Watch the Regents Meeting of March 18, 2021

The Regents as a full board met last Thursday in the second day of its meetings. A link to the video is below. During public comments, references were made to green energy on campus, staff pay, meat production, nurse staffing, Election Day as a holiday, labor relations for lecturers, UC-San Francisco construction, fetal tissue, staffing of pre-K school, Hawaii telescope, labor relations for skilled trades, paid leave for coronavirus situations, and labor relations for certain administrators.

The Daily Cal describes other discussion:

...Following public comment, the regents heard a report on “Beyond Economic Impact: Understanding Societal Impacts and Public Value of a UC Degree,” presented by UC Vice President of Institutional Research and Academic Planning Pamela Brown.

The report found that UC campuses substantially impact the California economy. For every dollar the UC system receives in state support, it generates $21.04 in economic output, and overall, the UC generated approximately $82 billion in economic activity per year, according to the report. The UC system is also the third-largest employer in the state, providing one in 45 jobs in California.

The report also found that the UC system advances intergenerational mobility, as the majority of UC Pell Grant recipients go on to earn more than their parents within five years, and the majority of first-generation students do so in seven years. Brown added that UC graduates donate to charity at more than double the national average and are more likely to vote than other similarly-aged California residents.

“Beyond the knowledge produced by the university and the knowledge it disseminates, there is more to a great public university’s impact than merely — or even exclusively — economic measures,” said Michael Brown, UC provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, during the meeting. “It represents a shared, collective and tangible sense of hope and opportunity — that is what is embedded in the California dream.”

The regents then heard about the impact of COVID-19 on the UC health system in a presentation by Carrie Byington, executive vice president of UC Health. According to Byington, there was an “enormous” surge in January that peaked at 806 inpatients in the UC health system, which has since fallen to 178, similar to the numbers from last summer. Byington added that due to vaccinations, there is now herd immunity amongst UC health care workers, with 85% fully vaccinated and the number of positive tests under 1%. “This March marks the one-year anniversary of the pandemic across the United States,” Byington said during the meeting. “As of March 2021, we are in a much more hopeful place than we were in March 2020.”

Full story at https://www.dailycal.org/2021/03/18/uc-board-of-regents-discusses-value-of-uc-degrees-covid-19-in-uc-health-system/

You can see the March 18 meeting at https://archive.org/details/board-3-18-21.