Examining a model of the planned Westwood campus including the bridge across the now-filled-in ravine.
Sunday, July 31, 2016
Saturday, July 30, 2016
Not so good PR
In a statement, the UCLA Health system said the regents agreed to settle the two cases “so that UCLA Health and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA could move forward with their ongoing commitment to excellence in patient care, research, education and community service.”...
Full story at http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ucla-wang-medtronics-20160729-snap-story.html
And while we wait for the August 1 Katehi report
The Sacramento region’s largest public university announced Thursday that it had its largest annual donation total in its 108-year history.
University of California Davis raked in $226 million in the fiscal year ended June 30, a 23 percent increase from the prior year. The money represents just 4 percent of the university’s budget but goes toward student scholarships, research and capital projects not covered by state funding, said spokeswoman Sarah Colwell.
UC Davis alumni gave $22.8 million this year, a 42 percent increase from last year. It’s unclear how many of the total donations came within the Sacramento region because a full accounting is not yet available, Colwell said.
In March, the university also benefited from its largest single donation ever. Swiss real estate investor Ernest Tschannen donated $38.5 million to fund vision research and eye care following a successful surgery that remedied his glaucoma.
UC Davis officials also announced last September that the university's endowment fund had reached $1 billion. A more recent figure was not immediately available.
In the 2014-15 fiscal year, the university received $184.1 million in total donations. It received $165.7 million in 2013-14.
Source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/news/2016/07/29/uc-davis-has-record-fundraising-year.html
Money talks (and sings):
Money talks (and sings):
Friday, July 29, 2016
Coming August 1
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| Thelma and Louise or Janet and Linda? |
The Slow-Motion Downfall of Linda Katehi
Chronicle of Higher Education, Jack Stripling and Fernanda Zamudio-Suaréz, 7-29-16
Picture two locomotives barreling down a single track, heading for a collision as predictable as it is unstoppable. Such is the path of Janet A. Napolitano and Linda P.B. Katehi, the president of the University of California and the chancellor of its Davis campus, respectively.
By August 1 the university is expected to receive the findings of a months-long investigation into whether Ms. Katehi violated system policies related to her family members’ employment at the university, her service on corporate boards, and the hiring of companies to suppress embarrassing internet mentions of the chancellor and the campus.
Ms. Napolitano’s decision to broadcast a litany of specific charges against the chancellor, wounding her publicly from the start, is in keeping with what those who have worked with the president describe as her take-no-prisoners approach. The chancellor’s response, which has included fiery press releases from a hired crisis manager and the filing of a formal grievance, surprises few of her colleagues, who describe her as resentful of criticism.
The face-off between Ms. Napolitano, a former Arizona governor and U.S. Homeland Security secretary, and Ms. Katehi, who has been placed on administrative leave, poses a profound leadership test for a politician-turned-president who is still relatively unschooled in the culture of academe. And, at its heart, the crisis portends an ugly denouement for Ms. Katehi, a chancellor who seems forever scarred by a years-old scandal that destabilized her administration and hardened her instincts toward self-preservation.
The Chronicle interviewed more than 20 administrators, professors, regents, and lawmakers for this article. Several former Davis administrators, who have worked directly with Ms. Katehi, would speak only on condition of anonymity, citing concerns about divulging information from private meetings or professional retribution for speaking critically of their former boss.
Both Ms. Katehi and Ms. Napolitano declined interview requests.
Walk of Shame
For all of its twists and turns, what may be most remarkable about the unfolding crisis is how substantially it differs from the traditional ousting of an academic leader. Ms. Napolitano asked the chancellor to resign during a meeting in April, and in most situations that would have been the end of it.
But it wasn’t.
Instead, Ms. Katehi left the meeting and crafted an email to her lieutenants saying she wasn’t going anywhere.
Soon thereafter, the president’s office released to the news media a letter from Ms. Napolitano to the chancellor, announcing the president’s decision to commission an independent investigation of Ms. Katehi’s conduct. The letter suggested that the president, who not long before had publicly supported Ms. Katehi, felt personally misled by the chancellor.
"I am deeply disappointed to have to take this action," Ms. Napolitano wrote.
