UCSF Faculty Association

November 19, 2013
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Increased support for Graduate Student Employees

Dear UCSF Faculty Association Member,

The UCSF Faculty Association’s sister chapter, Berkeley Faculty Association, has launched a petition in support of the UAW contract negotiations for better graduate student wages and conditions. The petition is intented for UC faculty within and beyond our Faculty Associations.

Please consider signing  the petition and spreading the word amongst your colleagues.   The petition will be sent to Director of UCOP Labor Relations Peter Chester.

http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/uc-faculty-in-support

August 28, 2013
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CUCFA’s letter to San Francisco City Attorney Herrera re: ACCJC suit

On August 28, CUCFA sent the following letter to San Francisco’s City Attorney Dennis Herrera:

August 28, 2013

City Attorney Dennis Herrera
City Hall, Room 234
1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place
San Francisco, CA 94102-4682
cityattorney@sfgov.org
fax: (415) 554-4745

(delivered by e-mail and fax)

Dear City Attorney Herrera,

We applaud your quest for injunctive relief from the decision of the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) to  terminate City College of San Francisco’s accreditation on the basis that the ACCJC unlawfully allowed its advocacy and political bias to prejudice its evaluation.  Thank you for supporting City College and all those who are trying to protect the public interest in low-cost, high-quality education for all kinds of learners.

Our organization, the Council of University of California Faculty Associations (CUCFA), made a public statement decrying ACCJC’s actions against City College of San Francisco at the time of the termination.  We reiterate our concern, and hope your suit will help City College to continue its broad educational mission.

Thank you again for supporting high-quality public education for all Californians.

Best regards,
Patricia Morton, President, Council of UC Faculty Associations
Professor and Chair, College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, UC Riverside

August 21, 2013
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University of California Faculty ask for the release of Professors Greyson and Loubani

On August 21, CUCFA sent a letter to H.E. Ambassador Mohamed M. Tawfik at the Embassy of Egypt in Washington, D.C., and to Consul General El Husseuni Abdel Wahab at the Egyptian Consulate in Los Angeles expressing expressing their concern about the imprisonment in Cairo of the internationally renowned documentary film maker, scholar and professor at York University (Canada) last Friday.

Read full letter here.

July 29, 2013
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Faculty Association Letter re: proposal on grants paying low indirect costs

To faculty colleagues at UCSF:

We are writing to apprise you a proposal to prohibit submission of grant applications to organizations that pay indirect costs of less than 10 percent (details attached). The Faculty Association believes that this proposal would adversely affect faculty, particularly junior faculty.

We wrote Chancellor Desmond-Hellmann to express our opposition to the proposal, citing the difficulties this policy would pose for junior faculty working to obtain early career funding as well as its impact on senior faculty’s ability to continue to obtain NIH funding. We also explained how this would have negative consequences to the resources of already struggling departments and raised concerns that this policy would likely affect scientific and academic freedom by eliminating funding from foundations which are often able to fund controversial research.

A copy of this letter is linked HERE.  We would be interested in your thoughts and knowing how such a proposal would likely affect you and your department.

We will keep you apprised of any response and further developments.

 

Ed Yelin, Chair

UCSF Faculty Association

 

 

May 2, 2013
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California: Do MOOCs Deserve Credit?

“It’s the wrong solution to the wrong problem,” said Robert Meister,chair of the Council of UC Faculty Associations and professor at UC Santa Cruz, in a phone interview. He argued that the problem is inadequate funding and the solution is to increase it. “The legislature and the governor have been cutting higher education on a per-student basis for ten years,” he said. “The universities and colleges have been reducing the number of admissions, especially at the community college level, and also reducing the number of seats in required courses. Those problems wouldn’t exist if the university, and particularly the community colleges, were adequately funded.” Meister said he believes the state of California could easily restore funding for all three public higher education systems to the levels they were at in 2000, referring to a statement on the Web site of the Council of UC Faculty Associations, which states that “for the median California tax return (individual or joint), restoring the entire system while rolling back student fees to what they were a decade ago would cost $48 next April 15.”

