The University of California Board of Regents plans to focus on attracting donors to the University by building up its social media fundraising efforts and working closely with the entertainment industry, regents said at their bimonthly meeting Wednesday.
New fundraising projects include the UC Promise Platform, through which students and alumni can make promises on social media platforms like Facebook in exchange for donations to the UC.
For example, the regents could promise to wear rainbow wigs during one of their meetings if individuals would promise monetary gifts to the UC, said UC Regents Chair Sherry Lansing.
The initiative is part of Project You Can, a systemwide effort to fundraise $1 billion for student support by 2014, said Daniel Dooley, senior vice president of external relations for the UC.
Regents said at the meeting that they hope corporate sponsors, celebrities and other famous figures will join in and help garner popularity for the project, which will be launched in October.
Dooley said the University is working with the Entertainment Industry Foundation, a nonprofit, charitable organization of the entertainment industry that is helping the University find celebrities and corporate sponsors to endorse their campaign.
During the meeting, Dooley thanked Lansing, a former CEO of Paramount Pictures and board member of the Entertainment Industry Foundation, for using her connections with the entertainment industry to help the social media campaign gain momentum.
Officials from the UC Office of the President also presented an update on the UC Working Smarter Initiative, a project launched two years ago that aims to redirect $500 million from administrative spending into teaching and research.
In two years, the initiative saved and raised $289 million by improving administrative efficiency, and UC officials aim to achieve their $500 million goal partly by collaborating with the California State University system on efficiency projects, according to a UC Office of the President report.
UC regents also approved the design for a new $104.7 million, 120,000-square-foot teaching and learning center to be built for the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine at Le Conte Avenue and Tiverton Drive.
UCLA officials launched the project to modernize and “upgrade” the way students learn at the medical school, according to a report from the UC Office of the President .
The school currently has teaching spaces suited for traditional lectures and class labs, but the new center will house smaller classrooms with audio-visual and video-conferencing technologies for more collaborative learning. The center will also have environmentally friendly features, such as open-air corridors and reflective roof materials to minimize energy use.
Construction of the center is set to begin in March 2014 and continue through August 2016.
While some regents voiced enthusiasm for new fundraising efforts and new building projects, some students criticized having to pay costs they said were incurred by the regents, such as a 20 percent increase in UC Student Health Insurance Plan fees students will possibly pay next year and a $60 tuition surcharge the regents have been collecting to cover the costs of a class action lawsuit.
In 2003, the regents raised tuition for professional students in response to budget cuts after promising they would not do so. That year, professional students sued the University for tuition increase refunds in the cases Kashmiri v. Regents and Luquetta v. Regents, said Dianne Klein, a UC spokeswoman.
The University was forced to refund the students and pay damages – a total of $42 million for Kashmiri v. Regents – and in 2007 began charging the whole UC student body a $60 tuition surcharge to pay for the costs.
Today, the regents will vote on whether or not to continue charging all UC students the extra surcharge to pay for $49 million in University costs incurred from Luquetta v. Regents.
During the public comments period on Wednesday, Erik Green, external vice president of the UC Santa Cruz Graduate Student Association, said he thinks that the regents, not students, should pay for their own shortfalls.
“By extending (the tuition surcharge), we are sending a chilling and silencing message that students are in a lose-lose situation if they challenge the UC in court,” said Green, who said he opposes the extension at the meeting.
Ex-officio regent Gov. Jerry Brown also attended the meeting, as a member of the Special Committee to Consider the Selection of a President, which met in closed session.
The regents will today discuss the search for a UC president to replace Mark Yudof, who is set to step down in August, after adding a special open session to the agenda.