Listen to the Regents Meetings of Jan. 23, 2020

The final day of the Regents meeting last week (January 23rd) involved the full board meeting twice, once for public comments and a second time for hearing reports of committees and taking up action items.

Note that some sessions that were originally scheduled to take place on January 22nd were moved to January 23rd because the full board ran late on the earlier date.

Below is a summary of the sessions from the Bruin:

Full Board (Split into two sessions)

• Members of the public said they are actively protesting the Thirty Meter Telescope that is being built on sacred Hawaiian land. They asked the UC to divest from its investments in the TMT.
• Pérez said he would like to have the TMT issue brought before the full board. He said this would allow the board to have a substantive discussion and has asked to schedule a meeting as soon as possible.
• The board approved to adopt a resolution of necessity for proceeding in eminent domain action to acquire land for a new Hillcrest campus in San Diego.
• Representatives from the Title IX Office summarized their actions over the past five years, including a revised sexual violence and sexual harassment policy, increased community education and changes to hearings and procedures responding to student accusations.

Governance Committee

• The committee approved market-based salary adjustments for the vice chancellor at UC Berkeley and for the university librarian at UCLA.
• The committee also approved a retroactive payment for temporary housing for the interim vice chancellor of student affairs at UC San Diego.
• The committee approved a correction of incentive compensation using nonstate funds for the chief investment officer of the UC Office of the President.
• The committee approved a measure to prohibit contracting out for services to comply with a recently adopted bargaining agreement with American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299, an employee union that represents service and patient care employees in the UC.

National Laboratories Committee

• Craig Leasure, the vice president for national laboratories, summarized of the performance of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
• Representatives from the Accelerating Therapeutics for Opportunities in Medicine consortium, a partnership between UC San Francisco, national laboratories and private pharmaceuticals that was funded by the regents in 2017, said they are using computing methods to accelerate drug discovery and are working with several national labs and private pharmaceutical companies to accelerate drug discovery.
• The regents approved the allocation of funds for a program that will increase collaboration between the national labs and UC campuses, and will provide research opportunities for undergraduates and postgraduates.

Compliance and Audit Committee

Representatives from the UC Herbicide Task Force summarized their recommendations to Napolitano, including a new integrated pest management policy that would require each UC campus to create local integrated pest management committees.

Public Engagement and Development Committee

• David Phillips, associate vice president of energy and sustainability, Sapna Thottathil, associate director of sustainability and Matthew St.Clair, director of sustainability, presented the 2019 Annual Report for Sustainable Practices.
• Thottahil said the UC’s 2020 goal of buying 20% sustainable food products has been met by all 10 campuses and four out of five health systems. She added the 2020 goal of reducing per capita water use by 20% was met by 8 out of 10 campuses, resulting in a 46% reduction in system wide water use since 2008. The 2020 goal for waste, which was to divert 90% of solid waste and reduce per capita waste to 2015-2016 levels, has been 76% met, she said.
• Philips discussed the UC’s progress toward the 2025 goal of carbon neutrality. Currently, there are more than 1000 energy efficiency projects that have been completed, he said.
• Pradeep Khosla, the chancellor of UC San Diego, described his fundraising practices to the board. Khosla said they want to use fundraising money for basic needs and mental health, and added he wants to reduce wait time for mental counseling to at most 30 minutes.

Source: https://dailybruin.com/2020/01/25/uc-regents-recap-jan-21-23/

You can hear the session at the link below:

or direct to:
https://archive.org/details/0dpublicengagementanddevelopment12320