September 2008: Printer-friendly version
This printer-friendly version of “Our University” from the UC Office of the President is intended to be
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work. The web version is available at: http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/ouruniversity/09_08/
From Combat to Campus
By Donna Hemmila
UC is deploying a lineup of services
aimed at helping veterans make the
transition from military to student life.
What do you know about the vets
coming to your campus?
Winnow Driscoll survived three years of combat service in the military, but
he almost didn't make it through his freshman year of college.
"After the first year, I was ready to quit and go back to the military," said
Driscoll, who graduates from UC Davis in December. "I'd say my biggest
frustration was financial."
Driscoll, who will pursue a science teaching credential after graduating,
said he has amassed $63,000 in student debt and one summer had to sell
his car to stay in school. Fees and books ate up most of his benefit money.
"The new GI Bill is going to be amazing," he said. "I'm really happy for the
new veterans who are going to benefit."
Beginning in August 2009, the financial stress veterans like Driscoll face in
earning a degree will ease somewhat with the start of the new GI Bill. UC
campuses are ramping up their veterans programs in anticipation of more
vets taking advantage of the beefed up federal benefits to attend a UC
campus. The new GI Bill will cover all fees plus give vets housing and book
allowances.
"The new financial package is so much more robust, I'm hopeful this will be
the thing that will inspire returning veterans to consider a four-year degree,"
said Ron Williams, coordinator of Re-entry Student and Veterans Programs
at UC Berkeley.
There were about 1,000 veterans enrolled at UC campuses in the last
academic year. Historically many of those have transferred from community
colleges where the current GI benefits stretch farther and those who never
prepared for college can take basic education requirements. But that trend
has been changing.
"UC has been honored to have the number of veterans enrolling at our
campuses growing, and we expect those numbers to increase even more
when the new GI Bill goes into effect in 2009," said Judy Sakaki, vice
president of Student Affairs. "We're committed to doing all we can to help
make their transition from military life to campus life a successful and
rewarding experience."
UC, along with the California State University and the California Community
Colleges system, participates in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Troops to
College initiative aimed at attracting more vets to California's public higher
education institutions.
Each UC campus has a dedicated veterans coordinator to oversee special
programs such as orientations, counseling and other services including
priority registration on some campuses. UC mental health counselors
recently held an in-service training to help them better work with combat
vets who may experience post-traumatic stress syndrome.
This fall semester Williams started a one-unit Veterans in Higher Education
course at UC Berkeley, and 20 vets have enrolled. The course not only
helps orient vets to life as a student, but also, Williams hopes, will dispel
UC Berkeley's anti-military stigma.
"Veterans assume or have been told how they'll be treated here," said
Williams. "While there are isolated incidents of inappropriate comments to
veterans, most students relate to vets as having hands-on experience in
the Middle East. They're met with intellectual curiosity and questions, and
that's what an institution of higher learning is about."
James Lingo, who served three tours with the U.S. Marines in Iraq, said he
feels comfortable on the UC Berkeley campus, where he transferred this
fall from Mt. San Jacinto College in Southern California.
"People said, 'They'll think you're like a baby killer if you go to Berkeley,' "
said Lingo. "But that's not at all the case. People will say the U.S. shouldn't
be in Iraq. After being out there for three tours, I'm not certain we should be
there either."
Since Lingo already used the bulk of his GI benefits at community college,
he said, the campus financial aid counselors suggested he save the
remaining months of benefits for next year when the new GI Bill will pay for
a lot more of his education. They helped him find other financial aid to get
him through his first UC year. Lingo wasn't aware he could do that and is
grateful he took advantage of the campus services for vets.
Such services play a critical role in welcoming and retaining veterans.
Driscoll, a former petty officer second class in the U.S. Navy's search and
rescue unit, found it hard to adjust to attending classes and living with
typical college freshmen. He lived through two helicopter crashes and
suffers daily pain from disabling back injuries.
