Another Campus Climate Incident Reported

The story above can be found in more detail at

http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2013/04/26/uc-irvine-fraternity-issues-apology-after-blackface-video-sparks-outrage/.  So far, yours truly found no official response on the UC-Irvine website. Blog readers may recall a somewhat-related video that became known as "Asians in the Library" at UCLA and which sparked an official reaction from Chancellor Block. Possibly, this matter will be discussed at the upcoming May Regents meeting, possibly in conjunction with results - are there any yet? - from the campus climate survey taken this past winter.  

Columnist asks about needs vs. wants

Note: In the future, there are likely to be more such questions - of the type excerpted below - about campus plans for new programs, schools, and even grand hotels.

Dan Walters today in the Sacramento Bee:

Was UC-Irvine's Law School Strictly Necessary?

Six years ago, yours truly wrote a column about a proposed law school at the University of California's Irvine campus, suggesting that it was more about academic ego and Orange County boosterism than a shortage of lawyers. The column pointed out that the state already had 25 accredited law schools and the number of graduates taking the State Bar examination had been rising steadily to nearly 7,000 a year. It also cited a study by the California Postsecondary Education Commission's staff, concluding that there was simply no need for another law school, especially one whose construction and operation partially depended on public funds...

UC – both its Irvine campus and the statewide Board of Regents – ignored the commission's criticism and created the law school anyway. Fast forward to 2012. The UCI law school graduated its first class and boasted that 46 of its 51 graduates who took the State Bar examination passed... Fast forward again. Last week, the Los Angeles Times published a lengthy article describing the angst felt by recent law school graduates who cannot find jobs while struggling to repay huge loans they took out to finance their legal educations.CPEC was absolutely correct six years ago in concluding that the state had more than enough lawyers and didn't need another expensive, taxpayer-subsidized law school....

There is – or should be – a lesson in this tale.

Full column at http://www.sacbee.com/2013/04/08/v-print/5323708/dan-walters-was-uc-irvines-law.html

Contemplating necessity isn't always pleasant:

Emisions Remissions?

UCLA co-generation plant

California's cash-strapped public universities would save millions of dollars under legislation by Orange County state Sen. Mimi Walters, but the bill's prospects are uncertain because it would alter a landmark global warming law beloved by environmentalists. Walters' proposal seeks to exempt University of California and California State University campuses from the new cap-and-trade program established under the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, otherwise known as Assembly Bill 32 or AB32, one of the nation's most ambitious environmental laws...

At least five UC campuses, including Irvine, UCLA and San Diego, qualify for the cap-and-trade program in 2013...

The UC system has budgeted $8 million to comply with AB32 – for just the next fiscal year.
For that much money, the UC system could accommodate another 800 students, UC Vice President Patrick Lenz told members of the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee last month. He and the system later backed off those comments, saying there is "not a direct correlation" between student enrollment and the money for cap-and-trade. He also later noted in a letter to committee chairman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, that it's possible the system won't have to buy any credits to cover its 2014 emissions...

Full story at http://www.ocregister.com/news/trade-501273-cap-emissions.html

The following is the amount of greenhouse gases emitted in 2011 by UC campuses covered under the AB32 cap-and-trade program. The emissions are displayed in units of metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.

UCLA – 205,299
UC San Diego – 160,579
UC Irvine – 69,979
UC San Francisco – 68,566
UC Davis Medical Center – 63,693
UC Davis – 62,259

Well, the emissions could be worse:

I guess the chemistry was good

UC-Irvine has put a chemistry course on the web.  But it doesn't give credit for it and isn't using the Coursera website (although UC-Irvine is affiliated with Coursera) because it wants to give the course away free.  As for labs, it says that if some other institution wants to offer the course, it will have to provide the labs, etc.  We are likely to see a bunch of such offerings from the campus. They show the campus is up-to-date, complying with the Regents/governor desires, and yet - in the end - they commit to nothing.  Actually, yours truly has put several lectures of his own on the web.  If anyone wants to see them, just let me know and I will supply the links. I am awaiting full praise from the Regents.governor but so far it hasn't happened.

