I Never Promised You a Rose Bowl? - Part 13 (ex-CFO edition)

There is fallout from l'affaire Agostini in the athletic sphere, according to the NY Post:

UCLA Chief Financial Officer Stephen Agostini, one of the principal drivers of the school’s proposed move from the Rose Bowl to SoFi Stadium, is out in what amounts to a huge blow for the Bruins athletic department. Agostini’s immediate departure was announced Tuesday in a memo from UCLA chancellor Julio Frenk to faculty and staff...

Full story at https://nypost.com/2026/02/17/sports/stephen-agostini-fired-as-ucla-cfo/.

So, what happens to the ongoing litigation about the move to SoFi stadium?

A Defensive Fund?

From the Daily Bruin: UC faculty are proposing the creation of a multi-billion-dollar fund to support UC researchers in the wake of the federal funding suspension to UCLA. The proposal, known as the California Futures Fund, envisions a state-level, pooled fund designed to support UC research, teaching and community service, according to a press release from the Save Our Science Initiative. The fund, which UC faculty rallied in support of at the California State Capitol on Aug. 18, would ensure the safety of the UC from ”federal attacks” and promote long-term stability, representatives from the initiative added in the press release. 

Advocates of the CFF suggest that in the short term, funding for the CFF could come from the UC by leveraging its endowment, as well as the UC Blue and Gold fund, said Anna Markowitz, the president of the UCLA Faculty Association, in a written statement. She added that a new source of funding would likely be needed in the long term...

Full story at https://dailybruin.com/2025/08/30/uc-faculty-propose-multi-billion-dollar-fund-in-response-to-federal-funding-freeze.

Election Results

Message from the UCLA Faculty Assn. Election Committee:

The following four candidates were elected to terms that run through June 30, 2026:

Liz Koslov, Urban Planning

Mia McIver, Writing Programs

Raphael Rouquier, Math

Noah Zatz, Law

--

The following five candidates were elected to terms that run through June 30, 2027:

Michael Chwe, Poli Sci

Miloš Jovanović, History

Robin D. G. Kelley, History

Anna Markowitz, SEIS

Susan Slyomovics, Anthropology

--

This concludes our work as a committee.

The UCLA-FA Elections Committee,

Choon Hwee Koh, George Dutton and Toby Higbie.

Things to Consider

Anyone who reads the news will be aware of the difficult climate that higher education institutions are likely to be facing in the future, given political realities. Although UC resides in a so-called blue state, it will not be exempt from such pressures. Indeed, it may be more of a target precisely because of its location. Moreover, the use of technology in instruction, broadly defined and uncertain as to future developments, raises some unique issues for faculty welfare, as do immediate concerns about the cost of living in the LA area. 

At UCLA, there has long been a north campus/south campus divide as well as a professional school/general education divide. Involved here are standards of evaluation and promotion for faculty and differing remuneration systems and labor market conditions. The various Academic Senate mechanisms that have evolved attempt to deal with these divides. (I speak as a former chair of CAP, the Senate committee that reviews all promotions, tenure hires, etc., across these divides.) But there are budgetary and other pressures that are likely to widen the divisions.

Political pressures at the state level are pushing for ever-increasing undergraduate enrollments. The legislature is sensitive to complaints from constituents about why their kids didn't get into the UC of their choice. They know there is a prestige associated with UC admission. But what produces that prestige is not large enrollments but research. That contradiction is not well understood in the political world. Administrators, pressed to make larger enrollments happen, look to the above-mentioned technology to make it possible. They also increasingly seek to rely on cheaper "temps" - nontenured instructors and graduate assistants - to accommodate more students. 

But since the unionization and major strike of grad students, these substitute instructors are not as cheap as they once were. So teaching via technology becomes the default fix. And with technology comes questions about who owns the "intellectual property" of recorded lectures, for example. Is it the faculty member who produced them? Or the university as employer? Note that Regents often come from the private sector where if you make something for your employer, the employer owns it.

