office and the UC Riverside campus will provide $4 million a year from its own nonstate funds and about $6 million a year has been pledged by Riverside County, the quasi-governmental Desert Healthcare District, affiliated hospitals and other donors. In addition, the UC system has authorized a $30-million line of credit, a backup officials say they don’t expect to tap.
…In previous decades, Californians celebrated UC’s new campuses and programs. But more recently, the new UC Merced campus and UC Irvine law school faced skepticism and allegations that local boosterism trumped educational needs. In 2009, a state legislative analyst’s report suggested that UC expand enrollments at its existing medical schools before opening a new one. “The idea that the state is going to find money for a new program isn’t realistic at the moment,” said Paul Golaszewski, the legislative analyst’s UC expert.
…If Riverside’s latest application is denied, officials pledged to try again in two years, the soonest rules allow. Meanwhile, UC Merced, the system’s newest campus, also wants to add a medical school, but (John Stobo, the UC system’s senior vice president for health sciences and services) said that is unlikely to happen for 15 years or so.
Full story at http://www.latimes.com/health/la-me-medschool-20120716,0,7182284.story
Inside Higher Ed pointed me to this story. Its summary is at
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2012/07/16/uc-riverside-trying-again-open-medical-school
The Daily Bruin today has a piece on proposals for dealing with faculty salary scales which have grown increasingly outmoded. As the table, based on a graphic in the Bruin, illustrates, most faculty at UCLA are paid off-scale. The University, for recruitment and retention purposes, tries to meet the external academic labor market. In effect, since there are only so many dollars to go around, paying more than the official scale has to mean a higher student/teacher ratio than would otherwise prevail.
Percent of faculty off scale as of 10/2010:
Merced 88%
UCLA 80%
Santa Cruz 73%
Berkeley 72%
Irvine 66%
Santa Barbara 66%
San Diego 64%
Riverside 59%
Davis 52%
The Bruin article is at http://www.dailybruin.com/index.php/article/2012/02/uc_considers_new_salary_scale_system
Mike Lofchie pointed me to this article which questions the one-system view of UC and, in particular, UC-Merced, in a period of budget stringency.
Always room for debate:
Source: http://www.mercurynews.com/health/ci_19419961
Above: In happier days (1960), UC President Clark Kerr meets with Regents committee to select site for UC-Irvine.
For years, UC promised – but didn’t actually – to build a Central Valley campus. In many respects, the promise without the delivery was the best of worlds for UC when it came to the legislature.
Real estate developers throughout the Central Valley, and their legislative representatives, had dreams of a new campus sparking a development boom. After all, it worked when UCLA moved to Westwood. Decades later, it worked for Irvine. Why not in my area (or legislative district)?, they thought. UC could study various locations but be noncommittal about the final decision. That way, multiple hopeful legislative members could be UC supporters. Indeed, all political leaders in the Central Valley saw the prospect of a UC-induced boom in their locale.
But eventually, once the location decision was made – putting it in Merced – only one state assembly member and one state senator cared.
UC-Merced still promotes its potential impact on local development. See the video clip below. But the news item below, which appears to be a NY Times and Sacramento Bee joint report, indicates that Merced is a major center of foreclosures. The beneficiaries, the report indicates, are students who get to live in “under water” McMansions built on spec by developers for the boom that wasn’t. Excerpt:
MERCED – Heather Alarab, a junior at the University of California, Merced, and Jill Foster, a freshman, know that their sudden popularity has little to do with their sparkling personalities, intelligence or athletic prowess. “Hey, what are you doing?” throngs of friends perpetually text. “Hot tub today?”
While students at other colleges cram into shoebox-size dorm rooms, Alarab, a management major, and Foster, who is studying applied math, come home from midterms to chill out under the stars in a curvaceous swimming pool and an adjoining hot tub behind the rapidly depreciating “McMansion” they rent for a song. In Merced, one of the country’s hardest-hit areas for home foreclosures, the downturn in the real estate market has presented an unusual housing opportunity for thousands of college students. Facing a shortage of dorm space, they are moving into hundreds of luxurious homes in overbuilt planned communities…
A confluence of factors led to the unlikely presence of students in subdivisions, where the collegiate promise of sleeping in on a Saturday morning may be rudely interrupted by neighborhood children selling Girl Scout cookies door to door. This city of 79,000 is ranked third nationally in metropolitan-area home foreclosures, behind Las Vegas and Vallejo, said Daren Blomquist, a spokesman for RealtyTrac, a company based in Irvine that tracks housing sales. The speculative fever that gripped the region and drew waves of outside investors to this predominantly agricultural area was fueled in part by the promise of the university itself, which opened in 2005 as the first new University of California campus in 40 years.
