We're over a month late but

Tuesday, August 03, 2021

We're over a month late but we definitely should take note of the following:

UCLA Professor Susan D. Cochran has been selected as the Academic Council Vice Chair for 2021-22

Susan Cochran is Professor of Epidemiology in the Fielding School of Public Health at UC Los Angeles and Professor of Statistics in the UCLA College of Letters and Science. She has been on the faculty since 1996. She received her A.B. in Anthropology from UCLA, her M.A. in Counseling Psychology from Loyola Marymount University, her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from UCLA and later her M.S. in Epidemiology from UCLA with support from a National Institute of Mental Health Scientist Development Award.

Her scholarly interests focus on the psychosocial determinants of health and healthrelated behaviors, and the role of social stigma and discrimination in health care access, health behaviors, mental health, and health outcomes. With funding from NIH over the years, she has investigated patterns of sexual risk taking related to HIV infection control, the burden of mental health and substance use disorders among sexual and racial/ethnic minorities, and most recently the use of machine learning methods to identify obscured features in administrative health data related to violent death. She teaches courses in the areas of survey sampling and scientific communication. She is also a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science. Over the years, she has received several awards for her research and contributions to the University including the American Psychological Association’s Distinguished Contribution to Research in Public Policy Award and the UCLA Chancellor’s Award for Special Contributions to a Fair and Open Academic Environment.

Professor Cochran’s record of Senate service includes chairing the UCLA Senate division in 2016-17, the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee in 2005-2006, and the Committee on Data, Information Technology, and Privacy in 2020-2021. At UCLA, she also served on the Undergraduate Council from 2004 to 2006; the Council on Planning and Budget from 2009 to 2013; Graduate Council from 2013 to 2015; the Graduate Council Executive

Committee in 2014-2015; and the Committee on Degree Programs in 2014-2015.

In addition to the Academic Council, her systemwide service includes the University Committee on Academic Computing and Communications, where she served as vice chair in 2020-2021; the UC Working Group on RIMS (Research Information Management Systems) in 2019-2021; the Cyber-Risk Working Group in 2019-2020; and Cyber-Risk Governance Committee in 2020-2021.

Source: https://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/_files/news/susan-cochran-bio.pdf.

335/2000 = 16.75%

Tuesday, August 03, 2021

From today's State Worker blog of the Sacramento Bee:

Hundreds of new California retirees aren’t getting their pension checks from UC system

Katherine Swartz

In a record year for retirement, the University of California is lagging in paying pensions for its new retirees, hundreds of whom won’t be paid on time — and don’t know when they will be paid. Hundreds of newly retired University of California employees aren’t getting their pensions and they don’t know when they’ll start receiving their checks. The UC Retirement Administration Service Center acknowledged the delay in a July 27 email to pensioners in which it said some new retirees wouldn’t receive their first retirement payment as expected on July 30.

Instead, the office would let retirees know by Aug. 16 when they can expect to receive their payment. The office informed retirees of the delay three days before they were supposed to receive their pension check. The backlog followed a record year for retirements in the UC system. Out of 2,000 June retirements, 335 haven’t received their payment.

Retirements in June 2021 were up 23% compared to 2020 and up 32% compared to 2019. Associate Director of Media Relations Ryan King said that said that the combination of a high volume of retirements and the complex nature of some retirements — like employees who are funded by multiple sources or involve divorce payments — all contributed to the delay.

Employees typically start retirement applications in March for end-of-June retirements. In total, the University of California’s retirement system includes over 87,000 retirees. Stephen Cox, a recently retired distinguished professor of literature at UC San Diego, didn’t receive his paycheck on time and said the pension issue is “part of a decade-long problem with the whole system.”

“With any government agency or any private company in history, this would be taken as something that was extremely serious, because it’s a sign of very deep distress,” Cox said. “What if the United States government said, ‘well, you know, something went wrong, we can’t pay you your Social Security.’ Who in the world does that?”

the UC Retirement Administration Center but wasn’t affected by the delay. He said the problem in a delay may not be a major issue for retiring faculty but could have greater damage for retiring staff members. “I think most faculty will be able to go without one or two checks in retirement without suddenly facing real problems. But it’s a very different matter for staff who have just retired because their salary levels are much lower and they live much closer to paycheck to paycheck,” Scull said.

“If you’re not yet old enough to qualify for Social Security and you were depending on your retirement check, this is not an inconvenience, it’s kind of a crisis,” he said.

In April, the UC introduced a “no lapse in pay” option for retirees, where if the Retirement Administration Service Center isn’t able to calculate the confirmed benefit amount by payment time, eligible retirees can receive a payment for their estimated benefit instead. Retirees had to apply for this program by mid-May.*

S o u r c e : h t t p s : / / w w w . s a c b e e . c o m / n e w s / p o l i t i c s - g o v e r n m e n t / t h e - s t a t e worker/article253211593.html.

*So the next test is whether the "no lapse in pay" policy in fact provides no lapse in pay.