These forces are the long-run, and maybe not-so-long-run, realities that will be affecting faculty welfare in the future. For junior faculty there are immediate issues such as the high cost of childcare and - at UCLA - the ability to access the primary and secondary schools run by the university. At UCLA, the high cost of housing is a major issue in recruitment. (And the current wildfires - by taking much property off the market - will aggravate the cost of the remaining housing stock.) What kind of housing assistance will be available?

As members of the Faculty Association will know, there is currently an election going on for board members. This blog obviously takes no position on individual candidates. But we do suggest that voters consider the issues raised above in making their selections. Who will best address the coming and present challenges facing faculty welfare? Since the Academic Senate has tended to be the forum in which such challenges are handled by faculty - both at the campus and systemwide levels - who will serve on Senate committees, such as Faculty Welfare, despite the time commitments involved? Who will keep up with nitty-gritty issues such as the cost of UC-provided health insurance or the funding of the pension system?

Dealing with the issues above focuses on concerns that unite faculty.

False Positives

No one wants their email to be filled with spam. But it is possible for spam blockers to identify messages as spam, even when they are not, especially messages sent to multiple persons.

Yours truly has noted that various notifications from the UCLA Faculty Club are being blocked by at least one UCLA department's IT system. Even when he tells the blocking program to release the messages, they often aren't released.

It seems likely that in order to block what may be malicious or fraudulent messages, messages that are desired are being lost. Unlike the past, where messages identified as spam can still be read in a spam folder, the new filters simply make them inaccessible. Below is an example from the Faculty Club.

Although it appears one can tell the blocker to permit such messages to come through (or just release them), it somehow doesn't necessarily happen. What actually occurs when you try those options is that a message comes saying "Your message has been processed; It will be delivered to your inbox if it passes security checks." And then nothing happens.

And PS, it happens to messages from the UCLA Faculty Association:

New Coach

UCLA has hired former associated head coach and running backs coach DeShaun Foster to become the Bruins’ next head coach. Foster will return to his alma mater after briefly being hired away from Westwood to become the running backs coach for the Las Vegas Raiders...

The former All-American started his coaching career in 2012 as a student assistant before he was promoted to graduate assistant in 2014 and the director of player development and high school relations in 2015. Foster spent the 2016 season on Kliff Kingsbury’s staff at Texas Tech, where he had his first opportunity as a running backs coach. He would return to Westwood in 2017 as the running backs coach. Chip Kelly promoted Foster to associate head football coach after helping churn out NFL quality running backs...

Full story at https://www.dailynews.com/2024/02/12/deshaun-foster-named-as-uclas-new-football-coach/.

As we noted on Friday, this turnover is occurring just as UCLA switches athletic conferences with all the attendant logistical and other problems:

https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2024/02/kelly-to-depart.html.

Rising UC Health Insurance Costs for 2024

Letter from Council of UC Faculty Associations to UC President Michael Drake and the UC Regents objecting to healthcare benefit costs to employees increasing by 22% to 193%, depending on plan and coverage.

President Michael V. Drake

Office of the President

University of California

1111 Franklin St., 12th Floor

Oakland, CA 94607

Delivered via Email to: president@ucop.edu

Dear President Drake,

Starting today, every UC employee received an Open Enrollment notice with new rates for healthcare benefits. UCOP presented these changes to UC Unions and the Council of UC Faculty Associations just three days before the start of Open Enrollment, leaving no opportunity for any input.

The increases in the employee health benefits share are unprecedented and alarming. Costs for healthcare benefits will be going up between 22% and 193% per month, depending on one’s plan and coverage. For example, if you currently pay for Kaiser for yourself and your spouse/partner, your cost will increase by 74% on January 1. Employees who insure themselves and their whole family (spouse/partner + children) through UC Health Savings Plan will see an increase of 171%. Every health benefit plan and coverage tier is affected, and these changes will impact the over 200,000 employees who receive benefits in the UC system.

Struck by the exorbitant increases, the UC unions and CUCFA pressed for answers. UCOP representatives cited inflation, deferred preventative care during the pandemic, rising drug costs, and clinical workforce shortages as root causes for these price increases. While these are all real issues impacting healthcare costs everywhere, when pushed for details about how prices were negotiated and set for UC employees, UCOP’s answers were unsatisfactory and lacked transparency.