Read full article [here]. by Leila Meyer, Campus Technology.

April 16, 2013
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What can the UCSF Faculty Association do for you?

To faculty colleagues at UCSF:

As Chair of The University of California, San Francisco Faculty Association, I am writing to urge you to join YOUR association as a member.

It’s no secret that UCSF faculty are under stress: Operational Excellence has removed many support staff.  Space and the quality of the work environment are being threatened.  We face declining state support for UCSF at the same time as Federal research agencies are under stress.  Meanwhile declining access to clinical revenue is another factor making faculty life much more difficult. Among UCSF faculty with state-funded FTEs, the level of support for the FTEs has been dramatically reduced. Concurrently, salaries have not kept up with our competitors, while charges for health care and the retirement system have increased, as have personal costs of other items that affect many faculty such as parking. Basic services once provided by UCSF, from telephones to office cleaning to building maintenance, tech support and office staff support, have been sharply reduced.

While the recent passage of Proposition 30 restored cuts planned for this year, it does not restore the funds lost from serious cuts of past years, nor does it offer protection from future cuts.

The UC San Francisco Faculty Association (UCSF FA) is a dues-supported membership organization of faculty, legally empowered to provide a voice on important issues to the Legislature, Governor, media, and UC systemwide and UCSF administrations. While we cooperate actively with the Academic Senate, our status as an independent organization allows us to engage in advocacy activities that are beyond what the Senate is permitted to do.

Through our affiliation with the Council of UC Faculty Associations (CUCFA) and with our evolving partnership with the California Faculty Association (of the CSUs) and particularly the National Campaign for the Future of Higher Education, we participate in broader movements to educate the public about the value of public higher education and the threats it faces today. Among CUCFA’s many accomplishments on our behalf was the successful co-sponsorship of legislation that specifies that individual professors, not UC, own their lectures, which is very important now as UC tries to move lectures to the web. You can access our UCSF Faculty association website http://ucsffa.org, as well as CUCFA’s sites at http://keepcaliforniaspromise.org and www.cucfa.org, for a full archive of our accomplishments on your behalf. But, we need YOUR support to strengthen our capacity to face our current situation.

Perhaps never before have UCSF faculty faced so many challenges. Your support makes it possible for us to be a strong voice for faculty concerns in this rapidly-evolving environment.  Join the UCSF Faculty Association TODAY. Becoming a member of the UCSF Faculty Association is not just a smart thing to do; it is the right thing to do at this moment in our university’s history. For questions, please contact me or any of the board members listed below. We welcome your membership and participation!

With best wishes,

The UCSF FA Executive Board

April 8, 2013
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UCSF FA letter to Chancellor re: Taxing of Faculty Discretionary Accounts

Faculty Association members have expressed concern that some departments are considering taxing discretionary funds that have been built up over years in order to cover expenses during lean times.   On April 8, 2013, the Faculty Association wrote a letter to Chancellor Desmond-Hellmann raising this concern and asking for clarification over whether these plans are actually in the works.

The UCSF FA received the following response from EVP Bluestone on April 17, 2013.  We appreciate his prompt response and effort to communicate our concerns to the Deans.

Dear Dr. Yelin:

Your April 8, 2013, letter to Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann (enclosed) was
forwarded to me to respond. Any decision to implement the type of taxation you
describe would not come from the Chancellors Office but is at the discretion of the
individual schools and departments. My office contacted each of the schools, and I
am informed that within the Schools of Dentistry, Medicine, Nursing and Pharmacy
there are currently no plans to implement the tax as your describe.

Copied below are the four respective deans. Please contact them directly if you
would like to discuss with them further.

Thank you for writing on behalf of faculty and recognizing the budgetary
challenges confronting the campus.

