Welcome to the UC Santa Cruz Faculty Association Website!
This website is a resource for staff, students and faculty about events and activities that are relevant to our UCSC community, especially to “terms and conditions of employment” of academic senate faculty members, who are our bargaining unit. Here we provide space for comments (blog format) and welcome them from the entire UCSC community and visitors. We hope it will be a place to find out about events and locate documents and resources. Our main focus is UCSC and the Santa Cruz community because excellent system wide blogs and websites already exist.
Latest SCFA News and Issues:
SCFA small grant program deadline extended! Small grant applications are now due January 31, 2012. We especially encourage applications that could be ready for the fast approaching March 1 day of action, March 5 mobilization to Sacramento, or applications that incorporate one or both of these days into the project.
Creative responses to the crisis:
Ways Ahead for the University, A small grant program for UCSC
The Santa Cruz Faculty Association announces a program of small grants for projects – two at up to $2,500 and five at up to $1000 – for faculty, staff, graduate, and undergraduate students. We encourage you to join the SCFA if you are an Academic Senate faculty member, but it is not a requirement.
A university is an institution focused on learning and innovation. We want to direct some of that creativity toward rethinking university practice and publicizing issues related to such matters as the decline of state funding in the US and/or UC in particular; student debt; civil rights of students, faculty; the demographics of UC students; achieving socially conscious administration and governance; and consequences of state vs. private funding.
We encourage:
Research that reimagines the work of the university in teaching, learning, administration, innovation, and research. This research should result in serious but readable articles suitable for publication in the popular media (e.g., the Huffington Post, the Chronicle of Higher Education), with spinoffs as op-ed pieces, letters to the editor, and the like. Publication in professional journals is of course desirable if suitable.
Workshops / events / performances leaving a permanent trace that can be digitized, and short videos or multi-media pieces that could go viral.
Other media – let your imagination go wild! Board games, video games, bumper stickers, art interventions, T-shirts, cartoons, animations–with a plan for distribution or publicity.
Results: Time is of the essence. We hope that supported projects can be completed and be ready for distribution or publicizing at the latest by the middle of Spring Quarter 2012. Some projects, we recognize, will not be ready for publication or distribution until the beginning of Fall Quarter 2012. Indicate in your proposal the rationale for your timing.
Proposal content guidelines: Restrict your proposal to no more than three pages, and please address these points in the following order:
1. List the name, UCSC affiliation, phone number, address, and electronic contact information for all the researchers and collaborators involved in the project. Make sure to identify the primary investigator (the main person responsible) for the project and the project title.
2. What is this project, and what are its objectives?
3. Describe your plan for completing this project.
4. Describe your plan for delivering or publicizing the information from the project. We do have contacts and websites to assist you in this process, but each project MUST have an outreach plan. If you plan to develop a publication or video, describe how it will be distributed or publicized.
5. Provide a timeline or calendar of important milestones. As previously stated, we hope that projects will be completed by the middle of the Spring Quarter 2012. If submitting a proposal for a project requiring additional time, please be sure to provide a plan and justification. The beginning of the Fall Quarter 2012 is the latest we anticipate completion and distribution of results
6. Do you have the experience and qualifications to do this project? Please explain or list them in a few sentences
7. What is your project budget? Please detail your use of funds.
Restrictions:We do not anticipate funding the purchase of cameras or other hardware.
Submission requirements :
1. Limit your proposal to 1-3 pages
2. Use 12-point font for all text in the proposal.
3. Submit proposals electronically by 11 PM on January 21, 2012.
4. Email your proposal as an attachment scfa.assist@gmail.com. Use the subject line”2012 grant proposal.” Please email if you need to make other arrangements for delivery.
Project Selection: By early February a review committee will select proposals for funding and advance funds. If money remains, a second round will be evaluated at the end of February.
NOTE: This is an experiment, we hope a happy one, to see whether some small amount of funding will help unleash creativity and enable a positive result. We are very open to feedback about any aspect of this very small grants program. Pre-proposals requesting feedback, or inquiries requesting clarification or suggestions on any aspect of the proposals are most welcome. Send them to scfa.assist@gmail.com. Use the subject line “2012 grant inquiry.”
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The SCFA Board sent the following letter to Chancellor Blumenthal on November 20, 2011 as a reaction to the outrageous police action which has occurred on other UC campuses. The SCFA is the Santa Cruz Chapter of the Council of UC Faculty Associations, which published (cucfa.org) the statement that we attached to our letter – and which is reproduced on this page below our letter.