For example, the cost to employees is determined by the insurance company rate increase less the employer share contribution. UC did not provide information about either the rate increase or the employer contribution, so there is no way to tell if UC is paying its share of the increased cost. But other sources indicate that Kaiser’s rate increase was probably about 15% this year[1], which would mean that UC reduced its share of contributions by about 20%.

We object to these unreasonable increases in our health benefit costs and UC’s secrecy and nontransparency in devising and announcing these policies. Your approach serves not only to degrade and disrespect UC’s academic employees but also contributes to the ongoing severe erosion of UC’s teaching and research mission. You will be hearing more from CUCFA, the UC unions, and the 200,000 people in the UC community who are now learning about how their lives and livelihoods will be devastated by the poorly warranted policy changes to our healthcare that UCOP has sprung on them.

Sincerely,

Constance Penley

President, The Council of UC Faculty Associations

Professor, Film and Media Studies, UCSB

===

cc: The UC Regents

===

Source: https://cucfa.org/2023/10/objection-to-unreasonable-increases-in-health-benefit-costs/.

===

PS from this blog: UC retirees under the various UC health plans also received notice of significant rate increases for 2024. It might be noted that the Medicare Choice (Medicare Advantage) option for retirees has particularly large increases. (Medicare Advantage is the privatized version of Medicare which now has more than half of all Medicare participants enrolled.

Student-Worker Strike Repercussions - Part 3

The LA Times very recently carried a lengthy article about UC's budgetary response to the added labor costs of the student-worker strike settlement. Excerpts from the article:

Just weeks after the University of California and academic workers heralded historic wage gains in new labor contracts, the question of how to pay for them is roiling campuses as they scramble to identify money, consider cutbacks in graduate student admissions and fear deficits. 

The full financial costs of the labor settlements between UC and 48,000 academic workers who help power the system’s vaunted teaching and research engine are still being tallied. But preliminary estimates have dealt a “financial shock to the system,” said Rosemarie Rae, UC Berkeley chief financial officer. The UC Office of the President estimates the increased costs for salary, benefits and tuition systemwide will be between $500 million and $570 million over the life of the contracts...

Overall, the costs take in pay increases of 20% to 80% depending on the workers — teaching assistants, tutors, researchers and postdoctoral scholars — and are among the highest ever granted to such university employees in the nation. “It’s a huge number,” UC Board of Regents Chair Rich Leib said of the costs. “I think it was a good agreement and I’m happy with that. But there are ramifications..."

  

Funding the raises could touch off far-reaching changes to UC’s traditional model of graduate student education, including potential reductions in teaching assistants and researchers. Decreasing their numbers could have a cascading effect by narrowing the pipeline for future faculty and industry innovators, affecting UC research output and diluting the learning experience of undergraduates with potentially larger class sizes and less personalized instruction...

So far, UC has not sent campuses any systemwide game plan to handle the raises — fueling frustration among many faculty that they’ll be left to figure out solutions using their own funds to pay for labor negotiations they say they had little if any opportunity to help shape...

Full story at https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-01-27/uc-scrambling-to-pay-big-wage-gains-for-academic-workers-grad-student-cuts-loom.

Whether the state might come up with more money is uncertain, since the governor has already signaled caution and cutbacks for 2023-24 in his January budget message. Moreover, there is the multiyear "compact" which UC has already praised the governor for continuing (even though - as we have pointed out in past postings - total nominal dollars slated for UC are being reduced). UC has said it will be seeking more from the legislature for infrastructure. But infrastructure funding has nothing to do with ongoing labor costs, although in the long run, acquisition of more affordable student housing might help.

One reaction has been an open letter from many faculty at UCLA addressed to UCOP:

We, the undersigned members of the UCLA community, stand firmly against any move on the part of the UC Office of the President (UCOP) and UCLA administration to impose the costs of UAW-ratified contracts on the already strained finances of departments, research centers, and faculty. The result would be a diminished quality of research and education for undergraduates and graduates alike. We urge UCLA leadership, UCOP, the California legislature, Governor Newsom, and federal granting agencies to recommit to fully funding public higher education.

