Chancellor Engages Faculty in Dialogue About Diversity, Salaries at Town Hall

Ioana Patringenaru | March 17, 2008

Chancellor Marye Anne Fox met with faculty March 11.

Click here to watch a video of the town hall. (Real Player)

Diversity, budget cuts and salaries were top topics at a town hall meeting Chancellor Marye Anne Fox held with faculty Tuesday. About 50 faculty and top administrators turned out for the event at the Faculty Club.

These meetings reflect the sense of accessibility that marks Fox’s tenure as chancellor, said Academic Senate Chair James Posakony. “I think that’s gone a long way towards creating a real atmosphere of community here on the campus,” he said. Fox is open to faculty input and responds to it, he added. “We’re very fortunate to have a chancellor that takes shared governance as seriously as Marye Anne does,” he also said.

Fox opened the meeting with a state budget update. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has warned that all state agencies, except the University of California, should expect a 10 percent cut across the board, she said. UC is exempted because it is under the authority of the Board of Regents. But the university system still relies on the state for about 12 percent of its $2.4 billion budget, she also said.

“It’s real money for our salaries, it’s real money for our students and our graduate students in particular,” she added.

The economic crisis bracing the country is real and is likely to last several years, Fox said. As a result, the university must focus on providing services for staff, faculty and students more efficiently, she said.

Later during the meeting, Posakony asked about the future of UC’s four-year plan, which aims to bring faculty compensation in line with comparable institutions. The first year of readjustments took place, Fox said. But the next budget year does look gloomy, said Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Paul Drake. He added UCOP hopes to provide at least a cost-of-living increase, but said he was concerned how it would be funded.

“We’re all very much in favor of raising faculty salaries,” he said.

Professor Jorge Mariscal praised Sandra Daley, the campus' new Chief Diversity Officer.

Would the university be facing hiring freezes, asked Jorge Mariscal, a professor in the literature department. Drake said the answer to that question wouldn’t come until Gov. Schwarzenegger releases his May revise of the state’s budget. The last time the state went through a budget crisis, the university was growing, so it was able to slow down growth rather than make cuts, Drake added.

“Our goal, whatever the budget cut, is to protect the academic core,” he said.

Marsical also asked whether the university planned to strengthen the office of Chief Diversity Officer Sandra Daley. He pointed out that UC Berkeley’s equity officer holds a full-time position and supervises six staff members. Daley serves as CDO part time, with a smaller staff. Berkeley secured outside funding to help pay for the additional staff positions, Mariscal said.

Daley was chosen for the job because of her commitment, but also because she has a track record of securing such outside funding sources, Fox said. She holds the CDO job part time so that she can keep her connections with the faculty and keep up her career as a researcher and clinician, the chancellor added. Officials are working to hire a part-time associate vice chancellor for faculty equity, as well as faculty equity officers for each division, Drake said.

Senior Vice Chancellor Paul Drake helped answer questions from the audience.

“I believe that this is our last big period of growth at UCSD,” he said. “It’s our last best chance to diversity our faculty.”

In addition to  taking questions from the audience, Fox also asked several vice chancellors to give campus updates. Vice Chancellor Steve Relyea gave a detailed account of UCSD’s new sustainability initiatives.
 
This month, the campus received a $1.5 million grant to revamp lighting fixtures in 27 buildings, Relyea said. That, in turn, will help the campus save more than $500,000 on its energy bills, he added. In the next few weeks, university officials hope to reach an agreement to install enough solar panels on campus roofs to power 800 to 1000 homes, Relyea also said. A hydrogen fuel cell facility is also in the planning stages. “This is an area where there are a lot of interesting things going on,” Relyea said.