Dear Chancellor Blumenthal
Dear Provost EVC Galloway
Dear Susan Gillman
The Santa Cruz Faculty Association would like to bring to your attention the fact that the Council of University of California Faculty Associations, of which we are a member, is dismayed and alarmed at the police violence that has been used at several U.C. campuses against protesters –both faculty and students–whose grievances are real and whose rights to assembly and free speech have been violated. CUCFA has issued at statement, which is attached. Please read it.
We are glad no such violence against students and faculty has been used against UCSC students and faculty, and we commend the Chancellor and EVC for their handling, so far, of student rallies and public assemblies. At the same time, we are aware that various UCs have sent their police forces to other UCs to enforce police actions, and we would like to request that UCSC not allow or participate in such actions should they arise.
We also call upon the Chancellor and the Chair of the Senate to publicly oppose the use of any police violence against peaceful protesters on campus, and to oppose such violence as well at off-campus protests such as those directed toward the Regents and the Office of the President. We trust we all agree that civil discourse requires the practice of civility itself, and that violent response to non-violent protest undermines the commitment to reason and restraint in which all of us believe. Please join us in denouncing the violent response on our sister campuses and pledging to continue to keep our campus safe from the unseemly breaches of civil discourse we have witnessed elsewhere in recent days.
Cordially,
Shelly Errington
for the Executive Board SCFA
The Council of UC Faculty Associations Condemns Police Violence Against Non-Violent Protesters
This week, we have seen excessive force used against non-violent protesters at UC Berkeley, UCLA, CSU Long Beach, and UC Davis. Student, faculty and staff protesters have been pepper-sprayed directly in the eyes and mouth, beaten and shoved by batons, dragged by the arms while handcuffed, and submitted to other forms of excessive force. Protesters have been hospitalized because of injuries inflicted during these incidents. The violence was unprovoked, disproportional and excessive.
We are outraged by the excessive and unnecessary force used against peaceful protests.
We are outraged that the administrations of UC campuses are using police brutality to suppress dissent, free speech and peaceful assembly.
We demand that the Chancellors of the University of California cease using police violence to repress non-violent political protests. We hold them responsible for the violence and believe it can only result in an escalation of outrage that holds the potential for even more violence.
Police brutality damages the University’s public image, and, more importantly, it damages the climate for free expression at UC. We condemn the assault on the legacy of free speech at the University of California.
We call for greater attention to the substantive issues that motivate the protests regarding the privatization of education. With massive cuts in state funding and rising tuition costs across the community college system, the Cal State network, K-12, and the University of California, public education is undergoing a severe divestment. Student debt has reached unprecedented levels as bank profits swell. We decry the growing privatization and tuition increases that have been the frequent — and only — responses of the UC Board of Regents.
Signed,
The board of the Council of UC Faculty Associations
The above statement has been turned into a petition by Progressive Change. We encourage you to sign.
UC Santa Cruz Faculty Association Statement in Support of striking colleagues at CSU Dominguez Hills and East Bay
On November 17, 2011, the California Faculty Association, which represents over 20,000 tenure-track and contingent faculty at 23 California State University campuses, will stage one-day strikes at CSU East Bay and CSU Dominguez Hills.
In 2008-09 and 2009-10, California State University faculty were denied contractually guaranteed salary increases allegedly because of the state’s ongoing budget crisis. Two independent fact-finders agreed with CFA that the CSU has the resources to pay portions of these increases that were designed to reduce salary disparities among faculty, but the CSU has refused. However, the strikes take place in the context of ongoing bargaining for a new contract, in which the CSU has rebuffed even modest salary and workload proposals, while pursuing a series of “take-backs,” including an assault on the system of three-year contracts for long-term contingent faculty.
The Santa Cruz Faculty Association, an affiliate of the Council of UC Faculty Associations and the American Association of University Professor, joins The Campaign for the Future of Higher Education (CFHE) and many other progressive organizations to record its support of the California Faculty Association in their one day strike at two campuses. We support the CFA’s ongoing campaign to counter the misplaced priorities of the California State University.
In supporting our colleagues at CFA in this action, we are supporting affordable, quality higher education for all who can benefit. As a country and as a state, we must provide the working conditions and institutional support for the faculty who do the essential educational work of the institution. And we call for substantially more public investment to enable quality education for the growing numbers of students and public who are demanding it.
REFUND CALIFORNIA!
The SCFA Board has agreed to support ReFund California, which is an effort to generate political support for tax reforms and other measures needed to increase state spending on education – K-12 and all three higher education systems. It has the backing of many unions, especially teachers, and a variety of other groups.
We hope that you, as members of the SCFA will join the SCFA Board in supporting this cause, that we feel is so important to anyone who is a part of the education world in California. Updated information concerning ReFund California’s campaigns and efforts will be posted on the “News by Category” Section of this site under ReFund California, as well as on their website that is linked to the right of this blog.