On December 23rd, 2022, UAW members across the UC system ratified contracts with much-needed and significantly increased pay and benefits, including childcare subsidies, increased access to healthcare, family leave, and transit benefits. These overdue contracts improve the lives of UAW members—our students and postdocs—who have long endured inadequate pay and benefits. Despite numerous warnings by public education advocates, the UC system has enjoyed these lowered labor costs for decades, and is only now facing the question of how to pay for these much-needed improvements.

Early indications across the UCLA campus suggest the university will seek to impose these costs on departments, research centers, and faculty PIs, leading to a reduction of graduate student appointments; an increase in the already high number of undergraduates per discussion section, and a correspondingly negative impact on course curriculum, undergraduate assignments, and grading; the weakening of currently funded research; and ultimately fewer funded research opportunities for graduate students. TA and GSR appointments are central components of funding for graduate students, and both are central inputs into the research and educational work of the institution.

Increasing pay will address the long-term issue of making the UC more competitive with other universities in graduate student recruitment, but without additional funding to departments and units it will also significantly decrease the number of students that we can recruit and support. Given these anticipated effects, the costs of the new contracts signed by UCOP cannot be borne by departments, research centers and faculty PIs. Indeed, by pushing the costs downwards in this way, the university is both effectively canceling the gains of this historic strike and negatively impacting the research and education mission of the UC.

We refuse this divide-and-conquer tactic and stand alongside our undergraduate and graduate students, department chairs, and deans, in insisting on a funding model that advances the UC system’s fundamental mission of education and research. We refuse the imposition of unilateral, punitive austerity as the university’s response to a strike by academic workers against poverty wages.

We know the UC system has funds at its disposal and can work to raise additional public funds at both the state and federal levels to cover the costs of the new UAW contracts. Mere days after the strike ended, the UC system invested $4 billion of endowment money with private equity giant Blackstone Inc.& Instead, the UC should invest in the research and education mission of the university. UC leadership must not only reallocate investment funds and administrative budgets but also robustly appeal to state legislators and federal grant agencies for larger budget appropriation. At UCLA, we expect to see a budget and planning process that allocates funds to the central missions of teaching and research and underwrites the short-term and long-term costs of the improved contract. The strike, which has been the largest academic labor action in US history, has highlighted the urgent need to reprioritize educational goals above financial goals.

We intend to take our concerns to the Academic Senate, the Council of UC Faculty Associations, the UC Regents, the California Governor and legislature, and the media. We do so to advocate for public education and to stand with our undergraduate and graduate students, and junior colleagues as we all work hard to carry out that mission.

Source: https://chwe.net/fullyfund/. Signatures can be added at this link.

===

*Note: It's unclear from what funds the Blackstone investment comes. Yours truly was told that a large portion came from the pension plan; pension dollars cannot be used to pay current wages. There are other issues related to the Blackstone matter which we have discussed in prior posts.

===

Finally, it might be noted that the legislature has been heavily focused on undergraduates due to pressures from parents anxious that their kids get into the UC of their choice. Graduate students and research generally have been of lesser concern as a political matter. This situation is a paradox since the reason UC campuses are prestigious - and that parents want their kids to get into UC - stems from the research and graduate education side. That reality was recognized by the old Master Plan which created a division of labor between the three segments, with UC focused on research and graduate education. If you just want to "process" lots of undergraduates at low cost, community colleges and CSU should be your choice. But that fact is not well understood by parents (voters) and legislators respond to constituents. 

Getting politicians heavily involved in the operations of UC has risks. For example, the state auditor has not been particularly friendly to UC. There could be hard looks at the micro level about faculty workloads, smaller departments, and other matters. We already see this trend with the governor and his compact, which has all kinds of detailed goals set for UC embedded in the budget. So, we have one of those be-careful-what-you-wish-for situations potentially developing.

It is also important to recognize - particularly at UC campuses with med schools - the differences between faculty in different areas. Most of the letter signers - not all! - come from north campus departments. The big buck research grants that pay for student researchers, post-docs, etc., come from south campus. Research grants, with limited exceptions, don't come from the state, but are competitively obtained from federal government agencies and other private sources.

