The program began with public comments dealing with student research union recognition, Teamster negotiations issues, UC policing budget, affordable student housing, climate change, nurse working conditions, the UC-Santa Barbara proposed Munger dorm, and the Hawaiian telescope. The Daily Cal picks up the rest:
...UC President Michael Drake... addressed the meeting. He first congratulated the 2021 UC-affiliated Nobel Prize laureates — David Julius, UCLA alumnus Ardem Patapoutian, UC Berkeley economics professor David Card and UC Irvine alumnus David MacMillan. Next, Drake shared with the board that the university reached a tentative agreement with UC-AFT for “more job security and other important benefits.”
“This is a very positive development for our entire community, especially the students that we serve,” Drake said during the meeting. “This contract honors the vital role our lecturers play in supporting UC’s educational mission in delivering high-quality education.”
Drake then updated the Board on the Capacity Working Group, composed of himself and the 10 UC chancellors, which has set a goal of adding 20,000 undergraduate and graduate students by 2030. This increased enrollment will happen on campuses with the physical capacity to grow, Drake added.
During the Public Engagement and Development Committee meeting, the regents discussed efforts to increase financial assistance for students. The university and the UC Student Association have developed a campaign calling on Congress to double the Pell Grant by 2024-25, according to UC Associate Vice President for Federal Governmental Relations Chris Harrington. “Debt-free doesn’t mean free, but means that we give students the tools to have enough money for what they need and to graduate debt-free,” said Sen. John Laird during the meeting.
The Office of Ethics, Compliance and Audit Services, or ECAS, also presented its annual report to the regents. Notably, the overwhelming majority of complaints put forth by UC employees this year were made through the whistleblower hotline, which offers 24-hour service and optional anonymity, said Alexander Bustamante, chief compliance and audit officer for ECAS. The report also covered systemwide rates of completion for mandatory faculty and staff trainings regarding cybersecurity, sexual harassment and conflicts of interest in research. The cybersecurity awareness training, with a completion rate of 78%, was of particular interest to board member John Pérez. “Every time we have had significant cyber events, there were human deficiencies,” Pérez said during the meeting. He noted his interest in a report examining how successful UC has been in actually changing human behavior related to cybersecurity rather than simply measuring how many employees viewed the trainings.
At the meeting, the Academic and Student Affairs Committee discussed plans to increase participation in the Eligibility in the Local Context, or ELC, program among California high Schools. This program allows for high school students to be admitted to the UC system based on their performance relative to the students in their own school, rather than in comparison to students on a statewide scale. UC Provost Michael Brown described ELC as a “critical tool for the university to broaden its geographical diversity of the undergraduate entering class.”
According to Brown, in fall 2020, 40% of the university’s admitted class was admitted through the ELC program and 7% of the class was only eligible for admission due to ELC. The committee also discussed the UC initiative to ‘grow our own,’ which aims to increase and diversify the pathways available for UC students to go on to work in roles as researchers and professors within the UC system. “The University of California at this time has a generational opportunity to advance educational diversity,” Brown said during the meeting.
UC Merced Executive Vice Chancellor Gregg Camfield highlighted ways UC campuses can increase diversity in their programs, including mentorship programs and providing stipends for research. Camfield explained that low-income students are often left out of research opportunities as they are in need of money, while students from higher-income backgrounds are able to access unpaid research opportunities without the same stress or concerns of their peers...
Full story at https://www.dailycal.org/2021/11/17/uc-regents-approve-2022-2023-budget-discuss-diversity-initiatives/.
You can watch the meetings at the links below:
Morning session:
https://archive.org/details/regents-board-compliance-and-audit-committee-11-17-21
Board and Compliance and Audit:
Public Engagement and Development:
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