Watch the Dec. 16, 2021 Meeting of the Regents' Special Committee on Innovation Transfer & Entrepreneurship

The Regents' Special Committee on Innovation Transfer and Entrepreneurship met last Thursday, the last regental meeting of the calendar year, and the day after the Health Services Committee meeting which we have previously reviewed.* As always, we preserve recordings of these meetings indefinitely since the Regents "archive" them for only one year.

The Innovation Transfer and Entrepreneurship committee was set up to encourage research from UC to be translated into commercial activities, and for the university to benefit therefrom. It would also probably say it wanted general benefits from UC research to flow into the public realm, even if non-commercial. My guess is that some faculty would be uncomfortable with the micro-level focus of the committee which seems to be rewriting parts of the APM (Academic Personnel Manual) dealing with such matters as tenure criteria, leaves of absence (to pursue entrepreneurial endeavors), and conflict-of-interest rules. 

In the past, as we have noted, there has been a sense of regents talking to themselves in this committee.** There has been an Academic Senate presence in what is happening - the chair and vice chair of the Academic Council are present at the meetings. But my sense is that a train is rolling along on which they are passengers, not the engine drivers. I am not saying Bad Things are happening or being decided; indeed, one can certainly argue that innovation and entrepreneurship are Good Things to be encouraged. What I am saying is simply that it is unclear that true faculty input will occur until the train has already reached its destination. There is already a glossy report with 13 recommendations, some of which involve the APM, and others of which deal with administrative/managerial matters such as the tracking of UC patents.*** That reports dates back to May of this year, so things are clearly rolling along.

That's just one observer's view. You can see the meeting for yourself and make your own judgment. The most relevant segment of the meeting begins at about hour 1, minute 19, and continues for approximately 3 hours until the end of the meeting. Note that you can speed up the playback of the recording, if you want to spend less time. The recording is quite understandable at 1.5x speed. 

By the way, it should not be assumed that the issues here apply (affect) only the STEM fields. In fact, a significant segment of the meeting was devoted to arts and humanities. (Social science was mentioned but not really featured.)

You can watch the meeting at https://archive.org/details/regents-innovation-transfer-and-entrepreneurship-12-16-21.

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*http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2021/12/watch-regents-health-services-committee.html 

**http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2021/10/watch-regents-special-committee-on.html

***https://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/may21/g1attach.pdf