Category University Administration

* Report on the SCFA Budget Cut Impact Survey

Deeply concerned about the effects of UC-systemwide and campus budget cuts since 2008, in winter 2014, the Santa Cruz Faculty Association sponsored a program of Small Grants for Creative Response to the Crisis in Education. One of the awards was granted to conduct a Budget Cut Impact Survey to assess and evaluate the particular impacts of those cuts on faculty teaching and morale at UCSC. This report contains the results of that survey. These results seem particularly timely given current discussions about budget cuts we may be facing again in the near future, and the impacts those would likely have.

* Faculty Letter to Senate Executive Committee concerning the planned Silicon Valley campus

What follows is a letter from UCSC Senate faculty to the Senate Executive Committee on the topic of the administration's plan to allocate 14 FTE to a Silicon Valley campus. If you would like to add your signature, please do so in the form that follows. We would like to send the letter to the Senate Executive Committee by March 13, 2015. As your colleagues in the Academic Senate, we write to you of our concern regarding the administration’s stated intention to divert 14 FTE to a planned Silicon Valley campus which, we fear, will erode UCSC’s ability to fulfill its core mission and will have negative implications for both undergraduate and graduate education at UCSC.

* CUCFA statement on UC’s planned tuition increases

Below please find a letter that The Council of UC Faculty Associations (CUCFA), the systemwide organization of which the UCSC Faculty Association is a member, sent today to President Napolitano and the UC Regents regarding their recent proposal to raise…

* Faculty letter urging that charges against students be dropped 4-2-14

The following letter was sent to EVC Galloway and Chancellor Blumenthal today, April 2, 2014, on the first of the two day strike by UAW 2865. UAW members, including union leader Josh Brahinsky, were arrested on the picket line in Santa Cruz this morning. As many as twenty undergraduate supporters were arrested as well. The union called for a peaceful, legal strike in protest of management’s unlawful intimidation of student-workers.

* What faculty can do to support the graduate student union strike on April 2-3, 2014

We encourage you to read the letter below from the graduate student union (UAW 2865) organizing committee, with details of the strike the union is planning for April 2 and 3. The letter includes suggestions about what faculty can do to support the strike. The Board of the Faculty Association supports our graduate students' demands. We understand that an action of this kind during the first week of class is an inconvenience for faculty and for students, but feel that by supporting the graduate students at this time we can help them in their struggle for the fair and just working conditions that are the necessary conditions for our collective educational mission.

* Online Education in the Media, April and May 2013

Members of the SCFA have been tracking campus conversations about Coursera and other commercial online course providers.  The most recent articles appear at the bottom of the list. Thank you to Sean Keilen (Literature) for providing us with these updates which have appeared…

* SENATOR STEINBERG’S PROPOSED ONLINE CLASSES BILL

Yesterday’s New York Times (and a number of other news sources) had an article about proposed legislation from Senator Steinberg that would require California’s public higher education systems to accept transfer credits from select online course providers for 50 of…

* CUCFA’s Letter to the UC President Search Committees

On March 8th, the Council of UC Faculty Associations sent the following letter to the Regents' Special Committee to Consider the Selection of a President and the Academic Senate Committee that advises said committee.

* UCSC Signs Contract with Coursera

March 5, 2013 The SCFA learned last week that the University signed a contract with Coursera without including them in the discussion.  The SCFA, as the bargaining agent for UCSC faculty, should be consulted whenever there is the potential for…

* University of California must disclose more information about its investment

Interesting article that ties in with our concern that the Regents are top heavy in investment bankers which makes the possibility of deals such a problem. "An Alameda County Superior Court judge has ruled that the University of California must disclose how its investments in two of Silicon Valley's top venture capital firms have performed."

* UC Management Bloat – updated (January 2013), by Charles Schwartz

Charles Schwartz shows the continuing outsized growth of the management cadre (defined as the employees classified in Senior Management Group and Management & Senior Professionals): their numbers grew by 252% over the 21 year period while total employee numbers grew by a mere 51%. His last presentation of data on the bloated growth of management at the University of California, covered the span of 1991-2010. (Note: click on graph to view a larger version in a new)

* Concerns re: open access to publications policy

Chris M. Kelty Chair, University Committee on Library and Scholarly Communications January 10, 2013 Dear Professor Kelty, We write to you on behalf of the Berkeley Faculty Association to express our concern that the proposed policy to expand open access…

* Brown and Yudof Bail on the Master Plan

By:  Bob Meister, President of CUCFA (Professor of Political and Social Thought, UCSC) On June 27, Governor Jerry Brown vetoed language inserted by both houses of the legislature that would have tied UC funding to admitting a minimum number of…

* What Governor Brown’s May Budget Proposal Means for UC

UC President Mark Yudof and Governor Jerry Brown are working out a deal behind closed doors that will loosen the most important ties between the university and the state. Although they will both praise the deal by saying that it…