UC-Irvine Chancellor Going to Ohio State U

 

News reports say that Chancellor Michael Drake of UC-Irvine is leaving to head Ohio State U.

http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-uci-chancellor-20140131,0,858740.story

Maybe he hasn't been reading weather forecasts:

Or maybe it was just irresistible:

Pension Initiative Seems to Be Out of Gas (for Now)

Earlier posts noted a pension initiative drive - fronted by San Jose Mayor Chris Reed - that would have swept in UC.  For now, the effort seems to have stalled.  The proponents have decided to litigate the title and summary by the attorney general of the initiative.  Effectively, that will take enough time so that they will not be able to gather the signatures needed to get the initiative on the November 2014 ballot.  The decision to litigate may just be a polite way to bow out for now.  See:
http://www.sacbee.com/2014/01/30/6116016/public-pension-measure-likely.html

Of course, if your car stalls for whatever reason, you are in trouble:

Is there Twitter after retirement?

Of course, the Big Question is usually is there life after death?  But we can't answer that one here.  The lesser question - Is there Twitter after retirement? - can be answered, at least in the case of former UC prez Mark Yudof.  YES!  Not surprisingly, Yudof stopped tweeting around the time he left the UC presidency.  But then, in late December, came another tweet.  It's actually a link to a Harvard Business Review piece, and says:

"Once you know your greater purpose, there are lots of roads that will take you there." http://s.hbr.org/18NiGul

[See https://twitter.com/mark_yudof]

I always thought the quote was "if you don't know where you're going, any road'll take you there," a paraphrase from Alice in Wonderland.  In short, I couldn't make much sense of what the link was all about.  But what do I know?

Anyway, we await future rockin' links and tweets:

Listen to the Regents Meeting of Jan. 23, 2014

We continue indefinitely archiving the Regents meetings since - as numerous prior posts have complained - the Regents view an "archive" as lasting only one year.  Below is a link to the meeting (open sessions only) of Jan. 23, 2014.  We have previously posted the morning session of Jan. 22.  The afternoon session of that date - which runs well over 4 hours -  will eventually also be done.  But it takes over 4 hours to do it so yours truly will get to it when he can.

At the Jan. 23 meeting, there were public comments involving (among other topics), outreach funding, a complaint by UC-San Diego students that the fall quarter calendar for 2014 (next fall) had been tailored to accommodate Jewish holidays, fossil fuel divestment, transfers from community colleges, complaints about complaints concerning the Israel boycott issue, and union issues regarding TAs.  There was then discussion of the internal audits including issues related to sexual assaults and the UCLA Moreno report.  (See our earlier post on Moreno.)  There was discussion of various compensation issues related to coaches, a Berkeley provost, the acting chancellor for UC-San Francisco, and the new chief investment officer.  One regent requested that coach compensation take account of academic achievement of athletes.  The Lt. Governor and one regent dissented on the Berkeley provost's pay.  Finally, UC President Napolitano reported on various student and faculty honors.  When the meeting was officially over, she can be heard thanking the session chair for "marshaling this herd through its paces."  Or maybe we should say she can be over-herd.

Click on the link below to hear the meeting:

Are some administrators shivering?

No, not because of the cold weather in other parts of the country.  Rather, because of the headline regarding Northwestern University's football program in today's Inside Higher Ed: 

Athletes Move to Unionize

The Internet – or at least, the piece of the Internet where people pay moderate attention to college sports – blew up Tuesday afternoon with the news that some number of Northwestern University football players are seeking to unionize.  The apparently unprecedented step is a potential watershed moment for athletes in commercial sports programs like those at Northwestern, who were lauded by outspoken critics and sports columnists who have driven much of the public interest in whether athletes deserve more than they’re getting for all the revenue they bring institutions in the era of highly commercialized sports. If they succeed, the athletes could gain a crucial say in hot-button issues like safety rules, revenue sharing and scholarship limitations...

Full story at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/01/29/long-road-ahead-northwestern-athletes-move-unionize

The thought of losing some control of the "business model" for university athletics programs undoubtedly is cause for shivers in high places.

Another of our periodic email cautionary notes

From time to time, we have provided reminders about email problems.  One problem - which we have noted - is that at a public university, your emails may be subject to public documents requests.

Another problem is that hackers may try to get into your email account through "phishing," probably to use it to send out scam messages to your contacts.  Such an event seems to have occurred at UC-Davis:

Hackers compromised the email accounts of three UC Davis doctors last month, potentially gaining access to personal or medical information on as many as 1,800 patients, the university announced Monday...  UC Davis said the attack was a phishing scam, in which someone is sent an email that looks legitimate. According to a statement on the health system’s website, data security experts were unable to determine the exact nature of the breach or whether any email messages were specifically read. However, it said, “the automated nature of typical phishing scams makes it unlikely that content from individual messages was viewed. The content of patient information in the emails consisted primarily of name, medical record number and limited information associated with a clinic visit or hospital admission.”...

Full story at http://www.sacbee.com/2014/01/27/6106308/uc-davis-health-system-emails.html

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/01/27/6106308/uc-davis-health-system-emails.html#mi_rss=Business#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/01/27/6106308/uc-davis-health-system-emails.html#mi_rss=Business#storylink=cpy

And you probably thought UCLA had water fountains

Maybe in the past it had water fountains.  But nowadays we're much more sophisticated.