Yesterday, we posted about the Regents' off-cycle meeting on June 15th of the Health Services Committee. Today, we report on the meeting of the Regents' Innovation Transfer and Entrepreneurship special committee which met the next day.
Unlike the Health Services Committee, there was no announcement that future meetings would be entirely in-person with all members and guest speakers required to attend. This meeting was definitely hybrid with some in the room and others on Zoom. There were no public comments, perhaps because anyone who wanted to speak did so the day before.
Yours truly should note that this committee is peculiar. Its task seems to be to oversee a transfer of responsibility for dealing with patents and potentially-commercial technology at UC from UCOP to the campuses. That process seems to be something that a board such as the Regents would normally leave to the UC president to handle. Put less gently, it seems to be micromanagement on the part of the Regents. In any case, the new goal seems to be more responsibility at the campus level with UCOP left with patent tracking and administration, i.e., seeing that royalties are paid, seeing that the terms of licensing agreements are carried out, etc. The patent tracking function involves developing a new computer system, and you can see why the Regents might be nervous about that, given the UCPath fiasco and other matters related to building new computer systems. Still, all the Regents can do is ask "how is it going" to which UCOP says "it is moving along." (Not in those words, of course.)
The committee uses "entrepreneurial" and "commercialization" more or less interchangeably. But the big opportunities for money-making come primarily from medical schools, engineering schools, and some of the sciences. So what happens to the arts, humanities, and social sciences? There is discussion of technology applied in those fields at the committee. But it seems disconnected from the role of the committee. At the meeting of June 16th, there was discussion of technology applied in the library system. So, yes, we don't have card files nowadays and a lot of stuff is online. But there really isn't entrepreneurial activity in the commercial sense arising from such changes. One of the Regents asked if students still use the library in the sense of entering the building and going to the stacks. The response was that there are lots of students in the building - but they are using it as a study hall. (Yours truly might note that the UCLA main library installed a coffee shop inside.)
The Regents asked if the Academic Senate's criteria for promotion and tenure need to be revised to recognize entrepreneurship. Apparently, the Senate came back and said "no," it can be recognized under existing criteria. The Regents seem to have accepted that response, but want some additional program of "recognition" for entrepreneurship. So, again, the problem of potentially disadvantaging faculty in the arts, humanities, and social sciences arises.
There was also some discussion of whether Regental funds (pension, endowment) could be invested in UC-related entrepreneurship. It was said that the Chief Investment Officer regards such internal investment as risky and thus has limited interest.
In short, if you watch the committee, you will see lots of enthusiasm from the Regent-members although the raison d'être for the existence of the committee is unclear. As always, yours truly preserves the recordings of the committee indefinitely since the Regents delete their recordings for no particular reason after one year.
You can find the June 16th meeting at the links below:
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