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Budget Planning at UCLA: (Eric Gans) Academic Senate involvement with the Budget

Legislative Assembly: LGA meets November 12 at 2pm Faculty Center

Dear UCLA Colleague:

This issue of Voice of the Faculty focuses on budget issues. The state has serious budget problems which have been on hold pending the election. No doubt, soon after the election and certainly within the next few months these issues and their impact on UCLA will demand our attention. It is important that we, the Senate faculty, be informed and in a position to work constructively toward solving them.

Last year the Academic Senate worked with the Faculty Executive Committees (FEC) to conduct a series of workshops to inform the faculty on budget issues in the various units. With the support of the Executive Vice Chancellor and particularly Assistant Vice Chancellor Glyn Davies, budget workshops were held for the FECs in Engineering and Applied Sciences, Nursing, Law, Public Policy, Education and Information Sciences, and Public Health. This year with the leadership of Eric Gans, (Chair, Council on Planning and Budget) we will continue our progress. You can find a copy of your academic unit’s budget and the University's budget in this newsletter in the section on campus budgets.

This issue also reviews the results of the Chancellor’s Leadership Retreat in Ventura this year. Deriving from the retreat was the Chancellor’s Task Force on Competitiveness, an important administration Task Force that will report back to the Chancellor on several key topics. The Task Force includes selected members of the faculty and Academic Senate and is chaired by our new Executive Vice Chancellor, Dan Neuman.

Finally, last year a joint Senate/Administration Committee to Review the Academic Calendar was appointed to examine the advantages and disadvantages of switching to a semester system from our current quarter system. This group, chaired by Vice Provost Judi Smith and Undergraduate Council Chair Ray Knapp, has been working very hard both last year and over the summer and plans to submit a report to the Executive Vice Chancellor Dan Neuman and the Leadership group of the Academic Senate early this month. We plan to make this report widely available as soon as we receive it and to initiate review within the appropriate committees of the Academic Senate. Be sure to visit our Senate’s Academic Calendar website to find the latest information. The Senate is just beginning a conversation on this issue. You might find the discussion at UC Davis, Minnesota and Ohio State of interest. I found the candid comments of our Berkeley colleagues on the question of converting from a quarter to semester particularly instructive.
 

This email is a new format for our Academic Senate newsletter. We hope you find it useful. As always, we look forward to hearing from you. We are your Academic Senate and we stand ready to serve you.