The UC Board of Regents will gather in San Francisco today for
the first of a two-day meeting where they will review the state
budget, open the discussion on lab management, and address graduate
education throughout the system.
The action items on the agenda for today and Thursday include a
proposal for management of the Department of Energy Laboratories,
fees at the new UC campus at Merced, and the university’s
engagement in K-12 education.
The regents will discuss the 2005-2006 budget, graduate
education and the stem cell initiative.
The meeting will also mark the departure of regent Ward
Connerly, whose 12-year term is over.
Connerly has been a controversial figure on the Board of
Regents, being hailed as courageous, condemned as a racist, and
given myriad labels in between.
Perhaps most relevant to students will be the regents’
discussion of the state budget, which came out last week. Based on
the compact made with the governor last May, the regents voted in
November to approve a budget that increased fees to a total cost of
$6,769 for undergraduates and $8,556 for graduate students.
But the discussion certainly did not end with the decision last
fall.
“We still have a lot of work to do with the university
budget,” said Jennifer Lilla, president of the UC Students
Association, a group which acts on behalf of students at the
UC.
The items on the budget will stretch to all corners of the 10 UC
campuses.
“The discussion of the budget on Thursday has broad
implications for funding that affects education facilities …
student fees, the whole range of operations at a university,”
said Trey Davis, a spokesman for the UC Office of the
President.
Though they will not be taking action on the agenda this week,
the meeting will provide a forum for the regents to publicly
discuss the budget.
“It’s one of the rare opportunities where we have UC
officials sort of telling the public what they’re planning on
doing to maintain funds for these important programs,” said
Monica Henestroza, director of university affairs for UCSA.
Undergraduate schools and students have received the bulk of
attention in the fee increases and fiscal crises, but graduate
programs have been greatly affected as well.
The fees at graduate schools in the UC system have been
increasing at an even higher rate than undergraduate costs, Lilla
said, adding that she felt “graduate students have been being
thrown around like they were trash.”
“There are fewer students … who are interested in grad
school and it takes them longer and longer to graduate,” she
said.
Graduate education will enter the regents discussion today, with
a presentation from professors on diversity at UC law schools and
the education master plan, Davis said.
While students, regents and university officials have spent a
great deal of time and energy over past years discussing fee
increases, they will shift their attention to a new campus, where
they will decide on the first set of fees for the university.
UC Merced is set to open in the fall of 2005, accepting 1,000
undergraduate, transfer and graduate students. This Thursday, the
regents will approve campus-based fees, such as health and
transportation services, for UC Merced.
Moving away from budgets and fees, the regents will discuss
management of the Department of Energy labs.
The regents will decide at this meeting whether to bid for
management of the Berkeley Lab and open the discussion of
management of other labs as well.
“The vote for now is just going to be whether or not the
university should continue its governance of the Lawrence Berkeley
Lab,” Lilla said.
The decision on the Berkeley Lab will also have broader
implications for the UC’s involvement in other Department of
Energy Labs, namely the more controversial Los Alamos National
Laboratory in New Mexico.
The UC currently manages the Los Alamos Lab and may bid to
continue to do so this year. The University of Texas, the
UC’s leading competitor, has recently suggested it will not
bid for management of the lab, and the governor of New Mexico has
said the state strongly supports the UC’s continued
involvement with Los Alamos.
Some oppose the UC’s management of Los Alamos because the
lab deals with nuclear weapons research and has had some security
problems in the past.
The bid for the Berkeley Lab is a much less controversial issue,
as it does not perform any weapons research or classified work.
The regents will also vote today on an initiative that Lilla
described as “an academic prep/student involvement
resolution.”
The initiative, which was co-authored by Student Regent Jodi
Anderson and Regent Ward Connerly, would affirm the
university’s engagement in preschool through post-secondary
education.
“It is something that a lot of students support,”
Lilla said.
The initiative would include increased academic preparation
programs and educational partnership efforts.
It will be Connerly’s last proposal to the regents,
topping off a career that has included actions with great effects
on the admissions process at the UC and across the state.