We resume our summaries of the Regents' various sessions from May 17-19. In earlier posts, we covered May 17 and the morning of May 18. Below is the afternoon of May 18 as summarized in the Daily Cal:
...The Academic and Student Affairs Committee began its meeting by approving amendments to the UC system’s undergraduate financial aid policy. Among the reforms included an emphasis on part-time work, rather than taking out loans, as a pathway for students to pay their cost of attendance. “I applaud these efforts in attempting to make sure that students minimize their loan debt as they graduate, because it sets the students back in life,” said UC Regent Jose Hernandez during the meeting. “It was five years before I was able to plan for buying a house, plan for retirement, all these things because I wanted to get student debt out.”
Following the action items, the committee discussed its status report on the Advancing Faculty Diversity program, or AFD. According to Vice Provost for Academic Personnel and Programs at the Office of the President Susan Carlson, 33.6% of the AFD hires made since the program’s launch were members of underrepresented groups, compared to 18.7% of total hires. She noted that all of the AFD hires brought a “demonstrated commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.” The committee also discussed how the UC system could best support first-generation college students, who make up two-fifths of the total undergraduate population.
John Matsui, the co-founder of the Biology Scholars Program, spoke on how the program avoids a “one-size-fits-all” approach on navigating UC Berkeley to encourage first-generation students to think differently about managing their success. The meeting concluded with a review of the final report produced by the Mitigating COVID-19 Impacts on Faculty Working Group. The report proposed five recommendations for UC campuses to implement and sustain over the next five years to support faculty through challenges they have faced during the pandemic. “I am really grateful that there’s been so much proactive work going into this,” said UC Regent Lark Park during the meeting. “I don’t think we thank our faculty enough for the heroism in trying to keep things together for students.”
During the Finance and Capital Strategies Committee meeting, the regents discussed projects and long range development plans for several UC campuses, the fiscal year 2022-23 UCOP budget and the UC system’s debt policy. Among the approved projects includes the Ocean Road Housing Project at UC Santa Barbara. UCSB Chancellor Henry Yang said this project would add 540 “critically needed” for-rent and for-sale units to faculty and staff. UC Regent Richard Leib emphasized the need to put “conditions on the development regarding affordability” as negotiations continue. UC Davis Chancellor Gary May presented the proposed Sacramento Ambulatory Surgery Center, or SASC, advocating that the development would address a shortage of operating surgery capacity.
“The project will meet four primary objectives for us: moving outpatient surgical cases from the main hospital to free up inpatient resources, enhancing ambulatory surgery capacity to accommodate existing demand and expected growth, enabling expansion of complex surgical lines and therapies and, finally, enhancing patient experience,” May said during the meeting.
David Lubarsky, vice chancellor of human health services and chief executive officer of UC Davis Health, said construction on the 262,000-square-foot center will begin in October and is scheduled to open in March 2025. According to Lubarsky, the center will consist of 12 major operating rooms, five minor procedure rooms, 60 prep recovery bays, a 23-hour stay unit and seven outpatient clinics. For the Kresge College Non-Academic project at UC Santa Cruz, which seeks to upgrade and provide more campus housing, Chancellor Cynthia Larive requested from the regents an additional $28.5 million, which is 14% of the current project budget.
UC San Francisco Chancellor Sam Hawgood sought the regents’ approval for a new 875,000-square-foot hospital at the UCSF Helen Diller Medical Center, the renovation of existing space and the demolition of the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute to make way for the new hospital. The budget for the new hospital and the renovations is over $4 billion. “My hope … is that we find ways to even make a fraction of that investment in places like Merced or Riverside that desperately need the same kind of medical support,” said UC Regent Eloy Ortiz Oakley during the meeting.
Pradeep Khosla, chancellor at UC San Diego, provided updates on rental rates for the Pepper Canyon West Housing project, noting that its rates were 33% below market within a three-mile radius of campus and 25% below market for all neighborhoods.
UCOP’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2022-23 is $1.035 billion, a 2.9% increase from the previous year. This change is due to the systemwide program investments, in order to enhance the pension administration system and the Retirement Administration Service Center. “This budget proposal is fiscally conservative and reflects the priorities of UCOP and the campuses,” said UC Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Rachael Nava during the meeting.
===
Editorial Note: There was a consent item in the agenda of Finance and Capital Strategies that involved a line of credit for telescopes on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. It was stated that this item had nothing to do with the proposed Thirty-Meter Telescope about which there has been controversy and referred only to the existing telescopes. An example was given of having an ability to spend in the event of a federal government shutdown.
===
The regents rounded out the day with the Governance Committee addressing the future of in-person meetings amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Leib said it is important for certain people, particularly those making presentations, to be physically present at board meetings. He noted how presenting over Zoom can become “awkward” and make it difficult for the audience to interact or start discussions. “People should be here unless they’re not central to the discussion,” Leib said during the meeting. “Sitting here, listening to people make full presentations and they’re doing it on Zoom, is just not the right way to go.”
While other regents agreed with Leib, UC Regent Jonathan Sures raised the question of what would happen in the case of another wave of COVID-19 cases. Drake responded and noted that any policy would take the pandemic into consideration. Committee members then turned to the topic of attendance for regents and advisors. Leib said there should be an expectation for regents to attend meetings in person unless they had a clear medical excuse. “If someone is just not interested in coming because of concerns of COVID but they’re not suffering from COVID or anything like that, it seems to me we should try to have people here,” Leib said during the meeting.
Full story at https://www.dailycal.org/2022/05/19/uc-board-of-regents-talks-budget-financial-aid-diversity-in-2nd-day-of-meetings/.
As always, we preserve the Regents' sessions indefinitely since the Regents delete their recordings - for no apparent reason - after one year. The links are below:
Full afternoon session: https://archive.org/details/academic-and-student-affairs-committee
Academic & Student Affairs: https://archive.org/details/academic-and-student-affairs-committee/Academic+and+Student+Affairs+Committee.mp4
Finance & Capital Strategies: https://archive.org/details/academic-and-student-affairs-committee/Finance+and+Capital+Strategies+Committee.mp4
Governance: https://archive.org/details/academic-and-student-affairs-committee/Governance+Committee.mp4
No comments:
Post a Comment