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At a time when we should be focused on establishing a heliocentric view of identity that sees us all fighting to protect life on this planet and whatever miracles we may find in our solar system, we continue to find our institutions of higher learning entrenched with the interests of warmongers, war criminals, and human rights violators. The UC has failed to call for a ceasefire or review its investments and support of Israel's war effort. The UC has spent over $30 billion towards genocide. No longer can we, as students and staff, stand behind our University contributing to the demolition of dozens of educational institutions in Palestine. Our work as educators is compromised when we stand by those who kill children, students, teachers, and administrators. It compromises our values when our research is used to whitewash a land, and erase a people’s cultural and historical heritages and histories from the face of the Earth. We cannot sit idly by while our University resources continue to contribute to apartheid and genocide, the murder of thousands of her students and teachers, and the massacre of tens of thousands of children and their families. How can UCLA keep its motto, Fiat Luxe, Let there be light, when the administration attempts to obfuscate, deny, and conceal the violence being committed in collaboration with our administration? Let there be shame.

A memoir of my experiences as a faculty member in the School of Informarion, 1976-2023.

BACKGROUND: The University of Californias Diabetes Prevention Program (UC DPP) Initiative was implemented across all 10 UC campuses in 2018. The COVID-19 pandemic and accompanying mandates required swift changes to program delivery, including pivoting from in-person to virtual delivery (i.e., Zoom). Our goal was to assess multilevel constituent perceptions of the use of a virtual platform to deliver UC DPP due to COVID-19 mandates. METHODS: We conducted qualitative interviews with 68 UC DPP participants, coordinators, and leaders to examine the use of virtual platform delivery on the reach, effectiveness, adoption, implementation, and maintenance (RE-AIM) of UC DPP. Transcripts were analyzed using rapid qualitative analysis and emergent themes were categorized using domains corresponding to RE-AIM framework. RESULTS: Among UC DPP participants (n = 42), virtual delivery primarily impacted perceptions of UC DPP effectiveness and implementation. Some participants perceived program effectiveness to be negatively impacted, given their preference for in-person sessions, which they felt provided more engagement, peer support, and accountability. Implementation challenges included problems with virtual format (e.g., Zoom fatigue); however, several benefits were also noted (e.g., increased flexibility, maintenance of DPP connections during campus closures). UC DPP coordinators (n = 18) perceived virtual delivery as positively impacting UC DPP reach, since virtual platforms provided access for some who could not participate in-person, and negatively impacting effectiveness due to reduced engagement and lower peer support. UC leaders (n = 8) perceived that use of the virtual format had a positive impact on reach (e.g., increased availability, accessibility) and negatively impacted effectiveness (e.g., less intensive interactions on a virtual platform). Across constituent levels, the use of a virtual platform had little to no impact on perceptions of adoption and maintenance of UC DPP. CONCLUSION: Perceptions of the reach, effectiveness, and implementation of UC DPP using a virtual platform varied across constituents, although all groups noted a potential negative impact on overall program effectiveness. Unanticipated program adaptations, including virtual delivery, present potential benefits as well as perceived drawbacks, primarily across the effectiveness domain. Understanding differential constituent perceptions of the impact of virtual delivery can help maximize RE-AIM and inform future UC DPP delivery strategies.

Abstract: A short summary of the women faculty:  Ruth Tringham, Margaret (Meg) Conkey, Rosemary Joyce, Christine Hastorf, Laurie Wilkie, Junko Habu, Sabrina Agarwal, Kim Shelton,

In this essay, we explore the consequences of the University of California’s policies to address racial disparities and its support for social justice activism as influences on its commitment to academic freedom and other intellectual values. This is a story of the interaction between two essential public university missions – one civic, the other intellectual – and the slow effacement of one by the other. The University’s expressed commitments to academic freedom and the culture of rationalism have not been abandoned, but they are too often considered secondary or when confronted by new administrative initiatives and social movement activism related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The experimental use of mandatory DEI statements on a number of the ten UC campuses, within willing academic departments, as initial screening mechanisms in faculty hiring is the most dramatic of the new administrative policies that have been put into place to advance faculty diversity. This policy can be considered the most problematic of a series of efforts that the UC campuses and the UC Office of the President have taken for more than a decade to prioritize representation in academic appointments. Our intent is to encourage a discussion of these policies within UC in light of the University’s fundamental commitments to open intellectual inquiry, the discovery and dissemination of a wide range of new knowledge, and a culture of rationalism.

Since establishing its first campus in 1868, the University of California (UC), California’s land-grant university, developed into the nation’s first multi-campus system in the United States, and is today widely recognized as the world’s premier network of public research universities. This short essay provides an historical brief on the role that shared governance, and specifically the role of the Academic Senate, played in creating an academic culture of excellence and high achievement in pursuing its tripartite mission of teaching and learning, research and knowledge production, and public service. A key component in understanding the critical role of the Senate in UC’s evolution from a single campus in Berkeley to now a ten-campus system is the university’s unusual designation as a public trust in the state constitution that, beginning in 1879, protected the university at critical times from external political pressures and allowed the university to develop an internal academic culture guided by the Academic Senate. By the 1920s, the emergence of California’s unique and innovative public system of higher education, with UC as the sole public provider of doctoral degrees and state funded research, also helps explain the ability of the UC system to maintain its mission and formulate what is termed a One University model. The Academic Senate has created coherency and shared values within UC, and a culture and expectation for faculty performance that is unique among universities around the world. This essay also offers a brief reflection on the Academic Senate’s past influence, its current status, and prospective role. The overall intent is to provide context for the current academic community and higher education scholars regarding the past and future role of faculty in university governance and management, and what distinguishes UC in the pantheon of major research universities.

In 1972, I took a road trip from California to Belize and Guatemala, where I found myself mesmerized by the hot rains, flamboyant hammocks, brilliant colors of the forest, and [...]

Describes the paths to the Ph.D. and the subsequent careers of the first 15 women to earn Ph.D.s from the University of California. It covers: Milicent Washburn Shinn (1898), Jessica Blanche Peixotto (1900),Alice Robertson (1902), Edna Earl Watson Bailey (1910), Annie Dale Biddle Andrews (1911), Myrtle Elizabeth Johnson (1912), Lillian Ruth Matthews (1912), Emma Phoebe Waterman Haas (1913), Anna Estelle Glancy (1913), Frances Lytle Gillepsy (1914), Rosalind Wulzen (1914), Olga Louise Bridgman (1915), Helen Margaret Gillkey (1915), Olive Swezy (1915), Irene Agnes McCulloch (1916).

The 2022 John Bates Clark Medal of the American Economic Association was awarded to Oleg Itskhoki, Professor of Economics at the University of California, Los Angeles, for his fundamental contributions [...]

Donald G. Buth, age 73, of VanNuys, California passed away on Tuesday, May 31, 2022. Don was born on February 23, 1949 in Chicago, Illinois. He was married to Karen, [...]