In the staid culture of elite research institutions, what is happening in California qualifies as a blood sport. But Ms. Katehi, a Greek immigrant who broke into the boys’ club of engineering in the 1970s, is seldom squeamish. Many chancellors in her position would have resigned nearly five years ago, when Ms. Katehi found herself at the center of a public-relations disaster. In November 2011, a Davis police officer broke up a student protest by dousing demonstrators’ faces with pepper spray. International outrage, much of it aimed at Ms. Katehi, ensued.
"A lot of people would have bailed under those circumstances; she didn’t," says Joseph Kiskis, a professor emeritus of physics and longtime member of the Academic Senate at Davis. "That shows a lot of determination."
“A lot of people would have bailed under those circumstances; she didn't. That shows a lot of determination.” An image from that period is so indelible that it has its own name: the Walk of Shame. Under pressure to resign, Ms. Katehi held a news conference in an academic building that was effectively under siege by protesters. Captured on video, the walk begins as Ms. Katehi emerges from the building in a beige trench coat and a dark scarf, her hands clasped in front of her. Traversing a throng of silent, seated students, she appears exhausted and full of dread, her face pale under the glare of TV spotlights, a scene punctuated only by the sound of her clacking shoes.
It is impossible to overstate how that moment, and the pepper-spray incident itself, helped to usher in the crisis now engulfing the chancellor, former advisers say. "The Walk of Shame" was an example of terrible optics for a woman who, by multiple accounts, became preoccupied with optics.
"It just changed everything," a former Davis administrator says. "It became about protecting reputation."
A Tightening Circle
After the pepper-spray episode, Ms. Katehi lost the confidence of some of her closest advisers, fired people or stood by as, demoralized, they resigned, and tightened her circle of confidants.
Every problem facing the campus, the former administrator says, was now seen through a pepper-spray-stained lens. The mission was to make sure nothing like it ever happened again to Davis or, just as important, to Linda Katehi.
When substantive problems cropped up, including several research-misconduct cases, Ms. Katehi seemed more concerned with how the news media were covering the issue than with fixing the problem itself, the administrator continues. She lashed out.
"She would just get very animated, talking about people by name — often they are not in the room when they are getting criticized," the former administrator says.
“This is typical Katehi. Klassy with a K, as we liked to say. It's not taking personal responsibility for one's conduct.” Advisers who might have challenged the chancellor before grew ever more cautious for fear of retribution, another former administrator says, and Ms. Katehi turned further inward for advice. Her husband, who is a lecturer in engineering at Davis, would show up at administrative meetings, the former adviser says. "It raised questions in people’s minds as to whose counsel she was taking."
Spyros Tseregounis, the chancellor’s husband, said in an email that he holds the title of associate of the chancellor, which is partly a fund-raising role, and he is "an advisor to the chancellor (albeit a nonpaid one)."
"As you can imagine," he wrote, "the chancellor values my input as a nonbiased one towards the best interests of the university. Anything I was involved with was within my professional purview related to me being the associate of the chancellor and a Faculty Senate member."
No matter whose advice Ms. Katehi may have sought, she often failed to stand behind her toughest decisions, the former administrator says. When she fired people, including the administrator, she sometimes had someone else do it.
"This is typical Katehi," says the administrator, who reported to the chancellor. "Klassy with a K, as we liked to say. It’s not taking personal responsibility for one’s conduct."
A Clean Sweep
The message became clear: Toe the line or else. A former dean, who was forced out, says the chancellor got rid of people who questioned her priorities. The dean, for example, had objected to spending $400 million on a chemistry complex, a signature project for the chancellor, arguing that the money would be better spent on deferred maintenance of classrooms, residence halls, and labs.
"I had challenged her too many times, and she was ready to move on," the dean says.
Kevin R. Johnson, dean of Davis’s law school, says he can understand why some of his colleagues felt reluctant to challenge Ms. Katehi. Her approach to meetings, he says, departed substantially from that of her predecessor, Larry N. Vanderhoef, who encouraged "free flowing" discussions and wanted to hear deans play "devil’s advocate." Ms. Katehi, by contrast, conducted "focused sessions" and expected "forceful, powerful, rational arguments" from her lieutenants, Mr. Johnson says.
"I can see why some people felt it was hard to chime in," he says. "You had to be able to defend your views."
Davis’s communications office has been on the defensive perhaps more than any other unit of the campus. During Ms. Katehi’s seven-year tenure, six different people have led the operation. Changing personnel has done little to clarify what the chancellor wants from the office, a former staff member says.