"I was used to being responsible for hundreds of lives and $50 million
aircraft," said Driscoll, who served in the Navy special search and rescue
operations in both Afghanistan and Iraq. "I was the commander of
teammates who were always dependable. Suddenly I was with all these
students who had no responsibilities. They haven't seen what I've seen."
He also encountered problems with financial aid red tape. Freshman year
he had to appeal his aid package because his military pay was counted as
income, but after his discharge, he'd no longer have a military paycheck.
Driscoll, who has a work-study job in the veterans program at UC Davis,
said keeping in touch with his still-deployed teammates and talking to other
campus vets like program director Phil Knox and mental health counselor
Frank Greer, both Vietnam-era vets, helped him with the healing process.
Lenita Kellstrand, UC Riverside's director of Student Special Services, has
been working with vets on campus since 1978. It used to be rare to have
vets enter UC as freshmen, she said. Now she sees more take that option.
She, like others, expects an increase in freshmen coming directly from
combat service to UC without stopping at a community college where they
work out the kinks of adjusting to civilian life and transitioning to college.
"Almost all the veterans we'll be seeing will have service in Iraq and
Afghanistan," she said. "I think we really have some issues ahead of us. I
think we'll be seeing more adjustments."
Like Kellstrand, UC Davis' Knox has worked with vets since the '70s when
more than 1,100 returning from Vietnam filled the campus. Many of the
issues for the so-called post-9/11 veterans are similar to what Vietnam vets
faced: combat disabilities, post-traumatic stress, anxiety, survivor guilt.
"We're on alert," he said. "We're planning. We know what the issues are."
But things are different in one respect, said Knox, an Army vet who was
stationed in Ethiopia from 1969 to 1972.
"Societal acceptance is a lot different than in the Vietnam era," he said. "At
least they're coming back to a higher level of appreciation. "
Ask it!
Chances are there's something you've always wondered about, meant to
look up or wished someone would explain. Now is your chance to satisfy
that curiosity. E-mail donna.hemmila@ucop.edu your questions, and we'll
find the UC brainiac who can answer it. Science, health, culture, language -
whatever your question, don't be shy. Just Ask it!
Q. What is the biological or chemical explanation for that feeling I get when
I hear a favorite song or see a moving performance, and I get tingles, or
goose bumps, on the back of my neck and arms?
A. Strong responses to music such as chills, shivers, or piloerection aka
goose bumps seem to be accompanied by increased cerebral blood flow in
brain regions thought to be involved in reward/motivation, emotion, and
arousal, including regions such as the ventral striatum, midbrain, amygdala
and prefrontal cortex.
These structures are the same as those activated by eating chocolate,
having sex or taking the most commonly abused drugs.
It's thought that getting goose bumps while listening to music is a type of
fight or flight response – in a sense, the music is hijacking body systems
that usually reward you when you are doing something to promote survival.
Evolutionarily, goose bumps are a common fear-response in the animal
world - they are a means to make the animal look larger by fluffing out the
fur or quills, like in the case of porcupines.
Goose bumps in humans, given our obvious lack of thick body-hair, is a
kind of evolutionary leftover. When it occurs in humans who are highly
attentive to and engrossed in a performance or art object, the "rush" or
"shiver" is highly pleasurable, rather than indicating that there's something
threatening going on. Because this seems to be a sort of mixed nervous
system response, somewhere between fear and pleasure, some scientists
suggest that what we feel in these instances may be an emergent property
of a brain that, through evolution, now reassigns and categorizes abstract
stimuli like music or painting into a subtler experience, beyond the black
and white, pleasure-danger evolutionary dichotomy.
Gabe Turow is the musician-in-residence in Child Life Services at UC San
Francisco Children's Hospital and helped found the annual International
Symposium on Music and the Brain at Stanford University.