Strike News: Additional Developments - Part 12 - IT'S OVER!

The student-worker strike is now officially over after the ratification vote that took place this week. From the LA Times:

University of California graduate student workers on Friday ratified a new labor agreement with big wage gains, support for child care and new protections against bullying and harassment, ending a historic strike that upended fall term finals and has reverberated nationally. In separate votes, two bargaining units of United Auto Workers approved the tentative agreement reached last week with the 10-campus university system — six weeks after 48,000 teaching assistants, tutors, researchers and postdoctoral scholars collectively walked off their jobs in the nation’s largest strike of academic workers.

SRU-UAW’s 17,000 graduate student researchers backed the agreement with 68.4% on a vote of 10,057 to 4,640, securing their first UC contract after forming a union last year. UAW 2865, which represents 19,000 teaching assistants, tutors and other student academic workers, approved the agreement with 61.6% of the votes, 11,386 to 7,097...

Full story at https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-12-23/uc-grad-student-workers-ratify-labor-agreement-end-historic-strike-with-big-wage-gains.

Note that these figures indicate a participation rate in the voting of about 92%.

The official announcement from UC reads in part:

Graduate student researchers and academic student workers at the University of California voted this week to approve new contracts, ending their six-week strike today (Dec. 23). Under the terms of the new contracts, these workers will be among the best supported in public higher education in the country. 

“The University of California welcomes the ratification of these agreements with our valued graduate student employees. The University believed that the assistance of a third-party mediator would help the parties reach agreement, which is why we are so grateful that the union accepted our invitation to mediation and partnered with us in selecting Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg to serve as the mediator,” said Letitia Silas, executive director of systemwide labor relations. “As a result of this collaboration, the parties were ultimately able to reach tentative agreements on the contracts as a whole in just a few days following months of negotiations. The University of California has negotiated several fair labor agreements over the last year with our represented employees. Today’s ratification demonstrates yet again the University’s strong commitment to providing every one of our hardworking employees with competitive compensation and benefit packages that honor their many contributions to our institution, to our community, and to the state of California.”

The new contracts go into effect immediately and will be in place through May 31, 2025...

Full news release at https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/press-room/university-california-graduate-student-workers-end-strike-ratify-three-year-contracts.

Events such as the strike have repercussions. Yours truly has been told that there has been renewed interest in faculty representation. You can join the UCLA Faculty Association at https://uclafa.org/join/. Note that state labor law - following private sector labor law - protects all forms of concerted activity, even apart from formal collective bargaining. Advocacy by faculty groups on behalf of faculty is legally protected. In addition, the longstanding issue of having a faculty regent rather than just an Academic Senate representative also may be raised. 

As we have noted in prior posts, the Regents at recent meetings generally avoided mention of the strike, particularly when informed of the dollar costs of the original demands by the UC president, estimates that were not out of line with numbers from the union side. At the forthcoming January meetings, there may be a fuller discussion of the costs of the actual settlement, particularly because the governor's budget will be out in early January. The governor was apparently instrumental in having Sacramento Mayor Steinberg act as mediator. What he may have said to Steinberg about the state budget outlook for UC is, of course, unknown. It is doubtful, however, that he suggested that the budget for 2023-24 would be bountiful, given the uncertain economic outlook.

The budgetary costs of the strike settlement fall both on the state portion of the UC budget and on funding coming from research grants raised by faculty, particularly on campuses such as UCLA with medical schools. Grant funding does not automatically adjust to higher salary costs. In addition, delays in meeting timelines specified within such grants that the strike may have caused can be problematic for faculty with major grants. In short, the impact of the strike has what might loosely be described as a north campus/south campus divide.

Unlike the previous settlement with postdocs and researchers, the vote in favor of ratification was not overwhelming. There are significant minorities within both local unions who feel the settlement was inadequate. Thus, frictions within the unions may have internal political consequences.

