[Online Exclusive] UC Regents discuss admissions, Los Alamos

SAN FRANCISCO “”mdash; The UC Board of Regents met today,
discussing the University of California’s role in training
math and science teachers and recent admissions trends, in what
appeared to be a fairly average board meeting. Despite the lack of
important issues to be decided today, the regents were met with an
earful of protest, from UC students and nearly every union the UC
employs. The regents aren’t voting on fee increases for
professional students until Thursday, but dozens of UC students
““ undergraduate, graduate, and professional ““ were out
in force at the regents meeting to voice their opposition to rising
fees and decreasing financial aid. The proposed fee increases,
which are on top of the three percent increase the regents approved
in November, raise fees for professional students as much as $2600.
In addition, the regents will vote to impose a $700 temporary
educational fee, which would increase to $1050 next year, to cover
the UC’s losses in recent class action lawsuits regarding fee
hikes. When the regents entered the Laurel Heights campus of UC San
Francisco, they were greeted by sign-wielding picketers from the
California Nurses Association, who were scheduled to strike at five
UC campuses Thursday. Not long after UCSF nurses appealed to the
regents during the public comment period for higher pay and better
staffing ratios, an injunction was issued in Sacramento Superior
Court prohibiting the planned strike Thursday, on the grounds that
CNA was negotiating in bad faith. Had their strike gone ahead as
planned, they would have been the fourth union to strike against
the UC in the last four months. During the meeting, the regents
unveiled plans for the California Teach program, in accordance with
the California science and mathematics initiative, “One
Thousand Teachers, One Million Minds.” The program aims to
quadruple the UC’s current production of highly-qualified
science and math teachers for K-12 schools to 1,000 annually by
2010. California Teach will provide an opportunity for every UC
undergraduate majoring in science, mathematics, or engineering the
opportunity to complete their coursework and become a credentialed
teacher within four years, while providing desperately needed
teachers for California public schools. The state will be short
nearly 4,000 teachers in math and science next year, and nearly 1/3
of current teachers will be eligible for retirement by 2010.
California eighth graders place last in science and near the bottom
in math for national state competency averages, according to the
National Assessment of Education Progress. The program will benefit
the university in the long-term, by providing opportunities for
current students, and producing more UC-eligible students in the
future by providing a better education in K-12 schools, said
Vice-Provost MRC Greenwood in her presentation to the regents. The
regents also presented the new student regent, Maria Ledesma, who
will serve a two-year term on the board: one year as a non-voting
designate, and the second year as a full voting member of the
board. Ledesma, a UCLA student pursuing a doctorate in social
sciences and comparative education, also possesses a master’s
degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and studied
English at UC Berkeley. Ledesma is also the first Latina to serve
as the student regent in the UC’s history. The regents also
discussed recent trends in accepted and applicant classes, taking
special care to note the perceived effects that have been seen as a
result of the end of affirmative action, after California voters
passed Proposition 209 in 1996. In admissions successes, the UC
admitted all eligible applicants for the fall 2005 class, and
offered the highest ever number of state residents admission.
Students in the applicant pool exhibited higher average SAT scores
and GPAs than ever before, and the percentages of accepted students
from low-income families, poorly performing high schools and those
who are the first in their family to attend college continue to
rise. However, some trends in admission rates were considered less
than desirable. Eligible black students had the lowest admission
rate at every UC campus, and UCLA displayed the largest percentage
gap in admissions between ethnic groups. UC officials attending the
meeting also commented on their bid for the Los Alamos National
Laboratory, operated by the U.S. Department of Energy. UCLA has
managed the New Mexico research facility since World War II, but
after coming under fire for recent management and security
problems, the Department of Energy opened the contract to
competition. To address the recent problems, a special company has
been established to manage security, although the UC will still
play a major role. Regent Gerald Parsky and UC San Diego Chancellor
Marye Ann Fox will sit on the board, as well as representatives
from the San Francisco-based engineering company Bechtel National,
the UC’s bid partner for Los Alamos, and experts from nuclear
security firm BWX Technologies, Inc. The representatives are
“all well-regarded, well-respected people in both management
and in the areas that this contract calls for,” Parsky said.
The UC-Bechtel team submitted their proposal for the thirteen-year
renewable contract Monday, and is in competition with a team formed
by the University of Texas and Lockheed Martin. “We’ve
put together what I think is a very compelling case, based on
science and technology as a platform for national security, and my
perspective is that we are offering the nation a choice between a
strong… academic, science-based proposal on one hand, and a
defense contract on the other,” said UC President Robert
Dynes. The Department of Energy is expected to make their decision
by the end of the year. The regents will continue their meeting
Thursday, discussing a series of fee increases for UC professional
school students and extending the UC’s contract for the
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory until the Department of
Energy sets a schedule to open the contract to competition.

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