"She’s not good at communications, and she doesn’t know she’s not good at communications," the former employee says.
“This story is everywhere. Worse than pepper spray. It will fade away, but not for a while. And based on our track record, it's a sure thing we will do more stupid stuff as we try to put it behind us.” The lingering public memory of Ms. Katehi’s worst moments ate at the chancellor, and Ms. Katehi was perhaps even more sensitive than most leaders would be to the charge that she had dispatched a jackbooted militia to crack down on protesters. Before immigrating to the United States, the chancellor was a student at the Polytechnic School of Athens, in Greece, where in 1973 demonstrators opposing a military dictatorship were mowed down by soldiers in tanks. To see herself labeled "Chemical Katehi" was a particularly jarring insult.
Ms. Katehi’s current troubles stem in part from Davis’s efforts to improve her image. Public records obtained by The Sacramento Bee show that Davis hired consultants on internet-reputation management, one of whom promised to "expedite the eradication" of online references to the pepper-spray incident and to "clean up the negative attention" the chancellor and Davis had received.
In April, Ms. Katehi told The Chronicle she was "not involved" with those contracts, an assertion that Ms. Napolitano has described as dubious. In her letter to the chancellor, the president went so far as to suggest that Ms. Katehi may have made "material misstatements" to reporters "as well as to me" in violation of the university’s standards of ethical conduct.
Now-public emails show that the chancellor’s staff provided her with talking points that sought to distance her from the reputation-management project. But inside the chancellor’s administration, there was a growing sense that the story had already gotten away from them.
"It makes me physically ill," Gary A. Delsohn, director of executive communications, wrote in an email at4:54 a.m. on April 16. "This story is everywhere. Worse than pepper spray. It will fade away, but not for a while. And based on our track record, it’s a sure thing we will do more stupid stuff as we try to put it behind us. We have too many soft-headed people making decisions …"
‘Top Cop’
In the drama unfurling at Davis, Janet Napolitano quickly transformed from an ally of the chancellor into her most visible adversary. When Ms. Katehi took fire for joining the board of the DeVry Education Group, a for-profit company accused of deceptive recruiting practices, the president called her a "very good chancellor" who had made a "mistake."
Ms. Katehi resigned from the DeVry board, and she tried to make amends for serving on the board of John Wiley & Sons, a textbook publisher, by pledging to donate $200,000 in stock to student scholarships.
But those actions failed to mollify Davis students, who staged a five-week sit-in outside the chancellor’s office and demanded that she resign.
After the sit-in disbanded, on April 15, all seemed to be well between the president and the chancellor. But 10 days later, something had changed. Ms. Napolitano, having already consulted with university regents, met with Ms. Katehi and told her it was time to resign.
The parties differ in their versions of what happened at this pivotal meeting. Ms. Katehi, through a spokesman, says that Ms. Napolitano wanted her to resign both as chancellor and as a tenured faculty member — a demand that, if made, would be widely viewed as exceeding the president’s authority. In a chilling coda, as described by the chancellor’s spokesman, the president pledged to "investigate her family," some of whose members are employed at Davis, if she failed to acquiesce.
"She acted like the nation’s top cop," says Larry Kamer, Ms. Katehi’s spokesman. "You’re not with me, you’re against me — you’re out."
Dianne E. Klein, Ms. Napolitano’s spokeswoman, says that the president did not ask for the chancellor’s resignation from the faculty. "It is also completely untrue that the president issued any threats to the chancellor whatsoever," Ms. Klein wrote in an email. "She most certainly did not say anything that could be interpreted as a promise, threat, or vow to ‘go after your family.’"
Ms. Napolitano has questioned the propriety of the Katehi family’s compensation and reporting relationships at Davis. Emily Prieto-Tseregounis, Ms. Katehi’s daughter-in-law, is chief of staff to Adela de la Torre, the vice chancellor of student affairs, who reports to the chancellor. Ms. Katehi’s son, Erik Tseregounis, is a graduate-student research assistant. Her husband, the lecturer in engineering, was recruited through a spousal-hiring program at Davis that is similar to many across higher education.
The president’s approach, which has involved the airing of unsubstantiated allegations, has been a disappointment to many faculty members, who value discretion and greater deference to the system’s campus leaders. But that is not the person the University of California hired.
