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UC Regents recap – July 28-30

The University of California Board of Regents discussed the Thirty Meter Telescope, student and faculty diversity and campus safety via teleconference at their July meeting. (Daily Bruin file photo)

By Saumya Gupta

Aug. 1, 2020 8:06 p.m.

The University of California Board of Regents, the governing body of the UC, met for their July bi-monthly meeting via teleconference from Tuesday to Thursday. The board discussed university policing, the Thirty Meter Telescope and student and faculty diversity.

Tuesday

Investments Committee:

  • The University of California’s assets totaled about $130.2 billion on June 30, said Jagdeep Singh Bachher, the UC chief investment officer.
  • Ronnie Swinkels, the head of active equity for the UC Office of the President, said the CIO office is considering increasing active management, an investing strategy that typically relies on frequent stock trades for some UC investments, such as the UC Retirement Plan and UC General Endowment Pool.
  • The committee voted to amend the UC Retirement Savings Program Plan Documents to introduce an optional deferred income annuity program for retirement savers. Marco Merz, the UCOP managing director and head of defined contributions products, said that under the amendment, purchasers at age 62, will be able to place up to a quarter of their UC retirement savings into a fund that pays them back monthly from age 78 until they die.

Special Committee on Basic Needs:

  • The Special Committee on Basic Needs discussed improving financial aid offer letters to help clarify college costs, including by offering the letters in non-English languages or possibly teaching financial literacy to students and parents.
  • Shawn Brick, executive director of student financial support, said financial aid will not be solely dependent on test scores to address concerns over the suspension of the ACT/SAT requirement that could affect eligibility for certain grants and scholarships.

Wednesday

Board of Regents:

  • The board unanimously approved the appointment of Alexis Zaragoza, a rising fifth-year transfer geography student from UC Berkeley, as the student regent for the 2021-2022 school year.
  • Alton Wang, a UCLA law student, said he thinks the regents should rescind the professional degree supplemental tuition increase during the pandemic because graduate students are facing precarious financial situations due to COVID-19.
  • Ashley Taylor, a UC Riverside student and the Associated Students of UCR Racial Justice Now coordinator, said she believes the regents need to defund, disarm and abolish the UCPD and invest that funding into students of color.
  • Jason Rabinowitz, the secretary-treasurer of the Teamsters Local 2010 union, said the UC should take every possible step to avoid layoffs, reduction in time and reduction in pay.
  • Sapna Ramappa, a third-year human biology and society student at UCLA, asked the UC to sign the Open COVID Pledge, which will make UC’s intellectual property available free of charge to help end the pandemic.

Health Services Committee:

  • Carrie Byington, the UC Health’s executive vice president, said UCLA and UC San Diego were chosen as trial sites for the Moderna vaccine, a possible mRNA vaccine for COVID-19. She added trials for the AstraZeneca or Oxford vaccine, a viral vector vaccine candidate, will begin later in the summer at UCLA and UC San Francisco. Byington said the committee is working on qualifying all of the UC sites, or as many possible, for vaccine trials.
  • UCLA has also optimized a technology called SwabSeq, which allows for very rapid and high volume testing, she said. The technology is waiting for emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration, she said.
  • The systemwide UC Health system lost $1.15 billion from the start of the pandemic through June 30, Byington said. However, the system received $494 million in CARES funding, which covers approximately 43% of the losses suffered thus far, she said.
  • Additionally, California no longer leads the nation in combating the virus and is one of three states that approaches 10,000 cases per day, Byington said. However, the state is fortunate, as it has 74,000 staffed hospital beds, she added.
  • Byington said experts expect to reach their target of 50% for immunity from COVID-19 by July 2022, but this could change if a vaccine is developed and distributed earlier than anticipated. However, Byington added she told the regents, chancellors and UC president the UC must prepare for the pandemic to last for at least two more years.

National Laboratories Committee:

  • The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Director Bill Goldstein will retire from his role after a new director is appointed.
  • The regents approved to allocate around $23.7 million in fees earned from managing the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory for research projects and COVID-related expenses. Of the estimated $23.7 million, $10 million was allocated to the UC Laboratory Fees Research Program, which funds research organized by UC students and professors who work with the National Laboratories, and $1.3 million was allocated to meet expenses currently not being reimbursed by the federal government, including providing salaries and benefits to employees who can no longer work due to the pandemic.
  • The regents approved the use of $5 million from the Capital and Campus Opportunity Fund to complete the renovation of the Hertz Hall Complex, a general-purpose space near the Livermore National Laboratory, in order to encourage collaboration between UC-affiliated National Laboratories, the UC campuses and UC medical centers.

Compliance and Audit Committee:

  • Chancellors gave an update on ongoing work addressing UC policing. UC Irvine Chancellor Howard Gillman said that each campus has a different strategy to address campus policing due to differences in each campuses’ surrounding communities.
  • Outgoing UC Student Association President Varsha Sarveshwar and UC Graduate and Professional Council President Gwen Chodur said the UC should engage with students of color to determine the best option for campus safety.