The crash crashed harder here. “Builders were coming into the area by the bulkload,” said Loren M. Gonella, who owns a real estate company in Merced. “It was, ‘Holy moly, let’s get on this gravy train.’ “…
With hundreds of homes standing empty, many of them likely foreclosures, students willing to share houses have been “a blessing,” said Ellie Wooten, a former mayor of Merced and a real estate broker. Five students paying $200 a month each trump families who cannot afford more than $800 a month…
The university’s free transit system, Cat Tracks, stops at student-heavy subdivisions. There are also limitless creative possibilities, with decor ranging from a Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority bedroom motif to an archetypal male nightstand overflowing with empty bags of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.
Not all neighbors are amused. “Everybody on this street is underwater and can’t see any relief,” said John Angus, an out-of-work English teacher who paid $532,000 for a house that is now worth $221,000. “This was supposed to be an edge-of-town, Desperate Housewife-y community,” he said. “These students are the reverse.”…
Full story at http://www.sacbee.com/2011/11/13/4050655/uc-merced-students-fill-mcmansions.html
Developers and under water homeowners are not the only ones paying the cost – and in a period when UC budget dollars are scarce. Perhaps some lessons might be learned from this episode, systemwide and locally.
MERCED — Chancellor Dorothy Leland of the University of California, Merced, said today (Oct. 3) the 6-year-old campus has made significant contributions to the state through its innovative research and that more investment is needed for it to meet its promise to bring greater economic prosperity to the San Joaquin Valley, the fastest-growing region in the state…
UC President Mark G. Yudof, along with some 300 community members, formally welcomed Leland to the university during a ceremony today in the Carol Tomlinson-Keasey Quad…
With countries such as Saudi Arabia, China and India aggressively funding higher education infrastructure for research, Leland called on public and private partners to continue their investment in UC Merced so the campus can build more research facilities and teaching labs, hire additional faculty members and expand research related to public health and medicine, among other fields. “In short, what UC Merced needs now is for the state and federal government, business and industry leaders, philanthropic foundations and individuals to step up and invest in this young university’s extraordinary promise to improve lives and bring economic prosperity to the valley,” Leland said…
Full release at http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/26414
In short, what she would like in resources is:
You probably don’t follow the editorial page of the Fresno Bee religiously. With that in mind, yours truly reproduces an editorial that appeared on it last week – without comment.
But before I do, you might be interested in the comment by state controller John Chiang regarding state revenues through the first quarter of the fiscal year and the possibility that the so-called budget “trigger” would be pulled – further cutting the UC budget:
“For better or worse, the potential for revenue shortfalls is precisely why the Governor and Legislature included trigger cuts in this year’s State spending plan,” Chiang said… “September’s revenues alone do not guarantee that triggers will be pulled. But as the largest revenue month before December, these numbers do not paint a hopeful picture.”
From: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2011/10/california-revenues-miss-mark-in-september.html
EDITORIAL: Applauding support for UC Merced
Oct. 7, 2011
We’re pleased that University of California President Mark Yudof confirmed in his clearest terms yet the system’s commitment to support UC Merced as a premier research university. Yudof made the statement after the formal welcoming ceremony for Dorothy Leland, UC Merced’s new chancellor. Even though it’s the first research university built in the 21st century, UC Merced has gotten some rough treatment from old-line UC members who think the six-year old university is cutting into the diminishing UC funding. But Yudof reiterated the UC Office of the President’s agreement for several million dollars to fund UC Merced’s student and faculty growth. He called for the state to come through with more money for desperately needed buildings to accommodate surging enrollment.
Here’s what’s on the drawing board:
The Science & Engineering 2 Building is the next state-funded building planned. A lease-revenue bond sale is scheduled for next month. If funding comes through as planned, the university expects occupancy in late 2014. The Office of the President has agreed to provide $20 million (from general university funds — no state resources or tuition) this fall for a student services building, which should be ready for use by fall 2013.
Construction of a fourth housing facility (non-state-funded) is slated to begin this fall for occupancy in 2013. External financing and other non-state resources have been secured to expand the existing Joseph Edward Gallo Recreation and Wellness Center this year. Occupancy is anticipated next fall.
By the time all those buildings are ready for people, UC Merced will have run out of space. So we urge the UC administration and state lawmakers to favorably consider additional funding requests to help UC Merced continue to grow.
http://www.fresnobee.com/2011/10/06/2567364/editorial-applauding-support-for.html
As they apparently say in Fresno, let there Bee money: