UC Commission on the Future

This page was created by the UCD GSA Chair, Malaika K. Singleton to share information about the UC Commission on the Future and her work on the Commission's Research Strategies Working Group as the system-wide representative for graduate students. This page is for all UC students to view and leave feedback (questions, concerns, comments) at the bottom in the comment box. Or if you prefer to contact Malaika privately feel free to email her at gsachair@ucdavis.edu. Please distribute widely!

UC Commission on the Future
UC Commission on the Future Listening Tour
Working Groups of the Commission
GSA Chair's Service on the Research Strategies Working Group
Articles about the Commission

UC Commission on the Future

Charge of this Commission

Commission Membership

Public forums will be held on December 8, 1:30 - 4:30 p.m. UCSF Mission Bay Community Center, 1675 Owens St., San Francisco and there will be a January forum in Southern California (details on date/location to be determined).

Policy Briefs

Presentations

Fact Sheets

News and Communications

Please provide Feedback to the Commission using this link or feel free to leave comments about this particular page and the Chair's service on the Commission down at the bottom of this page. Thanks!

UC Commission on the Future Listening Tour

Members of the Commission have or will visit all of the UC campuses.

On November 30, 2009 the Commission visited Davis in what was advertised to us student leaders as a public meeting with a public comment portion toward the end of the meeting, after invited speakers and presenters. However, when the student leaders (representing undergraduate, graduate, and professional students) went to the meeting we saw heavy security around the Alumni Center, we were asked to give our names upon entry, and those who wanted to speak during the "public comment" portion of the meeting had to sign up to do so. Prior to our presentations, we students were informed by our friends outside that they were not being let in. This was highly disappointing to the students of UC Davis and only served to re-enforce the idea that this Commission is not valid and really does not care to seek input from UC students. Whether or not that is true remains to be seen at this point but it was not a very good impression. However, the student leaders who presented delivered a strong message to our administration, the Regents, and the Commission. We intend to publish and distribute our presentation in both written and video format in the very near future.

Here is a recent news brief on the Commission Commission forum draws ideas for UC's future.pdf

Working Groups of the Commission

Size and Shape of UC

Education and Curriculum

Access and Affordability.

Funding Strategies

Research Strategies

GSA Chair's Service on the Research Strategies Working Group

To find out more about the Commission and the Research Strategies Workgroup, please visit the Commission website

Charge of this Working Group:

"The purpose of our group is to enhance the research excellence of UC as a one of the premier public research universities in the world. We will examine opportunities, barriers, funding strategies, incentives, and educational opportunities as we enhance research conducted in UC. Core to this endeavor is research conducted by graduate students, so your participation is crucial."

This working group will:

consider and develop recommendations for new models for various aspects of the research enterprise, including graduate student support, support services, research funding, indirect cost recovery, collaborations, policies and administration. New models for collaborative research within campuses and across campuses, with industry partners, and the development of hybrid models will be explored.
identify best practices in developing and delivering research experiences to undergraduate, graduate, post-doctoral fellows and professional students.

December 2, 2009: The Research Strategies Working Group of the Commission had a video/teleconference. We had an introduction of the group which includes faculty representatives from all 10 campuses (UCSD is still being confirmed), one Dean, 2 Vice Chancellors, 1 Grad Student (myself), 1 postdoc, 2 people "external" to the university (one of whom is retired), 1 staff representative, and 1 person from the Board of Regents.

We also discussed what we would each like to see come about as a result of the group's work. I spoke about a variety of graduate student issues that included: creating a more engaging and rewarding experience for graduate students which I tied into our current retention problem-not only as an issue of why graduate students are not finishing but what impact that is having on our university financially and otherwise, services for international students, mentoring, financial support, and support for work/life balance. I also reiterated a point that was made earlier by another member who stated that research strategies should emphasize the synergy of the 3-part mission of the UC rather than choosing one over the other.

I also spoke about the importance of undergraduates in research (recruitment of future graduate students) and expressed my desire to have an Undergrad rep in the group but I was told that the Co-Chairs had some trouble with nominations for this particular working group but that there were undergrads nominated to the other working groups. I had support from the postdoc rep and a couple of faculty reps who supported what I said so I felt pretty good about our meeting and I intend to contribute as much as I can despite the perception of the Commission.

Some of the other topics that were discussed as goals/concerns of this group were:

Maximizing recovery (cost recovery) from research
Policy changes
New areas of research; open academic environment
The importance of UC's research to California should be emphasized (i.e. advocacy)
The increase in federal research funding is likely to be temporary and there will be future cuts to NIH & NSF
We need to leverage cross-campus strengths and create cross-campus projects for grads
We must advocate for our public university
We must acknowledge research across the breadth; acknowledging the differences and strengths of each individual campus
Technology and the concept of a mixed future virtual world
We must increase collaboration across campuses while emphasizing research, teaching, and service
We must emphasize and support basic research as the core of the research mission
Our values and principles must be emphasized along with the discussion of monetary values
We must support and incentivize collaboration
We must provide high quality mentoring and engagement for undergraduates and graduate students
Revenue-generation
Increasing efficiency
National and International Collaboration
Making research more efficient (for example: we should decrease the amount of administrative tasks that our faculty members do so that they can spend more time on research, teaching, service, etc.)
UC must focus on doing things that other universities in this region can't do
We must provide a sustainable funding model for graduate students in the Humanities
We must focus more on the legacy when postdocs and graduate students leave the UC; what is their legacy?
We should be training graduate students for future jobs. The degrees are valuable but many degree-holders don't understand their value and don't know what to do with them.
We must keep in mind that a lot of solo work is done in art, humanities, and the social sciences when we discuss collaboration. We must also keep in mind that research in these areas is cheaper than most other kinds of research done at UC.

From these topics we envision that various subgroups will be formed to work on these issues.

Please view the notes Topics and Comments for Research Strategies Working Group from the Campus Listening Forums and.doc of Co-Chair, Mary Croughan, for more details on the topics that were discussed during this first tele/videoconference. This is a consolidated report that covers the topics, concerns and comments she received during her listening tours of campuses and from the first RSW conference call.

I did my best to keep track of who was on this particular call so that students can get a sense of who the people are who work on this commission. Here are the members of the Research Strategies Working Group and others who were on the video/teleconference for this first meeting (updated to include those on second call as well) To download and view the full roster, please see the RSW roster.pdf:

Henry T. Yang, Co-Chair of the Research Strategies Working Group, Chancellor of UC Santa Barbara and Professor of Mechanical Engineering. You can read more about Chancellor Yang here, here, here, and here.
Mary Croughan, Co-Chair of the Research Strategies Working Group; Immediate Past Chair of the Academic Senate, Professor, Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences; and Epidemiology and Biostatistics, UCSF. You can read more about Dr. Croughan here and here.
Alan Liu, Chair and Professor in the English Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. You can read more about Dr. Liu here
Andrea Ghez, Astronomer and Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UCLA. You can read more about Dr. Ghez here and here
Cheryl Hayashi, Professor of Biology at UC Riverside. You can read more about Dr. Hayashi here, here, here, and here.
Chris Kello, Associate Professor, School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts at UC Merced. You can read more about Dr. Kello here
Christine Des Jarlais, Assistant Dean, Graduate Division, UC San Francisco. You can read more about Dean Des Jarlais here, and here
Gail Hershatter, Professor in the Department of History at UC Santa Cruz. You can read more about Dr. Hershatter here
Gail Riley, Legislative Director at the University of California Office of the President.
Heidi Schutz, Postdoctoral Scholar Representative, Department of Biology at UC Riverside.
Janet Broughton, Dean of Arts and Humanities and Professor of Philosophy at UC Berkeley. You can read more about Dr. Broughton here, here, and here.
John H. Birely, Associate Vice President for Laboratory Management at University of California's Laboratory Management. You can read more about Dr. Birely here.
John Crawford, Associate Professor of Dance & Media Arts; Director, UCI Dance Film Festival; Director, Digital Arts Minor at UC Irvine. You can read more about Dr. Crawford here.
Michael Witherell, Vice Chancellor for Research and Professor of Physics at UC Santa Barbara. You can read more about Dr. Witherell here and here.
Patricia Conrad, Professor in the Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California-Davis. You can read more about Dr. Conrad here and here.
Patricia Rogue, Associate Vice President - International Management Department. You can read more about Rogue leveling spec or here
Patrick Schlesinger, Assistant Vice Chancellor - Research Administration and Compliance at UC Berkeley
Ronald Gronsky, Professor, and The Arthur C. and Phyllis G. Oppenheimer Chair in Advanced Materials Analysis in the Department of Materials Science and Engineeing at UC Berkeley. You can read more about Dr. Gronsky here and here.
Samuel J. Traina, Professor in the School of Natural Sciences and Vice Chancellor of Research & Graduate Studies at UC Merced. You can read more about Dr. Traina here and here.
Steve Beckwith (ex officio), Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies-University of California Office of Research and Professor of Astronomy at UC Berkeley. You can read more about Dr. Beckwith here, here, here, and here under ORGS review.
Steve Mayo, Professor of Biology and Chemistry, California Institute of Technology. You can read more about Dr. Mayo here
Stanley B. Prusiner, Director of the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases and Professor of Neurology and Biochemistry at the University of California, San Francisco. You can read more about Dr. Prusiner here, here, here, here, here, and many other places as he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1997 for discovering prions.
Norm Augustine, retired chairman and chief executive officer of the Lockheed Martin Corporation, the nation’s largest defense contractor. You can read more about him here, here, and here.
Norman J. Pattiz, Member of the UC Board of Regents. You can read more about him here
Tom Tomich, Professor, Director of Agricultural Sustainability Institute, UC Davis. You can read more about Dr. Tomich here,here, here, here, here, and here.
William De La Pena, Professor of Ophthalmology and Member of the UC Board of Regents. You can read more about Dr. De La Pena here
Jenny Gautier, Program Coordinator for University of California Office of Research and Graduate Studies.
Annie Shaw, Associate Secretary of the Regents, University of California.
Tricia Lyall, Secretary and Chief of Staff to the Regents, University of California.
Marsha Kelman, Associate Vice President-Policy and Analysis, UCOP.

December 17, 2009: Prior to today's meeting, all members of the RSW group were sent a ranking form, RSW Issues Ranking Form.xls, to rank our priorities from the topics discussed at the previous meeting. Please review the ranking form and submit feedback if you'd like.

I ranked my priorities in the following order. As always, I'm open to feedback and can change my ranking if you have additional ideas and reasons as to why the rankings should change:

1) Faculty and Graduate Students
2) Research Mission and Principles
3) Advocacy
4) Research and Education
5) Additional Issues of Concern (Increasing Diversity Amongst Faculty, Staff, and Students; Formation of Multi-Campus, Interdisciplinary Teams to Secure Funding)
6) Support Services For Research
7) Incentives and Disincentives
8) Research Services and Support
9) Compliance and Risk Management
10) The Administrative and Management Costs of Research
11) Internal Research Funds
12) Indirect Costs (IC) and Indirect Costs Recovery (ICR)
13) Technology Transfer and Private Industry

To clarify, the ranking is still underway and hasn't been finalized yet. In the end, there could be a grouping of topics rather than a ranking of individual topics. I will update the page when I know more.

In addition to discussing the best way to perform this ranking/prioritizing, we also had a presentation from Christophe Lecuyer, UCOP & Office of Research Economist, on Indirect Costs/Recovery. I will update this section with more info on that presentation when it is in a more complete form to lessen confusion here.

January 13, 2010: Today was the deadline to submit our rankings of the RSW topics which were grouped into four main categories (as opposed to the long list of topics above). Please see this document, RSW Topic Summary DRAFT.doc, for a description of the groups. To clarify, the composer of this list states that, "this list of four groupings is a draft and meant as a starting point to converge on a few key directions, as well as serving as the basis for forming subgroups of the RSW. This is by no means the final charge for the workgroup or any subgroup, an exhaustive list of the issue to address, or a list of recommendations the group should produce. However, it does provide a foundation for our discussions."

In response, here are my rankings of the suggested topics:

_1_ A. Defining Research Mission and Principles
_2_ B. Strategies for UC Internal Research Funding and Management
_4_ C. Barriers, Challenges, Incentives and Support for UC Research
_3_ D. Recommend a Funding Model for UC Research

We are in the process of scheduling our next meeting and I will update the page with more info at that time.