The former Arizona governor and Homeland Security chief, schooled in hardball politics and a foot soldier in the "war on terror," is known for a clear-cut leadership style that rejects shades of gray. Richard H. Bloom, a California assemblyman and member of the State Assembly’s higher-education committee, says that Ms. Napolitano’s approach to management can be a liability as well as an asset.
"It’s that singular focus that she has that can lead to some level of friction," says Mr. Bloom, a Democrat from Santa Monica.
‘Butt Out’
It is not uncommon in public universities for tensions to exist between campus leaders and system chiefs, but Ms. Napolitano may invite particularly intense turf wars. Faced with granular questions about campus-level contracts and her family’s salaries, the chancellor may well have thought, "Hey, this is my institution — butt out," says Dean R. Florez, a former majority leader in the California State Senate.
But the chancellor, Mr. Florez continues, learned "who Janet Napolitano is" and got the message: "No, I’m in charge of the overall brand that is UC."
The president’s desire to elevate the university’s brand was at times a source of tension with the chancellor, who has worked to differentiate Davis from California’s powerhouse campuses, particularly Berkeley. Ms. Katehi was dismayed, former administrators say, when the president unveiled the UC Global Food Initiative, a program that sounded an awful lot like Davis’s World Food Center.
“That is the irony dripping from this whole issue. It's more about attention for her than for the good of the commons.” The chancellor’s private grumbling about the program, which aims to improve food security and sustainability, suggests that the president had failed to make Ms. Katehi feel like a true partner in the effort. To the contrary, she felt sidelined by it, former advisers say. But her reaction feeds the narrative that Ms. Katehi cannot swallow her pride for the greater good.
"That is the irony dripping from this whole issue," a former administrator says. "It’s more about attention for her than for the good of the commons. Is it better that the entire infrastructure of the best public-university system in the world is focused on hunger? Of course."
Still, the president has consistently made moves that signal the system’s authority, Mr. Florez says, and she is laying down a marker with her handling of Ms. Katehi.
"This is a leader that’s saying our UC system isn’t going to stand for this, and publicly calling a chancellor out," Mr. Florez says. "She was trying to send a message that her role isn’t just the head of a federation. She’s going to be a steward for the entire system, setting kind of an ethical tone."
‘It’s Just Messy’
But at what cost? The president’s letter to the chancellor reads like a prosecutorial indictment, and its public release lends an official veneer to a vaguely described whistle-blower complaint and charges of conflicts of interest that Davis’s Academic Senate has dismissed as erroneous.
"In my 40 years at the University of California, I’ve never seen anything like this, and I can tell you all of my colleagues say they’ve never seen anything like this," says Suad Joseph, a Davis professor of anthropology and gender, sexuality, and women’s studies. "Why was this tried in the court of public opinion?"
Ms. Katehi enjoys substantial support from faculty members, more than 300 of whom signed a letter condemning any "pre-emptory action" to remove the chancellor. A number of professors, including Ms. Joseph, have argued that the chancellor has been unfairly singled out because she is a woman, noting that male chancellors did not receive similar scrutiny for service on corporate boards. Ms. Katehi’s lawyer, setting the stage for a lawsuit, has made similar charges of discriminatory treatment.
Ms. Napolitano’s approach breaks with established norms in academe, validating some professors’ historical misgivings about hiring a politician to lead the system. The university, beleaguered by budget cuts, wanted a dealmaker who could manage a huge bureaucracy. But those qualities, which Ms. Napolitano had in large supply, came at the expense of traditional higher-education experience.
“People would have preferred if the president had said, You serve at my pleasure, you're too hot, let's negotiate an exit.” Ms. Napolitano’s father was dean of the University of New Mexico’s School of Medicine, and she told members of the presidential-search committee that she had always wanted to follow in his footsteps. But the president is conscious of her outsider status in academe, and she has publicly lamented the speed of change at the university.
It is no surprise that the president’s pace of doing business feels foreign to her new colleagues, says Monica C. Lozano, chairwoman of the Board of Regents. "It’s a way of leading that is very direct; it lets people know exactly what her expectations are," Ms. Lozano says. "And it has forced the system to move perhaps faster than it’s used to."
It is all the more unexpected, therefore, that the president would be criticized for moving too slowly with the chancellor. Professors at Davis are mystified that Ms. Napolitano would drag out the process, not simply fire Ms. Katehi as chancellor.