Finally, faculty pay increases in the coming academic and fiscal year will inevitably be compared with increases achieved for student workers by the strike as well as the general rates of inflation. The bottom line is that the strike and its settlement will have ongoing repercussions.

===

*http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2022/11/student-worker-strike-drags-on.html.

===

To hear the text above, click on the link below:

https://ia601402.us.archive.org/25/items/big-ten/end%20of%20strike.mp3

Stuff Happens (and is happening) - Part 2

From the LA Daily News: The basketball teams at UCLA won’t be returning to the court any time soon. The men’s basketball team had its Wednesday nonconference game against Cal Poly canceled Saturday due to the COVID-19 protocols within the Bruins’ program. It’s the third consecutive game canceled for the fourth-ranked Bruins after games with Alabama State on Wednesday at Pauley Pavilion and North Carolina on Saturday in Las Vegas were recently called off. The game with Cal Poly will not be rescheduled. “UCLA’s team-related activities have been paused, and the status of future games is to be determined,” a UCLA release said.

The women’s basketball team, which had to cancel Thursday’s game against Texas Southern due to COVID-19 protocols within the Bruins’ program, announced that home games against Ohio State on Sunday and Cal State Bakersfield on Tuesday won’t be played either. The next game on the men’s team’s schedule naturally becomes a question, which is a Pac-12 game against No. 8 Arizona on Dec. 30 at Pauley Pavilion. The women’s team has a Pac-12 game with USC scheduled for Dec. 28 at Pauley Pavilion.

COVID-19 related issues have shut down college basketball programs all over the country. Ohio State, which was supposed to take on Kentucky in the CBS Sports Classic, canceled because of positive COVID-19 results within the 15th-ranked Buckeyes’ program. Seton Hall canceled its games against Iona and St. John’s. It’s part of a growing wave of COVID-19-related sports cancellations and postponements as the pandemic surges again this winter...

Full story at https://www.dailynews.com/2021/12/18/ucla-mens-and-womens-basketball-teams-stalled-by-covid-19-protocols/.

The Blog's Back Issues: 2009-2015

Mainly on a quarterly basis, we have been making the blog available in "book" format on issuu.com and archive.org. Only the archive.org files, however, are downloadable as pdfs, and we did not start putting them up on archive.org until 2016. However, we have now gone back and uploaded the blog in pdf format from its beginning in 2009 through 2015 on archive.org. You can now access these backfiles to read and download at:

https://archive.org/details/ucla-faculty-association-blog-first-half-2015.

The blog in 2009 through 2010 is available as a single file. Thereafter, because of size limitations, the files are broken down into six-month intervals.

Note that you lose all video, audio, and animated gif elements in the pdf versions. You can always use the blog itself to find the originals with those elements. (Some old links to YouTube videos, however, are no longer valid.)

The Alternative Way to Read the Blog

At the end of each quarter, we provide an alternative book-like way of reading the blog. Of course, when you read the blog as a book, all videos, audios, and animated gifs are omitted. For those, you have to use the original postings.

In any case, here are your alternative options for the second quarter of 2021:

https://issuu.com/danieljbmitchell/docs/ucla_faculty_association_blog_2nd_quarter_2021 (read only)

https://archive.org/details/ucla-faculty-association-blog-2nd-quarter-2021 (read and/or download)

The Alternative Way to Read the Blog: First Quarter 2021

At the end of each quarter (calendar quarter, not UCLA quarter), we offer that quarter's blog posts as a book which can be read online and/or downloaded. Of course, as a book, there are no audios, videos, or animated gifts. The conversion to a book also causes some odd formatting. Two links are below:

Read only: https://issuu.com/danieljbmitchell/docs/ucla_faculty_association_blog__first_quarter_2021

Read and/or download: https://archive.org/details/ucla-faculty-association-blog-first-quarter-2021

Your Choice in Reading This Blog

As is standard practice on this blog, we give you a choice as to how to read it.

1) You can read it online, as you are now doing.

2) You can read and/or download it as a pdf file - i.e., book style - on a quarterly basis. For the third quarter of 2020 (July 1 - September 30), that option is now available. If you choose it, however, all the audios, videos, and animated gifs are omitted, although you may see links to some of them.