Q. Is it true that coffee when prepared in the espresso or cappuccino form
has been found to be a cause of higher cholesterol? I’m very proud of
cutting out fast foods, high fat and my addiction to chocolate - but giving up
my cappuccino will be hard.
A. Coffee contains several substances that may have either beneficial or
harmful effects on the cardiovascular system. Whether coffee consumption
affects blood cholesterol levels has been a matter of debate and
controversy for several years. There are conflicting reports in the literature,
most likely due to differences in coffee preparations used in the studies and
specific study designs.
An important consideration is whether the drink is prepared from filtered or
unfiltered coffee. Unfiltered coffee or coffee prepared using metal filters
contain substances called diterpenes including cafestol and kahweol. High
concentrations of these substances are present in boiled, Turkish and
French press coffees. A recent study reported increases in blood
cholesterol levels in individuals consuming five cups of French press coffee
per day for four weeks. Thus media headlines citing that “coffee drinking
increases cholesterol” were based on a study where people consumed very
high amounts of non-filtered coffee. In espresso coffee, the small serving
size makes it an intermediate source of cafestol and kahweol (4 mg/cup).
Moderate (one to two cups per day) coffee consumption has not been
associated with negative cardiovascular effects. Just like with other dietary
recommendations for health, moderation is the key. Having a cappuccino
should not pose any health risk, however, the healthiest choice would be
non- or low-fat versions of the drink.
Sheri Zidenberg-Cherr is a UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the
Department of Nutrition at UC Davis. Her bi-monthly publication, Nutrition
Perspectives, provides research-based information on food and nutrition.
People
Getting the bugs out
By Kate Callen
As a young lad, Doug Yanega started his first
bug collection. Boy, has he outdone himself. As
the senior scientist at UC Riverside's
Entomology Research Museum, he now looks
after roughly 3 million bug specimens. Got a
bug that's bugging you? Send Yanega a photo,
and he'll help you ID it.
The most exotic library in the University of California system is 75 years
old, occupies a small building and has 3 million holdings, most of them
four-winged and six-legged.
The Entomology Research Museum at UC Riverside is legendary among
insect experts worldwide for its extensive collection of bug specimens. Its
primary mission is research collaboration and support: At any given time,
90 percent of its holdings are on loan to scientists around the globe. But it
has proven equally valuable in conserving insect species and acquainting
Californians with bugs that can help and harm us.
"Public education is an essential part of what anybody does at a university,
and that is certainly true here," said Doug Yanega, the museum's senior
scientist. "People come to us all the time when they need help identifying
bugs, and we regularly take specimens to schools for outreach purposes."
With Jacques Cousteau as one of his boyhood heroes, Yanega has always
had a fascination for fauna. But growing up in New York City put him on the
path to entomology.
"New York doesn't have a lot of wildlife, but it has a lot of bugs," he said.
"Every time you turn over a brick, you discover a new little world. Like many
kids, I had a bug collection, and I've never lost my fascination with them."
After completing his undergraduate studies at Cornell, grad school at the
University of Kansas and post-doctoral work at the Illinois Natural History
Survey, Yanega spent three years doing field research in Brazil then
headed to UC Riverside in 1999.
He was drawn to the museum by its rich history, dating back to1923 when
its first specimens were transferred from the California State Insectary at
Sacramento. The breadth of California's native insect populations makes
UC an entomologist's paradise. By Yanega's estimate, the combined
holdings of the Riverside, Davis and Berkeley campuses rank UC among
the world's top five entomological collections.
The museum is best known for its holdings of bees and parasitic wasps –
flying insects important to agriculture. The museum also has a trove of
terrestrial insects from Southern California and Arizona, with an emphasis
on native populations of desert bugs. It has an impressive array of Mexican
bugs, primarily from Baja California and Sonora. But it also includes
species from Thailand, Russia, India and Australia, with prize insects like
the menacing Madagascar hissing roach and the iridescent Panamanian
orchard bee.