"It’s just messy," says Linda F. Bisson, a past chairwoman of Davis’s Academic Senate and professor of viticulture and oenology. "People would have preferred if the president had said, You serve at my pleasure, you’re too hot, let’s negotiate an exit."
Angry Mob
There was a moment, two days after Ms. Katehi’s Walk of Shame, when the chancellor agreed to speak to a rally of student protesters on Davis’s quad.
"I know you may not believe anything that I am telling you today, and you don’t have to," the chancellor said. "It is my responsibility to earn your trust."
It was a potent and humble message that nearly brought Ms. Katehi to tears, the sort of humanizing moment that communications officials can’t script. But when the chancellor exited the stage, she was devoured in a scrum of cameras and microphones.
An angry chant ensued: "Don’t come back! Don’t come back!"
It was a classic public-relations trap, placing the target of so much ire directly in the sight lines of demonstrators. But, then as now, Ms. Katehi was intent on entering the fray.
Source: http://chronicle.com/article/The-Slow-Motion-Downfall-of/237300 as reproduced in UCOP Daily News Clips
Waiting for the report is a real cliffhanger:
Waiting for the report is a real cliffhanger:
UCLA History: 405
Building the 405 in 1964 in the Sepulveda Pass (top) and Sunset Blvd. (bottom) near UCLA
Thursday, July 28, 2016
Proceed with extreme caution
Outgoing UC Student Association, or UCSA, President Kevin Sabo submitted a report of recommendations July 20 to the university calling for explicit recognition of the UCSA as the official voice of UC students.
The recommendations aim to codify the relationships between the UCSA and both the UC Office of the President, or UCOP, and the UC Board of Regents by amending both groups’ existing bylaws and policies. According to Sabo, the recommendations are a culmination of discussions between the UCSA and UC officials that have taken place over the last year.
“What this was really about was pulling all of the points of our interaction together in one document,” Sabo said. “This is the final document which encapsulates all we’ve talked about this year.”
Sabo said the UCSA has been implicitly recognized as the voice of UC students since the establishment of the UC Student Regent position in 1975, but that its official recognition would protect the organization from being dismissed as irrelevant when beneficial for UC administration. Since releasing the report, Sabo said he had received multiple emails from the UCOP attempting to finalize some of the recommendations...
Full article at http://www.dailycal.org/2016/07/27/outgoing-ucsa-president-submits-report-recommendations-uc-system/
Editorial: Is the Academic Senate involved in these discussions between UCSA and UCOP? In the past, when student groups take actions or make statements, those actions and statements are often interpreted by the outside world as "official" UC policy. There is already a student Regent who is "official." Widening the sphere of officialness (if there is such a word) is a step to be approached with great caution.
Do state subsidies for public universities favor the affluent?
Looking at indirect subsidies in aggregate rather than per student, we find that the total distribution of indirect subsidies largely mirrors enrollment. That is, high income students do not receive a disproportionate share of indirect subsidies provided to students attending public universities...
Full report at
https://www.insidehighered.com/sites/default/server_files/files/public%20university%20subsidies.pdf
Summary from Inside Higher Ed at
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/07/28/report-finds-state-subsidies-do-not-favor-rich
Wednesday, July 27, 2016
Too much repetition? Too much repetition?
Public and private colleges and universities in California must post their sexual harassment policies online and provide copies to all students and faculty under a new law.
Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday signed AB2654, which seeks greater awareness of campus sexual harassment policies already mandated by state and federal laws.
Each college must also specify a complaint process and timeline.
Democratic Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla of Concord wrote the law in response multiple cases of sexual assault by faculty and high-profile investigations at the University of California Berkeley.
It also follows former Stanford University swimmer Brock Turner's June sentencing to six months in jail for raping a woman on campus.
When Turner arrived at Stanford, new students were required to complete online training about sexual consent and assault intervention.
Note: We recognize the need of legislators to "do something." But at some point, repetition of messages is self-defeating. Folks stop seeing them
FYI: AFSCME-UCLA's Facebook Ad
AFSCME at UCLA is running a Facebook ad presumably targeted at UCLA-related users.
Tuesday, July 26, 2016
Mellinkoff
Mellinkoff died July 17 at his home near the Westwood campus, UCLA said in a statement.
