Watch the Regents' Afternoon Sessions of May 18, 2022 Sunday, May 29, 2022
We resume our summaries of the Regents' various sessions from May 17-19. In earlier posts, we covered May 17 and the morning of May 18. Below is the afternoon of May 18 as summarized in the Daily Cal:
...The Academic and Student Affairs Committee began its meeting by approving amendments to the UC system’s undergraduate financial aid policy. Among the reforms included an emphasis on part-time work, rather than taking out loans, as a pathway for students to pay their cost of attendance. “I applaud these efforts in attempting to make sure that students minimize their loan debt as they graduate, because it sets the students back in life,” said UC Regent Jose Hernandez during the meeting. “It was five years before I was able to plan for buying a house, plan for retirement, all these things because I wanted to get student debt out.” Following the action items, the committee discussed its status report on the Advancing Faculty Diversity program, or AFD. According to Vice Provost for Academic Personnel and Programs at the Office of the President Susan Carlson, 33.6% of the AFD hires made since the program’s launch were members of underrepresented groups, compared to 18.7% of total hires. She noted that all of the AFD hires brought a “demonstrated commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.” The committee also discussed how the UC system could best support first-generation college students, who make up two-fifths of the total undergraduate population. John Matsui, the co-founder of the Biology Scholars Program, spoke on how the program avoids a “one-size-fits-all” approach on navigating UC Berkeley to encourage firstgeneration students to think differently about managing their success. The meeting concluded with a review of the final report produced by the Mitigating COVID-19 Impacts on Faculty Working Group. The report proposed five recommendations for UC campuses to implement and sustain over the next five years to support faculty through challenges they have faced during the pandemic. “I am really grateful that there’s been so much proactive work going into this,” said UC Regent Lark Park during the meeting. “I don’t think we thank our faculty enough for the heroism in trying to keep things together for students.” During the Finance and Capital Strategies Committee meeting, the regents discussed projects and long range development plans for several UC campuses, the fiscal year 2022-23 UCOP budget and the UC system’s debt policy. Among the approved projects includes the Ocean Road Housing Project at UC Santa Barbara. UCSB Chancellor Henry 196
UCLA Faculty Association Blog: 2nd Quarter 2022
