Category: UC-San Francisco

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

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 that he let Nathan off easy on Blake House.  Blake House is the possible residence of the incoming UC president that would require renovations and repair.  There is more of that in the link below towards the end.

In this session, there was discussion of installation of solar panels at two campuses: Davis and Riverside.  Both campuses indicated that the electricity cost – after various govt. subsidies – would be comparable to the cost from outside sources.  An interesting point was that having solar installations would not help were there to be an external power failure.  The solar component would shut down in such events to prevent damage.  UC-San Francisco presented an upgrade and construction plan involving seismic work, among other elements.  There was discussion of a new ocean pier for Scripps/UC-San Diego. UCLA sought authorization for design of a new engineering building.  A question was raised about how, given that this was the design phase only, UCLA somehow had rather precise estimates of construction costs.  It was noted also that because of the release of such advance estimates, it would be unlikely that UCLA’s prospective contractors would come in with lower bids, even if costs were actually lower.  Lt. Gov. Newsom asked what was really being committed here.  If you start down the road of just approving design costs, doesn’t that effectively commit you to the entire project?  He was assured that the costs approved were just for design.  Good question, Mr. Lt. Governor.  The answer was not so good.  In fact, once you get a train rolling at the Regents, it does leave the station.

Then we come to the Blake House discussion for which Nathan was let easily off the hook, as per above.  Apparently, the house is not in good shape and has a leaky roof and related damage.  The approval sought was to do repairs.  There were questions about whether UC could just sell the building and land and use the proceeds for something else.  It was noted that the location, 4 miles from Berkeley, was not ideal for a president’s residence or other uses.  Nonetheless, repairs were authorized with promises from UCOP that there would be a more thorough evaluation forthcoming in the future.

You can hear the audio at the link below:

No So Free

Apparently, not in this case

From Inside Higher Ed comes the story of the intern who worked for free at UC-SF, and then didn’t.

A former doctoral student who worked as a psychology intern at the University of California, San Francisco was awarded more than $14,000 in back wages after filing a complaint with the California labor commissioner over uncompensated work…

Full story at http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2013/08/09/former-intern-wins-back-wages-university

Emisions Remissions?

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…

The UC system has budgeted $8 million to comply with AB32 – for just the next fiscal year.
For that much money, the UC system could accommodate another 800 students, UC Vice President Patrick Lenz told members of the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee last month. He and the system later backed off those comments, saying there is “not a direct correlation” between student enrollment and the money for cap-and-trade. He also later noted in a letter to committee chairman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, that it’s possible the system won’t have to buy any credits to cover its 2014 emissions…

Full story at http://www.ocregister.com/news/trade-501273-cap-emissions.html

The following is the amount of greenhouse gases emitted in 2011 by UC campuses covered under the AB32 cap-and-trade program. The emissions are displayed in units of metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.

UCLA – 205,299
UC San Diego – 160,579
UC Irvine – 69,979
UC San Francisco – 68,566
UC Davis Medical Center – 63,693
UC Davis – 62,259

Well, the emissions could be worse:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaN7xuAIjXI?feature=player_detailpage]

Listen to Regents Meeting of Nov. 13, 2012

The UC Board of Regents, Committee on Grounds and Building met on the afternoon of Nov. 13, 2012.  On the agenda were public comments, approval of the UC capital budget plan, discussion of a long term plan for student housing at UC-Santa Barbara, and design approval of a $118.6 million faculty office building project at UC-San Francisco.

Two speakers in the public comments session referred to out-of-state students although exactly what was being suggested was unclear.

The capital budget is a wishlist of projects that it would be nice if the state funded through general obligation bonds.  However, given the governor’s concern about the state’s “wall of debt,” that seems unlikely for the most part.  There is some receptivity toward seismic upgrades.

There was discussion of a long-term housing plan for students at Santa Barbara.  One regents suggested that housing might be handled more efficiently through a public-private partnership of some kind.  Campus reps from Santa Barbara said that the housing the campus provides is 40% cheaper than in the private market for students.  This discussion was followed by design approval the UC-SF office building.