He took over the school in 1962, when it was just a decade old and did not yet have its own buildings. He led it for 25 years — a marathon term for a medical school dean. Under his direction it grew from a few dozen students to classes of 1,500 interns, residents and fellows.
Mellinkoff helped establish multiple organ transplant programs, a comprehensive cancer center and one of the first federally funded centers for research in positron emission tomography, or PET scans.
Those who worked under him said he was a beloved and generous leader for whom no project was too quirky when he saw its merits.
Jared Diamond, the well-known professor behind "Guns, Germs and Steel" and other books, said when he arrived at UCLA in the mid-1960s he was nervous that he wanted to keep studying birds along with human physiology.
"Sherm's response was unforgettable," Diamond said in a statement. "He looked me in the eye and said with complete sincerity, 'Jared, UCLA is interested in New Guinea birds. We are going to give you $5,000 a year to support your research there.'"
Mellinkoff was also a renaissance man whose friends and colleagues said knew his literature, history and baseball nearly as well as his medicine.
His successor as dean, Dr. Kenneth Shine, said Mellinkoff was the only man he knew "who could quote James Thurber and Ecclesiastes in the same sentence."
Mellinkoff was a native of Pennsylvania whose shoe-selling family moved to Los Angeles when he was a child.
He said that at Beverly Hills High School he was interested in literature, history and debating — everything except medicine."
But he took a biology class by a local doctor his senior year, and that changed everything. He was a pre-med at Stanford, completed his residency at Johns Hopkins and served a two-year stint as an army doctor.
He joined the UCLA medical faculty in 1953, and took over as dean about a decade later. Mellinkoff continued teaching after his retirement as dean.
Monday, July 25, 2016
Oktoberfest for UCLA Grand Hotel
Construction of the Meyer and Renee Luskin Conference Center is now complete, as the center prepares for its opening. The center will host a grand opening event Oct. 7...
Source: http://dailybruin.com/2016/07/24/luskin-conference-center-reaches-final-stages-of-construction/
But perhaps we can limit the damage:
Sunday, July 24, 2016
Listen to the Regents Meeting of July 21, 2016
The July 21st meeting began with public comments. Topics included student food issues, gun violence, whether law students could be TAs, sustainability, diversity, scholarships, and the expansion of the Merced campus.
The Merced expansion was the next major item. As blog readers will know, this is a $1 billion-plus public-private arrangement. Costs have gone up by $195 million although some savings in interest costs were also reported. Regent Makarechian asked to be sure that any subsequent changes to the deal should be brought to the Regents. The Merced arrangement was approved.
There was reference to Dept. of Energy Labs oversight. However, the next main topic was a report by the UC prez on student food programs. The Committee on Compensation outlined its plan for constraints on outside board memberships by chancellors and other senior execs. The new plan was approved with some recorded dissenting votes. Some executive pay arrangements were also approved. Finally, the meeting ended with the UC prez's report on various faculty awards.
You can hear the audio from this meeting at the link below:
Regents Pérez & Makarechian Express Concerns About Effectiveness of Sexual Harassment Training
You can hear both Regents at the link below: [Audio with still pictures.]
We'll Do Our Part for Online STEM - Part 14
Saturday, July 23, 2016
Friday, July 22, 2016
Listen to the Regents Meeting of July 19, 2016
However, we do now have the July 19 meeting. It began - as seemingly all Regents meetings begin nowadays - with public comments from the anti-vaccination folks. This time, there was only one. Thereafter, the meeting turned to audit and compliance. When the issue of sexual harassment prevention came up, Regent John A. Pérez noted the there wasn't evidence that such training in fact prevented bad behavior. Oddly, his observation was followed by a suggestion by Regent Hadi Makarechian that the training should be turned into a for-credit course. Subsequent discussion dealt with security of data and safety in UC-related travel.
The rest of the meeting involved either discussion or approval of various capital projects. These included student housing at UC-San Diego, general planning related to a student housing crunch at Santa Cruz, student housing at UC-San Francisco, and a research building at Riverside. Two UCLA projects came up. A $35 million budget was approved for the Geffen Academy. And there was discussion of plans for revamping an arts facility run by UCLA in Culver City.