The collection is nestled in the ground floor of the compact two-story
museum building. With classical music playing in the background, Yanega,
staff researchers and graduate students keep busy with an array of tasks
that include sifting through the debris of insect traps, peering through
microscopes at mystery bugs and cataloging specimens.
In his decade at the museum, Yanega has helped reorganize the collection
from an alphabetical cataloging system to a more useful taxonomic system,
and he has overseen the installation of mobile cabinets that have increased
storage space and improved accessibility. But he does more than merely
tend the existing collection.
Yanega and his colleagues are passionate about discovering new bugs –
nine out of 10 of the world's bugs don't have names, he said.
Like many entomologists, he takes a special interest in dispelling bug
myths: Spiders, for example, are routinely accused of wrongs they didn't
commit.
"There is a tide of falsehoods about spiders, and the medical community
helps perpetuate it," said Yanega. "When people in California seek
treatment for small necrotic wounds, doctors often blame brown recluse
spiders. But those spiders only live in the Midwest. There are 20 other
more likely causes, and some are life-threatening, like methicillin-resistant
staphylococcus."
Another widespread myth involves the species that is Yanega's research
focus.
"As an expert on bees, I've gotten caught up in the discussion of colony
collapse disorder, which has generated a lot of misinformation," he said.
"The phenomenon only involves honeybees, a species that isn't native to
North America. They're imported to begin with, and we can always import
more. And we aren't even certain the extent to which this occurs and the
amount of damage it has done."
The museum scientists work closely with agricultural researchers who track
new trends in bugs that are either decimating California farmlands or
feeding on pests that feed on crops. And they answer a steady stream of
questions from people who are spooked by the sudden appearance of a
monstrous-looking bug.
One of the most popular offerings on the museum's Web site is its Insect
FAQ page, a pictorial menu of weird California bugs that provoke the most
inquiries. They include the huge but harmless Jerusalem cricket and the
pesky carpenter bees (which "have a tendency to scare the bejeezus out of
people," Yanega said).
In addition to his work at the museum and his own studies of bee
populations, Yanega spends a lot of his personal time contributing to
entomology entries on Wikipedia, which allows him to share his expertise
with a global audience.
"One of the things that got me interested in science was seeing how
Jacques Cousteau reached so many people," he said. "Public impact is
really important to me. A scientist who just does research and nothing else
isn't giving anything back."
If you have an insect you need to identify, e-mail a digital photo to
dyanega@ucr.edu
Kate Callen is a staff writer in UCOP Strategic Communications.
Featured campus: UC Merced
Center opens doors to college
Fresno high school students got to
experience university life when UC
Merced's new Upward Bound program
kicked off this year. Support from
PG&E and Paramount Farming is
helping fund the campus's Center for
Educational Partnerships to bring more
low-income and first-generation
students to college. Read more at:
www.ucmerced.edu/featuredetail.asp?featureid=141
Systemwide News
Mark Yudof – the first 100 days
On Sept. 23 Mark Yudof reached a 100-day milestone
as UC president. Learn what he's been working on and
where he sees opportunities for UC to lead the pack in
higher education and service to California.
Mark Yudof reached the 100-day milestone of his tenure as UC president
by taking a major step forward on one of the first priorities he announced
after assuming office in June – the development of an accountability report
for the UC system.
Yudof issued a draft report on Sept. 21 that represents the first attempt to
comprehensively assess UC's progress in meeting key teaching, research
and public service goals. The draft report contains 102 performance
measures in a range of high-priority areas such as student access and
affordability, faculty and staff diversity, student graduation rates, graduate
enrollments, technology transfer to society and level of private donations.
The draft report is posted for public review and comment over the next four
months with the final updated version to be published in May.
"An accountability framework is critical for transparency, it’s critical for
performance measurement of the institution, and it’s important for the
personal accountability of the leaders of the institution," Yudof said.
UC has collected and reported much of the data for years, but the
accountability initiative represents the first time the information has been
pulled together into one report and made widely available to the public. The
report will be issued annually, Yudof said, and will get better year by year.
Yudof said he recognizes that not all the good work of a university can be
measured quantitatively, and he expects to add quality measurements over
time.
"Just because you can't measure everything, doesn't mean you shouldn't
measure anything," he said.
In addition to launching the accountability initiative, Yudof has spent his first
100 days focusing on a number of projects aimed at bolstering the
university's fiscal health, increasing transparency and building a strong
leadership team.
"While the first 100 days of any new job are daunting, I believe we are
making good progress," Yudof said. "I know I have learned a great deal
about the University of California and have a deeper appreciation for the
amazing people who work here and the legacy that predates me.
Furthermore, I have an even greater appreciation for the challenges and
opportunities that lie ahead."
Restructuring Office of the President. Staffing in the central administrative
offices reduced from 1,750 to 1,344, not including direct reports to the
Regents and self-supporting enterprises. Further reductions are
anticipated, and the president will present Regents with a revised and
smaller UCOP budget in November.
Yudof also is working to ensure that the president and Board of Regents
are focused on strategy and oversight in productive ways, not overly
involved in transactional approvals that are better handled by those closer
to the activities involved.
“In an $18 billion enterprise, the CEO simply can’t monitor hundreds of
individual transactions each week,” he told the Board of Regents this
month. “A better way to ensure compliance is to continue to require full
disclosure, to hold the chancellors accountable for their compensation and
other decisions, and to make greater use of random audit and compliance
reviews.”
Hiring leadership. Since assuming the UC presidency Yudof has hired
Steve Juarez as associate vice president and director for state government
relations, Alan Hoffman as senior vice president of external relations and
John Stobo as senior vice president for clinical and health services. A
search is under way for a new provost to take over from interim Provost
Robert Grey and a new assistant vice president of federal government
relations in Washington.
Fund distributions to campuses. Yudof also has been focusing on the
university’s funding streams and the processes by which funding that
comes to the Office of the President is distributed to the campuses. His
review of these issues will continue, with an eye to both achieving greater
transparency and ensuring that dollars are made available for campus
activities to the greatest extent possible.
At the same time Yudof is focusing on these structural and expenditure
issues, he has laid out an agenda of academic and financial challenges.
They include:
• Maintaining UC's competitive position in faculty recruitment and
retention
• Developing a funding model that replaces or supplements the current
model
• Enhancing research competitiveness and the capacity to compete for
outstanding graduate students
• Ensuring UC's accessibility and affordability to students of all
backgrounds and achieving a diversity that reflects the demographics
of California
• Making sure that staff are rewarded and feel valued for the important
role they play in the institution
• Providing support for a health education and clinical care program
that meets the growing needs of our state
• Contributing innovative ideas and resources to address the national
K-12 education crisis
• Working more closely with community college leaders to bolster
transfer rates to UC
Yudof said he is placing a priority on developing an effective partnership
with the incoming chancellor of the California Community Colleges, current
state Sen. Jack Scott.
"This is an area where modest investment can reap large dividends," Yudof
said. "We have solid data that transfer students who enter UC in their junior
year perform very well relative to students who enter in the freshman year.
If we can increase our transfer rates by a few percentage points per year,
the cumulative outcome over a 10-year period would be monumental."
In furthering UC's commitment to K-12 education, Yudof is evaluating the
university's existing programs aimed at assisting K-12 students to
determine which are most effective. He plans to call together a small group
of leading education thinkers from around the state and within the
university to discuss UC's engagement with K-12 schools and community
colleges.
"Many of the issues we're facing are not unique to the University of
California," Yudof said. "All of public higher education across the country is
facing these challenges. But we have a special responsibility as the
stewards of the best public university in the world to be leaders in
addressing these challenges."
New retirement funding policy adopted
UC Regents have approved a UC Retirement Plan
funding policy that will determine the restart of
employer and employee contributions starting July 1,
2009. The actual contribution amounts will be
determined at a later date. Read more at:
http://atyourservice.ucop.edu/news/general/0809-
judyboyette_message.html
UC faces ongoing budget challenges
With state fiscal woes still looming, UC's Vice President
for Budget Patrick Lenz sees a difficult funding climate
next year as UC's utility and benefits costs rise and
more students seek enrollment.
The 2008-09 state budget funds the University of California at essentially
the same level as in 2007-08, but the spending plan leaves UC with other
long-term concerns.
The overdue budget, a compromise between Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
and the Legislature, does include nearly $100 million to UC that was earlier
cut from the university's budget but that the governor restored in his May
Revision. However, the final budget does not provide support for the
additional 5,000 students UC expects to enroll this year and leaves UC
vulnerable for cuts in coming years.
“We are gratified that the governor and Legislature have brought this year’s
state budget process to a conclusion,” said UC President Mark Yudof. “The
final budget for UC is probably the best we could have achieved in a
difficult fiscal environment, but it falls far short in terms of maintaining and
enhancing our competitiveness in educational and research programs. We
will need to do more with less.”
UC already has responded to the budget crisis by reducing administrative
staff, cutting administrative spending by more than $20 million at the Office
of the President alone and raising student fees 7.4 percent for the 2008-09
school year.
“While we appreciate the support for UC and not further cutting our budget
this year, we are concerned that if the overall budget plan doesn’t
permanently close the state’s structural deficit, we’ll be in a very difficult
funding climate in 2009-10,” said Patrick Lenz, UC vice president for
budget. “The best-case scenario is our revenue would stay flat in 2009-10
and the worst-case scenario is we could lose a significant amount of
money.”
Meanwhile, UC, California State University and California Community
Colleges leaders have jointly promoted the importance of investing in public
higher education. For every $1 the state invests in a student’s higher
education, the state’s economy receives a net return of $3.
“This is a critical crossroads for the university,” said Lenz, who previously
held senior budget positions at CSU and the California Community
Colleges. “Does the public want a University of California that is going to be
a private institution, or are they really interested in putting more public
resources into offering higher education opportunities for our students?”
UC expects to receive about half of the $400 million capital facilities budget
it was seeking for this year, which could delay some projects. Meanwhile,
utility and health benefit costs are rising and faculty and staff salaries lag
the competition.
“We have some very pressing demands,” Lenz said. “We enrolled 5,000
more students than the state was willing to fund.” Providing student access
and funding the university’s increasing health care and energy costs means
campuses will have to come up with about $100 million to cover these
costs, he said.
The answers aren’t easy.
“While we are well on our way to reducing administrative costs and
achieving greater efficiencies, belt tightening alone will not be enough to
meet the financial challenges ahead for the university,” Yudof said.
“Increasing student populations, rising costs of health care, escalating
competition to attract and retain world-class faculty, and the challenges of
maintaining a fully funded retirement system all contribute to higher costs.
Simply maintaining the status quo in funding from the state will not enable
us to meet these challenges for California over the longer term.”
By keeping the university’s funding flat relative to last year, the 2008-09
budget does not provide the normal state funding for employee
compensation increases. The administration and Board of Regents are
looking closely at this issue, as well as health insurance costs for 2009, and
expect to clarify in the next few weeks what the final state budget dictates
in terms of employee compensation and benefits.
“The university is under some difficult financial pressure,” Lenz said. “I think
it’s a multiyear problem.”
Alec Rosenberg is an Our University staff contributor.