We note, as we have before, that the Regents typically approve large projects – such as the UC-SF building – without having the capability of independent auditing or of verification that what was promised is what was delivered after the fact. 

You can hear the meeting (under one hour) at the link below:

Listen to Audio of the Regents’ Afternoon Session: July 18, 2012

This audio is a direct recording of the Regents’ afternoon session of July 28, 2012. At the end of the recording, it is announced that the governor is coming and that the Regents – who were going into closed session – would go back into open session when he arrived. However, the live-stream audio was shut off at that point.  When we get the full audio from the Regents, if there are remarks from the governor on it, the audio will be posted.  (Presumably, the governor wanted to talk about the Regents’ earlier endorsement of his tax initiative.)  Otherwise, this recording should be complete.

In the afternoon session, there were discussions of various campus efficiency and money saving activities.  Discussion of professional school fees (see an earlier post today) was intertwined with issues of diversity in business and other professional schools.  Ultimately, the Regents approved the various professional school proposals.  (Undergraduate tuition was not raised, contingent on passage of the governor’s tax initiative in November.)  There was a somewhat nasty exchange between Regents on the diversity issue.  The UC-San Francisco chancellor – who has made statements about UC-SF being different as a med school from other campuses and needing autonomy – came in with a proposal for an outside board just for her campus, a kind of mini-Regents. She has a task force working on governance issues but promised it would not get into privatization. 
The UCLA hotel was approved as part of a larger package from the Committee on Grounds and Building about an hour into the afternoon session.  This was a pro forma vote after yesterday’s Committee approval.
A report on the Dept. of Energy labs was presented.  Much of the other business involved reports on prize-winning faculty and nice words for departing officials.
You can hear the audio on the link below:

Breaking Up the UC System?

Inside Higher Ed today has a lengthy article on recent proposals to give the various UC campuses more autonomy. These proposals have primarily been emanating from UC-Berkeley and UC-San Francisco.  The article goes over some of the past statements and documents relating to this issue and provides a review of related developments in other state systems.

The article is at:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/05/11/university-california-faces-questions-about-its-governance-structure

Clearly, breaking up the system would be difficult:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbad22CKlB4&w=320&h=195]

UCLA Among Top 10 Universities in R&D Spending in Fiscal Year 2010

Inside Higher Ed reports that UCLA is among the top ten universities in research and development spending.  It has been in that group for some time.  Basically, the key determinants are having a med school and getting a lot of federal research funding.

The top ten are:

Johns Hopkins
U of Michigan (Ann Arbor)
U of Wisconsin (Madison)
U of Washington (Seattle)
Duke
UC-San Diego
UCLA
UC-San Francisco
Stanford
U of Pennsylvania

Data from http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2012/04/02/hopkins-again-leads-rd-spending.  There is a link in this article to NSF data.  When you click on the link to the article, go to Table 5.

It’s good to be among the tops:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6oGytt0Hiw&w=320&h=195]

Let me go, says UC-San Francisco

From today’s San Francisco Chronicle:

Unlike the other nine campuses of the University of California, UCSF enrolls no undergraduates, offers no history classes and gets so much money from government grants that it barely depends on the tuition its students pay to attend the medical school on a windy San Francisco hill.
…At Thursday’s meeting at UC Riverside, UCSF Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann told the regents, delicately, that she wants out.
Under her proposal, UCSF’s medical school, hospital, clinics and research facilities would remain a public university connected to UC, the chancellor assured the regents. But the tendrils connecting the two entities should be thinner than they are today…
We have some audio of the chancellor’s presentation from the meeting:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hyLRbRCCLU&w=320&h=195]

UC students to protest at regents meeting (tomorrow)

Lisa M. Krieger, San Jose Mercury-News 11-26-11
Student protesters with the Occupy movement will converge on four UC campuses Monday morning to vent their fury at a meeting of the regents, with demonstrators in Davis attempting a campuswide shutdown. The meeting, rescheduled after cancellation earlier this month because of threats of violence and vandalism, now includes a one-hour slot for student voices and other public comment, increased from the usual 20 minutes. The regents will be spread out in four locations — San Francisco, Davis, Los Angeles, and Merced — and conduct the meeting by teleconference…

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.