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First, there is the Transit of Venus, which the LA Times calls a “twice in a lifetime experience.”  Check it out at  http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-venus-transit-20120601,0,3065385.story The other “twice in a lifetime experience” (since we had a “scoping” hearing last fall) will be the upcoming environmental review on the proposed UCLA hotel/conference center, 7 PM, at the Faculty Center.  It is supposed to be built opposite the Transit of MTA and other bus lines near Ackerman and, as this blog has endlessly pointed out, is based on a questionable business plan which could end up costing the campus.  We have yet to find…

Inside Higher Ed today continues its coverage of the litigation on what is allowed in eReserves, i.e., readings placed online for students in courses.  A recent court decision allowed up to 10 percent of a book’s contents to be put online as “fair use.” University librarians generally supported the decision. Book publishers, notably university book publishers, were not happy.  It might be noted that the University of California press is one of the academic publishers that has membership in an organization of publishers that is among the unhappy and has issued a press release to that effect. Inside Higher Ed‘s…

From today’s San Francisco Chronicle: Occupy the Farm protesters agreed Saturday to end their three-week encampment on UC Berkeley property in Albany, but rebuffed an invitation from the university to discuss how the area can be used for both urban farming and for research.  Instead, the several dozen protesters set up ladders to scale the fence UC had erected around the area along San Pablo Avenue known as the Gill Tract and said they will continue to tend the vegetables and fruit trees they’ve planted on 2 of the 5 disputed acres. As a result, the UC regents said they won’t drop…

As readers of this blog will know, UC-Berkeley and UC-San Francisco have been calling for more autonomy from the overall UC system, including the right to set tuition at the campus level.  (UCLA has been strangely silent about the proposal, pro or con. Can there really be no opinion on this matter in Murphy Hall?)  Yours truly somehow missed the item below from May 3: Ratings agency Moody’s Investors Service applauded a new University of California, Berkeley proposal to give each UC campus more autonomy, particularly when it comes to setting tuition rates. Because its seats are so coveted, Berkeley…

Sometimes this blog posts items relevant to holidays of the day and today is Cinco de Mayo.  On May 3, 2012, UCLA Professor David Hayes-Bautista was interviewed by Warren Olney on KCRW radio’s Which Way LA? about the history of Cinco de Mayo.  He was also interviewed on the UCLA Newsroom blog on the same topic and recorded a YouTube video for that blog on the subject of Cinco de Mayo (link to that video and text at http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/uncovering-the-origins-of-the-232941.aspx). Prof. Hayes-Bautista notes that the celebration of the holiday has much to do with the American Civil War.  On the radio…

The Beverly Hills Courier published an interesting history of the Japanese Garden and its proposed sale by UCLA in its May 4 issue.  Links to just that article and to the paper as a whole are below.  It contains an interesting statement by former Dean Fred Eiserling on p. 10: Using a letter written by Dean of Life Sciences Fred Eiserling in June 1993 to Vice Chancellor Alan Charles, UCLA partially based its argument to sell the gardens on Eiserling’s assertion that it did research purpose and would be better suited for another use within the University. In 1965, the…

Inside Higher Ed pointed me to a UC notice dated 5-3-12 in which it was announced that certain UC human resource functions will be consolidated at UC-Riverside.  UCLA will be among the first set of campuses (“Wave #1”) to make the transition. UC RIVERSIDE SELECTED TO HOST NEW EMPLOYEE SERVICE CENTER   After a thorough review and analysis, UCPath executive sponsors Peter Taylor, chief financial officer, and Nathan Brostrom, executive vice president of business operations, have selected UC Riverside as the host location for the UCPath Center, the new systemwide shared service center.  The UCPath Center will process routine transactions related…

According to the Daily Bruin, rent-a-bikes will be joining Zipcars in Westwood soon.   Bicycle rental kiosks will soon populate Westwood, once a city-wide bike-sharing program launches this fall. The private venture is being funded by Bike Nation, a bike-share service provider that plans to install 4,000 bicycles at 400 rental kiosks throughout communities in Los Angeles… Full story at: http://www.dailybruin.com/index.php/article/2012/04/bike_nation_to_bring_bicycle_rental_kiosks_to_westwood_in_the_fall [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GugsCdLHm-Q&w=320&h=195]

In an earlier post, we noted a bill in the state legislature that would limit pay of state employees to the salary of the governor, about $174,000.  The bill exempts UC because of its constitutional position.  Nonetheless, should such a bill be passed, it would create difficulties for UC as an outlier.  The bill advanced in committee yesterday. State employees — even university presidents and top medical doctors — should not bring home more than Gov. Jerry Brown, a Senate Committee agreed Wednesday.  “This is a good first step to reining in the outrageous state salaries that Californians keep hearing…

We continue to report on the UCLA hotel/conference center project which the Regents found questionable in their March meeting and refused to endorse.  Earlier, we noted threehotel projects being planned for Santa Monica.  It is useful to look at a rendering of one of them which has 138 rooms and would be at 5th Street and Colorado.   It’s pretty massive and useful to look at.  Now consider that the 250-room proposed UCLA hotel would have over 80% more rooms and you get a sense of the scale of the UCLA project.  The Santa Monica project shown above is described as follows:…