To choose option #2 for the third quarter of 2020, go to:

https://issuu.com/danieljbmitchell/docs/ucla_faculty_association_blog_3rd_quarter_2020 (read online as a book only)

Read and/or download as a pdf file:

https://archive.org/details/ucla-faculty-association-blog-3rd-quarter-2020

or:

https://ia801502.us.archive.org/18/items/ucla-faculty-association-blog-3rd-quarter-2020/UCLA%20Faculty%20Association%20Blog%203rd%20quarter%202020.pdf

Unfortunately, Blogger has a new format that no longer seems to permit direct embedding of book-type documents. You must use one of the links above.

Martha Banta and Edward I. Condren

Edward I. Condren

The item below from the Dept. of English was passed to me by Prof. Tobie Higbie. No photo of Prof. Banta could be found. Prof. Condren was one of the founders of the Faculty Assn. at UCLA:

Today I have to write with some sad news that is unrelated to the more general loss that surrounds because of the pandemic. Martha Banta and Edward I. Condren, emeriti of our department, both passed away on 1 April.

Martha Banta, distinguished Americanist and author of  Failure and Success in America: A Literary Debate, Imaging American Women: Idea and Ideals in Cultural History, and One True Theory and the Quest for an American Aesthetic, among many other works, suffered a severe fall earlier this year. She was hospitalized for a while for fractures and cognitive difficulties and then chose care at her home in Pasadena, where she passed away peacefully.

Edward I. Condren, a well-known medievalist, joined UCLA in 1967. His published books include Chaucer and the Energy of Creation: The Design and Organization of the Canterbury Tales, The Numerical Universe of the Gawain-Pearl Poet: Beyond Phi, and Chaucer from Prentice to Poet: The Metaphor of Love in Dream Visions and Troilus and Criseyde. He had not been in good health for a number of years and succumbed to his illness earlier this week.

We will follow up with more detailed notes on their lives and work on our website, but for the moment I simply wanted you to be aware of their passing in case you wanted to reach out to their friends or relatives.

In sadness,

Ursula K. Heise, Chair, Department of English

Read the blog for the first quarter of 2020

At the end of each quarter, we put up the blog in alternative form you can read as a book. Below are links for the first quarter of 2020, January 1 through March 31. Note that all animated gifs, audios, and videos are omitted in book format.

You can read the blog for the first quarter at the link below:

or direct to https://archive.org/details/uclafacultyassociationblogfirstquarter2020/mode/2up

You can also read the blog for the first quarter (but not download it) at:
https://issuu.com/home/published/ucla_faculty_association_blog__first_quarter_2020

Read the Blog in Book Format

At the end of each quarter, we offer readers an alternative way to read the blog for that quarter. You can read it in book format. However, reading it that way will leave out all videos, audios, and animated gif. And there are some oddities in the format that results when the blog is turned into a pdf file.

To read the past quarter of the blog (July 1 - Sept. 30, 2019) as a book, go to:


or direct to:
https://archive.org/details/uclafacultyassociationblogthirdquarter2019/page/n1

Alternative:
https://issuu.com/danieljbmitchell/docs/ucla_faculty_association_blog__third_quarter_2019

Read the Blog as a Book (from last quarter)

As we do towards the beginning of each quarter, we again make the prior quarter's blog available to those who prefer to read it in book format.

Of course, all audios, videos, and animated gifs are omitted in that version.

You can read the blog from last October 1 through December 31st at:

or at:

or download at:
https://archive.org/details/UclaFacultyAssn.Blog-4thQuarter2018

Plan B for reading this blog

There are two ways to read this blog. One is what you are doing now. But the other is to wait until the end of the quarter and flip through it through the link below. Of course, you will lose all the clever videos, audios, and animated gifs if you go the flip route.

So below is Plan B, the flip option:

The Alternative

At the end of each quarter, we provide an alternative way to read this blog as a "book." The book version entirely omits all audio, video, and animated gifs and has an odd format at various points. But it also has a table of contents. So it's your choice. The book version for April-June 2017 is below: