Systemwide Academic Senate Vice-Chair 2014-15

The Academic Council elected me to serve as Systemwide Academic Senate Vice Chair for 2014-15 and Chair for 2015-16.  This required me to relocate from UC Riverside to the Bay Area, near the UC Office of the President in Oakland, California.  A stipend was provided for the relocation, so I rented an apartment near Walnut Creek for those two years.  I was able to commute by BART almost door-to-door between my apartment and the UCOP headquarters in less time than it usually took to drive between UC Riverside and my home.  I returned to my family and home in Riverside on alternate weekends, on average, to look after my local obligations.

Vice-Chair, 2014-15

Two major issues during 2014-15 concerned yet another reduction to UC’s retirement benefits and improving the transfer process from the community colleges to UC.  Systemwide Chair Mary Gilly and I were deeply involved in both.

2014-15 was the second year of President Napolitano’s term.  She and the chancellors recognized that not adjusting in-state tuition for inflation essentially acted as a ~2% reduction in funds available to educate students annually.  With the support of the Regents, she proposed a modest, inflation-based increase in tuition at the November, 2014 Regents meeting, the second one that I attended as a “Faculty Advisor” to the Regents.

Governor Brown attended the meeting and was strongly opposed to any tuition increase.  His message was, in essence, that UC doesn’t need more money, it needs to become more efficient.  He also brought a list of proposals that he thought could make UC more efficient and, in his frequent words, “bend the cost curve.”  These discussions occurred in the Regents Committee for Long-Range Planning.  In that discussion, former Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins suggested that UC could reduce its long-term expenses by capping all pensions following the California Public Employee Pension Reform Act  (PEPRA) to reduce the costs of UC’s retirement benefit, thereby freeing up additional funds for teaching.  Eventually, a “Committee of Two” (Co2) comprising the Governor, President Napolitano, and supporting staff took all recommendations under advisement in early 2015.

 The result of these confidential meetings was a “Budget Framework,” presented to, and adopted by, the Regents in May, 2015, that provided for predictable increases in State funding and $436 M in one-time Proposition 2 funds for UCRP in exchange for: 1) no tuition increases over four years, 2) evaluation of potential efficiencies, and 3) a new retirement tier incorporating the PEPRA cap.  The University of California had already expressed its concerns about the non-competitiveness of pensions capped at the PEPRA limit for faculty, (about $122,000 at that time), so the agreement allowed for a “supplement” to the new retirement plan for certain employee groups. 

I saw a direct path from a proposal for a modest, inflation-adjusted increase in in-state tuition to an even less generous retirement tier for future UC employees.  Unfortunately, most legislators did not appreciate that any savings from a cheaper retirement plan offered to new hires accrue slowly over decades, whereas the needs for additional funds to teach current students accrue immediately.  Much of my efforts during my year as Senate Chair were to meet the Senate’s responsibilities to implement these Budget Framework Initiatives and the new retirement option as described later.

The University of California had already committed to enhancing the transfer of students from community colleges to UC before the Budget Framework Initiative was adopted, but this process was nevertheless rolled into the agreement with the Governor.  In short, the different campuses did not all require the same range and level of course preparation for transfer.  The differing requirements made it difficult for community college students to meet all requirements for admission to all nine UC general campuses. The Senate therefore was charged to develop and provide sufficient guidance and “pathways” so that community college students would know which courses they needed to take to satisfy admissions requirements in their major for as many UC campuses that offered that major. 

Beginning in the Spring of 2015 with Chair Mary Gilly and me, and continuing in the Fall of 2015 with Vice-chair Jim Chalfant and me, we convened meetings of the chairs and undergraduate advisors of the 20 largest and most popular majors for transfer to develop a list of courses that would satisfy admission requirements for any campus within that major.  It sometimes took a lot of negotiation and a bit of give and take among the campuses, but we were able to develop the first set of Transfer Pathways by the end of 2015.