Governance Committee:

  • The committee discussed amending regent policy 7102, which covers the process of selecting and searching for a chancellor. One of the recommendations includes using a search firm to assist in the initial screening for a chancellor. Previously faculty did the initial screening. However, Faculty Representative Kum-Kum Bhavnani said faculty are happy to do this process and that it’s not a burden to them as they are deeply committed to the campus.
  • The committee approved a recommendation to temporarily suspend bylaw 21.7, which states that a regent can not be appointed to or employed in a university-affiliated position, to allow Regent Richard Blum and Ex-Officio Regent Eleni Kounalakis to serve on UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business’ board.

Thursday

Finance and Capital Strategies Committee:

  • The regents approved construction plans to address seismic safety concerns on UC Berkeley’s Evans Hall and a renewal of the Life-Safety Fee for UC Berkeley students.
  • Committee chair Hadi Makarechian clarified a need for UC Davis to correct and address floor plans for their new Orchard Park Graduate Student Housing and Family Housing Project.
  • The regents approved a plan for UCD to employ Bear River Land Holdings, LLC for consultation on the Community for Health and Independence project, which will establish a community for the elderly and vulnerable populations in the Sacramento area.
  • The regents approved preliminary plans for over $101 million in funding for the construction of a UC Davis Health Hospital Bed Replacement Tower. David Lubarsky, the vice chancellor of human health sciences and chief executive officer for UC Davis Health said that UC Davis’ hospital is at 100% capacity for the first time in its history due to COVID-19.
  • The regents expressed support for a development plan at UCSF’s Parnassus Heights campus which would amend a 1976 regent resolution that placed a space ceiling of 3.55 million gross square feet on the area”. UCSF Chancellor Sam Hawgood said that the project would request an amendment allowing for a 1.5 million gross square foot increase to this ceiling.
  • The regents discussed UC Merced’s Medical Education Project which would expand health education, services and build a health center to address the needs of the Central Valley.

Academic and Student Affairs Committee:

  • The regents approved plans for the UC Irvine School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. Steve Goldstein, the UCI vice chancellor of health affairs, said he and UCI chancellor Howard Gillman will go before the board of directors of the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education Friday.
  • Jan Hirsch, UCI’s proposed dean for the new school, said based on projected demographic numbers for the school, they need to do more work to address the school’s diversity. Hirsch, a UCI pharmacy professor, added that following the death of George Floyd, the prospective school’s diversity committee began revising their diversity plan to be more proactive to help recruit more students of color.
  • Cheryl Lloyd, the interim vice president of systemwide human resources said the UC’s accountability report on diversity, which used staff numbers from 2019, found that management roles are less diverse than professional and support staff roles. She added there needs to be clear pathways for underrepresented groups to access management positions in order to make UC’s management staff representative of professional and support staff demographics.
  • Marie-Ann Hairston, the UCOP director of employee relations, said according to the biannual UC staff engagement survey, those who identify as African American or Native American felt unsafe voicing concerns in the workplace. Those who identified as non-binary or came from underrepresented sexual orientations also felt unsafe voicing their concerns, she added.
  • The regents tabled discussion for Student Academic Preparation Strategies.

Governance Committee:

  • The committee passed the amendment to Regental policy 7102. Past Academic Senate chairs and faculty representatives sent a letter to the regents expressing opposition to the amendment. Bhavnani also sent a letter to UC President Janet Napolitano expressing her objection.

Board of Regents:

  • Public commenters applauded President-designate Michael Drake’s appointment but called on him to establish a zero-tolerance racism policy, issue and support a state resolution to declare racism a public health crisis and address UCPD’s systemic challenges during recruitment and racial profiling.
  • Pamela Brown, vice president of the UCOP institutional research and academic planning, discussed the 2020 UC accountability report. The report’s 2030 goals includes increasing the number of degrees issued and diversifying degree recipients to match the diversity of California. Brown also discussed student retention rates. She said there has been a decline in retention rates for students overall and an even bigger decline in retention rates for underrepresented students.
  • The regents provided an update and discussion on the Thirty Meter Telescope project on Maunakea, Hawaii. Michael Bolte, an astronomy and astrophysics professor at UC Santa Cruz, said the Canary Islands in Spain is an alternative location for the project, however, all of the TMT partners would have to unanimously agree to move the telescope. Bolte also said they submitted a proposal to the National Science Foundation. Maunakea is a sacred region to those who practice Ai Kapu, a Hawaiian religion, and it’s cultural beliefs, said Noe Noe Wong-Wilson, executive director of the Lālākea Foundation, an organization that perpetuates traditional Hawaiian practices. Paul Jenny, the UCSF senior vice chancellor for finance and administration, said the estimated budget of the project is now about $1.4 billion. No decision was made on the project.
  • The regents passed the 2020-2021 financial budget for UCOP, which has a reduction of about $80 million from the 2019-2020 budget. Nathan Brostrom, UCOP chief financial officer, said the UC also lost about $1.8 billion in revenue since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • The board voted to honor UC President Janet Napolitano with the title president emeritus once she steps down from her role in August.

Contributing reports by Justin Jung, Olivia Tran, Julia Shapero, Eshan Uniyal, Rachel DuRose and Bernard Mendez, Daily Bruin staff.

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Saumya Gupta | News senior staff
Gupta was the 2020-2021 assistant News editor for the national news and higher education beat. She was previously a contributor for the beat. She is also a fourth-year psychology student.
Gupta was the 2020-2021 assistant News editor for the national news and higher education beat. She was previously a contributor for the beat. She is also a fourth-year psychology student.
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