UCSF Faculty Association

March 16, 2014
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New UC Care Options – Feedback Requested

We have been hearing that many  faculty and employees at campuses across the UC system are unhappy about the new rules, particularly those from campuses without a medical center where there are fewer options and higher out of pocket costs. If you have a story to tell, UC professors Michael Meranze and Chris Newfield who blog at Remaking the University have created a page where you can Share Your UC Care Story.

With more information about how changes impact faculty and staff, we can seek better mechanisms that would permit faculty to negotiate these elements of our compensation.

 

March 12, 2014
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UCSF Faculty Association Survey on Operational Excellence (OE)

Dear colleagues:

As part of our ongoing effort to serve the UCSF faculty, we are collecting information the the effects of Operational Excellence on pre-award grant submissions and Personnel on faculty workloads, costs and efficiency.  Please take a few minutes and give us your views by completing our survey which you can access by clicking on the following link.

UCSF Faculty Association Survey on Operational Excellence

We will distribute the results once we have them.

Please email ucsffa.assist@gmail.com if you have any questions or comments.
Thank you.

The UCSF FA Executive Board
Ed Yelin, PhD, Chair (ed.yelin@ucsf.edu)

March 4, 2014
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The Degradation of Faculty Welfare and Compensation

We would like to bring to your attention an Op-Ed written by Colleen Lye and James Vernon, Co-Chairs of the Berkeley Faculty Association, on behalf of its Board. The article appeared today in the Daily Cal, and details the systematic degradation of faculty pay and benefits. We are concerned about the fact that faculty not only pay more now for retirement and healthcare programs that offer less value, but also that the evolution of the benefit system has led to serious inequalities between faculty in how retirement, health and other benefits are administered.

We encourage you to follow the link below to read the full article.

http://www.dailycal.org/2014/03/04/paying-yet-getting-even-less/

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