School of Global Health moves ahead
Planning is under way for UC's first multicampus,
systemwide school. The proposed school will prepare
students to tackle growing global health issues from an
interdisciplinary perspective. Read more at:
www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/18579
More News
UC Draft Accountability Report released
www.universityofcalifornia.edu/accountability
Open enrollment begins Oct. 30
http://atyourservice.ucop.edu/briefing/2008_sept/oe_2009.html
UC senior VP health sciences and services appointed
www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/18591
Regents approve UCSF Mission Bay hospital complex
www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/18593
Staff advisors to the Regents want to hear from you
Contact them at: www.universityofcalifornia.edu/staffadvisors/woym.html
College women have greater financial hardships, stress
Read more at: www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/18586
Science Today: Weekly roundup of UC science research
Read more at: www.ucop.edu/sciencetoday/index.php
For more news, visit UC Newsroom at:
www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news
Working at UCOP: Stories for and about Office of the
President staff
OP communications consolidation moves forward
By Donna Hemmila
A new communications unit within the External Relations division will unify
several communications functions operating in different parts of the Office
of the President. The restructuring will better leverage resources and
provide service to more OP departments.
The creation of a new centralized communications unit will transform the
way the Office of the President tells the story of UC's public contributions to
the people of California.
Housed under the External Relations division, this newly created
department will bring together editorial and creative design services in print,
Web and video under one organizational umbrella. This department will
also be responsible for media relations, speechwriting and marketing and
branding efforts, all under the leadership of Alan Hoffman, newly appointed
senior vice president of External Relations.
"Creating a highly skilled, integrated external relations operation that meets
the highest standards of professionalism and service to the University of
California is my first priority as I begin my new assignment," said Hoffman,
who joined UCOP in August. "This division will act proactively, plan jointly,
work with campus colleagues and Office of the President clients
collaboratively and responsively, and above all succeed in telling the
compelling story of the University of California to the people of California."
The External Relations division also includes state and federal
governmental relations, institutional advocacy, and alumni relations. The
consolidation of the communications unit began several months ago with
the goal of achieving:
• One integrated office working together toward shared goals
• Better leveraging of resources and content
• More proactive planning to anticipate needs
• Integration and execution of UC messages
• Consistent brand identity
• Broader range of services available to more departments
• Greater efficiency and economies of scale
• Clear career paths and opportunities for cross-training
The consolidation will bring together communications functions being
performed by 34 positions spread out over the existing Strategic
Communications department, Human Resources and Benefits, Student
Affairs and other UCOP departments. The new communications unit will
hold 27 positions, which will be filled on a competitive basis beginning with
the leadership positions. Job openings will be posted on the UCOP
employment site. Hoffman said he will begin recruitment in the next few
weeks and expects to complete most of the hiring by the end of January.
For more information on the communications unit and other restructuring
efforts, visit www.universityofcalifornia.edu/future/workunderway.html
Donna Hemmila is editor of Our University.
UCOP business travel has changed
Visit the Connexxus online portal to set up your traveler profile and become
acquainted with the new booking procedures.
Read more at: http://www.ucop.edu/ucoptravel
Best thing about my job?
Martha Winnacker is executive director of the
Academic Senate.
"Being at the heart of where the faculty play their
key role in the governance of the university is very
cool," she says.
Did you know?
UC students and alumni captured 43 medals during the Summer Olympics
– 13 gold, 24 silver and six bronze.
UC teams won four NCAA championships this year: three for UCLA and
one for Berkeley.
UCLA is the all-time NCAA title holder with 103.
Athletes who attended UC campuses include Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
(UCLA), Billy Beane (UC San Diego), Natalie Coughlin (UC Berkeley),
Jason Lezak (UC Santa Barbara), Greg Louganis (UC Irvine), J.T.
O’Sullivan (UC Davis), Troy Percival (UC Riverside), Jackie Robinson
(UCLA), Todd Rogers (UC Santa Barbara) and Helen Wills Moody (UC
Berkeley).
Send Your Feedback
What would you like to read about in future editions of Our University? Send your
comments and story suggestions to donna.hemmila@ucop.edu. Our University is
produced by Strategic Communications, University Affairs, UC Office of the President.