The full board met twice on Nov. 19. Initially, it heard public comments dealing with the Hawaiian telescope, disabled students, basic needs including child care and internet access, labor relations issues including pay for lecturers in summer and pay cuts, and UC-San Francisco expansion.
Unusual Hearing:
The main part of the first full board meeting was quite unusual. A tenured faculty member of the engineering school at Santa Cruz was recommended for firing by the chancellor and UC president. He requested an open board hearing. (Normally, such matters are handled in closed session, as are other personnel matters.) The hearing was held and ran over two hours. In general terms, the matter revolved around a reorganization in the engineering school that produced a new departmental structure. However, the faculty member was not placed in a new department but was given a divisional appointment, i.e., reporting directly to the dean.
Ultimately, in 2019-20, he refused to teach three courses assigned by the dean on the grounds that only a department chair could assign courses. In the course of this dispute, which ran over several years, there were internal academic senate reviews and litigation outside the university. The upshot was the recommended firing. The grievance and his lawyer both testified and answered questions from the Regents. In the end, the board went into closed session to decide the case. There is no public record of the outcome.
When the meeting resumed, there was discussion of reports from the Governance Committee and the Special Committee on Basic Needs. These sessions are summarized below:
Governance Committee
Executive Summary:
As a result of a discussion on effective board governance at the Board of Regents’ retreat in fall 2019, a Regents’ Working Group on Committee Structure was formed. The Working Group met several times, conducted interviews with two committee chairs and sent a survey on committee structure to all Regents and Chancellors. It developed several recommendations that can be implemented immediately to address issues identified in the survey and interviews.
Because all of the recommendations are operational practices that are within the discretion of the Board, the recommendations do not need to be formally adopted. The Working Group also recommends that another group or the Board as a whole convene to engage in a broader discussion of the role of contemporary university governing boards and whether this Board’s structure is appropriate for meeting the strategic priorities of the University and challenges facing higher education.
Excerpts:
The Working Group recommends the following actions that can be implemented immediately at the Board’s discretion:
1. The Board review committee/meeting structure at either a retreat or Governance Committee meetings or form another working group or subcommittee to examine the role of the Board and its strategic priorities.
2. The Board make greater use of subcommittees, special committees or working groups to improve efficiency.
3. Regents identify a mechanism to communicate across committees, perhaps off-cycle Governance Committee meetings to facilitate communication between committee chairs.
4. Committee chairs and vice chairs should play active roles in shaping their committees’ agendas.
5. The connection between the UC strategic plan and the role of the Board should be included as part of new Regent orientation
==========
Special Committee on Basic Needs
Apart from the items below, the report recommends measures to enroll students in need in the CalFresh program, the state's name for the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP ("food stamps"). In the short term, there was also note taken of the need to assist some students with internet access during the coronavirus crisis.
Excerpts:
Executive Summary:
This action item presents recommendations regarding the issuance of the Special Committee on Basic Needs’ report (Attachment 1) and outlines the purpose of the report, the report’s contents, and additions to the report since September. Developed throughout its two years of meeting, the report represents the Special Committee’s conclusions about student basic needs and vetted solutions to successfully reduce basic needs insecurity at the University and beyond.
Recommendations:
The Special Committee on Basic Needs recommends that A) The Regents accept the report of the Special Committee, The University of California’s Next Phase of Improving Student Basic Needs, and B) An annual report on basic needs be presented to the Academic and Student Affairs Committee beginning in 2021...
The report establishes that the University will present an update on student basic needs at UC to the Academic and Student Affairs Committee at least once a year beginning in 2021. Consistent with its Charter, the Special Committee on Basic Needs shall sunset after this meeting.
==========
The full board met (again) after the two committees above. An important element was approval of the budget ask from the state for the next fiscal year (2021-22). As the chart below shows, UC is asking for over $500 million from legislature and governor to make up for the cut this year and more. We noted in an earlier post on the state budget outlook that for various reasons - mostly more state revenue than anticipated flowing in despite the coronavirus crisis - the legislature will have what the Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO) describes as a "windfall." So UC has a reasonable shot in asking at least for some kind of backfill for the cuts this year. In addition, it is asking for $250 million in what are termed climate-focused deferred maintenance projects (not shown on the chart). Whether it gets all that it asks for is another matter. Regent Cohen - a former state budget director - called the budget ask a "wishlist."
 |
| Click on chart to clarify and enlarge. |
The full board also approved temporary changes in the retirement system to shield UC employees who might be affected by furloughs and temporary layoffs from reductions in pension and retiree health care.
==========
Below are audio links to the sessions:
Initial Full Board:
https://archive.org/details/2-regents-board-11-19-20/2-regents+-+Board+11-19-20.mp3
(Faculty grievance starts at about minute 55.)
===
Governance, Basic Needs, second session of the full board:
==========
*http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2020/11/the-state-budget-outlook.html
No comments:
Post a Comment