You can hear the meeting at the link below:
Forbes on Diversity Ranking of "Top" 10 Colleges
- California Institute of Technology
- University of California, Los Angeles
- University of California, Berkeley
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Rice University
- Stanford University
- University of Southern California
- Amherst College
- Duke University
- Columbia University
Thursday, July 21, 2016
The Regents on Moonlighting
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| Handy book for chancellors |
From the Sacramento Bee:
University of California regents voted Thursday to limit top administrators to two outside paid jobs and add another layer of approval to ensure moonlighting doesn’t pose a conflict of interest or a “reputational risk” to the university system.
The regents approved the changes without opposition during their full board meeting in San Francisco. The new restrictions come after UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi drew criticism this year for accepting past board positions with a textbook publisher and for-profit DeVry Education Group.
The new policy, initially proposed by UC President Janet Napolitano, would require administrators to explain the benefits an outside job or paid board seat would bring their campus and UC, as well as a statement that spells out how much time the job would require. The new policy adds a mid-year review of outside jobs, as well as a review panel for questionable applications.
“The changes we are recommending today would be among the most careful and restrictive in the nation,” said UC regent Bonnie Reiss, who chairs the board’s Compensation Committee.
Regents approved the new policy after The Sacramento Bee reported in March that Katehi accepted board seats with DeVry Education Group as it faced a federal investigation for allegedly misleading students. She did not receive final sign-off from Napolitano before accepting the seat that paid $170,000 annually in stock and salary. Katehi resigned that position within days under pressure from Napolitano, Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, and watchdog groups.
The Bee also reported the chancellor had previously received $420,000 in income and stock over three years as a board member for John Wiley & Sons, a publisher of textbooks, college materials and scholarly journals. Critics said that represented a conflict because students and state leaders were seeking to reduce the cost of textbooks and use free alternatives.
She pledged $200,000 toward a UC Davis student scholarship in March but has not donated the money and could rescind her pledge depending on the outcome of the UC investigation, her private spokesman Larry Kamer said earlier this month.
In 2014, the most recent year data are available, 49 top UC had outside jobs as consultants, advisers, speakers and corporate board directors. The exact compensation is hard to determine because the report, which lists income from cash and stocks, doesn’t always include the value of stock options.
Eight senior managers with outside jobs, including Katehi, held three or more outside paid positions in 2014. That would exceed the proposed policy’s maximum of two, though UC will only apply the limit when current administrators seek new positions rather than ask them to step down from existing ones.
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| Big step for the Regents? |
The biggest earner appears to be Mark Laret, chief executive officer of UC San Francisco Medical Center, who earned $589,820 serving on the boards of medical firms Nuance and Varian, according to UC records. In 2014 Laret earned $1.59 million in salary and other compensation from UC.
Katehi has been on paid administrative leave since April 27 as outside investigators look into allegations of misusing student funds, nepotism and misstating her role in hiring online image consultants. She has denied any wrongdoing.
Kamer would not comment Thursday on the UC changes.
Reiss said news stories led state legislators to hold a hearing on the outside compensation policies of California’s public university policies in April. The state budget this year also included language directing UC leadership to review and make changes to the policy.
“Our Board of Regents and our compensation committee took this very seriously, as we take our relationship with state leaders and we take our relationship with the public very seriously,” Reiss said.
Despite that, she said conflicts of interest among senior management are “neither prevalent or rampant” in the UC system. In her seven years on the board there have only been two stories that questioned a conflict of interest and those involved only two of UC’s senior staff, she said.
To come up with its recommendations, the committee reviewed the policies of other U.S. universities. It could not find any that banned moonlighting and very few that limited chancellors and other senior managers from serving on boards and receiving outside compensation, she said.
“We agree that an outright ban is an overreach and could hurt UC’s ability to attract talent and would deprive UC of the benefits that some of these affiliations bring,” Reiss said.
The proposed policy applies only to the university’s 165-member Senior Management Group, which includes Napolitano, campus chancellors, medical center chief executive officers and directors of national laboratories, as well as some directors that report directly to them. Similar policies for staff and faculty won’t be revised, according to UC officials. Senior managers who already hold more then two paid outside positions will be allowed to continue in those positions.
“I’m extremely comfortable with this,” said Regent Sherry Lansing. She said that she had to go through the same process as a corporate executive and that it helped her to avoid unintentional errors. “It’s not a difficult process. It’s a common process.”
The outside professional activities policy for senior management was last revised in 2010 after public outcry over the extensive activities of some campus chancellors. Faculty policies underwent a major revision in 2014, and there are no current plans for additional revisions, Klein said.