Regards,

Jeffrey Bluestone, PhD
Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost

cc:
Dr. Sam Hawgood
Dr. Joe Gugliemo
Dr. David Vlahov
Dr. John Featherstone

March 21, 2013
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Add your voice to a call for changes to SB 520

As many of you know from news reports in the SF Chronicle and elsewhere, Senator Darrell Steinberg has proposed a law (SB 520)that would mandate that students in the UC, CSU, and community college systems who cannot gain access to specific courses be permitted to take the courses elsewhere (including online from for-profit organizations) provided there is minimal oversight by the system in which they are pursuing degrees (and we mean minimal). Senator Steinberg is a progressive legislator who has been a forceful advocate for the educational system (and many other causes).  However, although the legislation is well-meaning, it undermines the independence of faculty even while it offers only a stopgap to the real problem: inadequate financial support for the public higher educational system in California.  While we work to ensure that the system can provide the kind of access for which it was designed by Clark Kerr, which means funding by broad-based progressive taxation rather than rationing of classes and higher tuition,  we must preserve the public mission of the public higher educational system, that is, to provide coursework and degrees which serve no one but the public’s purpose.

Our colleagues at UC, Berkeley have started a petition to voice opposition to Senator Steinberg’s legislation.  We urge all faculty at UCSF to sign the petition.

*******************************

Dear Colleagues,

The Berkeley Faculty Association is deeply concerned by Senator Darrell Steinberg’s attempt to force the UCs, CSUs, and Community Colleges to accept credit for online courses from any source. Please help us convince him to pull or amend his bill by signing the petition at the link below.

http://signon.org/sign/uc-faculty-opposition?source=c.em.cp&r_by=985930

Thanks

on behalf of the Berkeley Faculty Association

— Shannon Steen Associate Professor Department of Theater, Dance, Performance Studies Program in American Studies UC Berkeley

 

For more information on this impending legislation, see the various links at:

http://utotherescue.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-academic-senate-and-others-respond.html

March 14, 2013
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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 the state’s most impacted courses (some of these courses would be Community College or CSU courses but some could be UC courses, they have not been selected yet). “If it passes, as seems likely, it would be the first time that state legislators have instructed public universities to grant credit for courses that were not their own — including those taught by a private vendor, not by a college or university.”
The New York Times article is available online at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/13/education/california-bill-would-force-colleges-to-honor-online-classes.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp
Lillian Taiz, the president of the California Faculty Association (the union representing CSU faculty), is quoted in the article as saying:
“What’s really going on is that after the budget cuts have sucked public higher education dry of resources,” she continued, “the Legislature’s saying we should give away the job of educating our students.”
The language of the proposed bill is not available from the Legislative Counsel’s website yet, but HERE is a PDF of the proposed language and HERE is a PDF press release from Senator Steinberg’s office.

“Will the Academic Senate Defend Faculty Authority or not?” by Michael Meranze and Christopher Newfield was posted yesterday on their “Remaking the University” blog.

March 9, 2013
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CUCFA’s Principles for Selecting a New UC President

Sherry Lansing, Chair
Regents’ Special Committee to Consider the Selection of a President
University of California
1111 Franklin St., 12th Floor
Oakland, CA 94607-5200
Fax: (510) 987-9224

Dear Chair Lansing,

The selection of a new President of the University of California
provides all of us an important opportunity to set the future course of
the University. The Council of UC Faculty Associations, by far the
largest voluntary membership organization representing the faculty of
the University of California, would like to offer these principles for
who we think would best serve the interests of the university community:

The next President must have a very long and large view of the
University of California, animated by extensive experience in and deep
knowledge of public higher education. He or she should grasp the
seriousness of the University’s current predicaments, including
imperiled affordability and access to undergraduate education by the
middle class, shrinking graduate programs, the difficulties of
sustaining educational quality and research infrastructure, the problem
of retaining and supporting a first-rate research and teaching faculty,
the challenges posed by rapidly evolving but untested online education,
and growing disparities among the campuses, especially their access to
resources. The President must also be able to represent UC effectively
to legislators, the governor, and the people of California. He or she
should stem pressures toward further privatization and defend and
promote the public status and public mission of the University.

Above all, the next President should be a leader in the most august
sense of that word.

Sincerely,

Robert Meister,
President, Council of UC Faculty Associations
Professor History of Consciousness and Political and Social Thought, UC
Santa Cruz