You can find the UC-Irvine announcement at:
http://learn.uci.edu/openedweek/opchem.html

An Inside Higher Ed article about the Irvine course is at:
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2013/03/11/irvine-offers-full-chemistry-curriculum-online-and-free

Actually, good chemistry has already been available for some time:

UC-Irvine Gets Some Good Press

Warm welcome to University of California Irvine

By Anat Maor, Jerusalem Post, 2-17-13

When I first arrived at the University of California in Irvine, I didn’t know a single person there. To tell you the truth, I was feeling apprehensive about my new role as a professor in Israel studies here, especially given the reputation of the school. This was the same university which saw confrontations between student protesters and Israeli ambassador Michael Oren in 2010, which culminated in arrests and the Zionist Organization of America branding UCI as “a campus that permitted bigotry.” Yet after just one month I have already started to feel at home in Irvine. How did this happen? Contrary to expectations, I have had many positive experiences here...

Furthermore, I have been very active in a group called “Olive Tree,” which brings Israeli and Palestinian students together for dialogue, and every summer they go to visit the Middle East. I have developed a close personal connection with the vice president of this group. To conclude, although I have only been teaching at UCI for a few short weeks I can already see that I am going to have a great time here...

Full story at http://blogs.jpost.com/content/warm-welcome-university-california-irvine

Quick! Somebody Tell the Governor!

From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Professor Leaves a MOOC in Mid-Course in Dispute Over Teaching

Students regularly drop out of massive open online courses before they come to term. For a professor to drop out is less common.

But that is what happened on Saturday in “Microeconomics for Managers,” a MOOC offered by the University of California at Irvine through Coursera. Richard A. McKenzie, an emeritus professor of enterprise and society at the university’s business school, sent a note to his students announcing that he would no longer be teaching the course, which was about to enter its fifth week.

“Because of disagreements over how to best conduct this course, I’ve agreed to disengage from it, with regret,” Mr. McKenzie wrote...

Full story at http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/category/uncategorized

We have a video from the class: 

 

Update: The LA Times version of the story is at http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2013/02/uc-irvine-business-professor-stops-teaching-midway-in-online-coursera-class.html 

A Different Kind of Grade Inflation

From the Orange County Register: When Jose Carrillo went through medical school at Dartmouth College a decade ago, students would have thick books weighing down their white coats with reference information in case they needed it while making rounds... Today, Carrillo is helping third-year medical students understand neurology at UCI Medical Center in Orange... (L)oaded on the iPads in the pockets of the medical students' coats is every textbook, note, flash card and question from their first two years of medical school – so much information that its equal in printed copies once covered entire tables. All that information sits on the iPad, along with an app that can access the electronic medical records of patients students interact with on their rounds, as well as the entirety of Web resources...

...(T)he medical school announced a 23 percent increase in scores, on average, on the initial test for a medical license taken by the first class to get iPads...

Full article at http://www.ocregister.com/articles/ipad-496247-medical-school.html

Someone Else, Not Me

Inside Higher Ed today carries a story about various institutions that are offering MOOCs (massive open online courses).  Some of these courses have been approved for college credit by the American Council on Education.  But the institutions offering the courses say they are for other universities; they won't give credit for the courses to their own students.  Among these institutions is UC-Irvine. All the courses are in technical fields such as math. 

...No students at Irvine... will be able to take any of these courses for credit, though. Gary Matkin, UC-Irvine's dean of continuing education, distance learning and summer session...said UC-Irvine does not consider its Coursera courses, as currently constructed, to be worthy of its credit because "we do not control learning environment of these students.... There are 250,000 signups in our six courses, with open enrollment so anybody can sign up, and those anybodies can influence negatively the learning environment of students who are serious about taking it." ...

Full article at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/02/07/ace-deems-5-massive-open-courses-worthy-credit

It's not clear how the "anybodies" can negatively influence the learning environment of others if each anybody is sitting alone at a computer in a separate location.  But in any case, the message seems to be that when it comes to giving credit, the host institution is saying to the course takers, let credit be given by someone else, not me: