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:
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.
You can access the project guidelines, and submission requirements here.
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. 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.
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.
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The SCFA Board sent a 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 in the “Recent News” and “Faculty Response” sections on this site.
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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.