Why has UC Davis experienced so many new hires recently? For example, we’ve had a new chancellor, provost and vice chancellor of research all in the past two academic years.

UC Davis is a large and extremely complex organization and in order to effectively manage it, it requires an accomplished team with the type of specialized talent, skills and knowledge that comprise a major public research university.

With 6,000 acres spread across Davis and Sacramento, we are the largest UC campus. Our administrators oversee 17 million square feet of classrooms, lecture halls, labs, residence and dining halls and offices – and the people inside those spaces. We serve 32,290 students, 4,453 faculty and 24,158 staff. When you compare the size of our campus and population with other UCs, our team of campus leaders is relatively lean.

So when critical positions like those of chancellor, provost and vice chancellor of research open up, it’s crucial to find the right people – and quickly – to fill them. Leading a university of this size is a great honor and a great challenge. During this ongoing financial crisis, I cannot do it alone. Our university must survive but also thrive. To do so, we need a coordinated team of the nation’s best and brightest minds in research, fundraising, in the provost’s office and as deans of our schools and colleges.

For example, Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Ralph Hexter joined us in January 2011 as the university’s chief academic and operating officer. He oversees our 4,453 faculty members – spread across four colleges and six professional schools – and the associated budget. Our new vice chancellor of research, Harris Lewin, oversees 28 research units and more than 130 researchers, and an annual research budget that currently exceeds $700 million. And our vice chancellor for the UC Davis Health System, Claire Pomeroy, is responsible for the health system in Sacramento and its associated budget of $1.6 billion.

We need all these people working together to help lead our campus and continue its upward trajectory toward excellence. I want to assure you that our team is devoted to our campus and to helping all students achieve their educational goals.

Got a question for the chancellor? Send it to campus@theaggie.org.

On April 7, the Education Abroad Center (EAC) launched its newest step in connecting students back home through its innovate social media hub called the Aggie Abroad Social Network.

The Aggie Abroad Social Network, which gained over 500 members in its first month of operation, is designed to provide communication between students from country to country, back home and from school to school.

“The network is a place to tell stories, to post photos. It’s a place to post videos, creative projects for class all within the context of travel,” said Blake Cooper, the EAC’s outreach, marketing and social media director.

The network, which integrates Facebook, Twitter and other social media sources, is a place not only to gather information, but also to get a true understanding of the abroad experience. To make the website easier to navigate, students can join groups based on their country of choice, following students who traveled there, are currently there and want to go there in the future.

For Cooper, one of the most important parts of the site is the ability for those who have already traveled abroad to give their peers advice from their own experiences.

“I was trying to figure out what wasn’t available on the EAC site and I wanted to build a place that basically connects traveling Aggies,” Cooper said. “A place certainly to get information but also to gain information beyond what the website will provide.”

The network’s successful launch was drastically facilitated by the EAC’s photo contest, which has been going on for years.

“In the past we’ve had developers build sights where students can post photos. It just was a collection of good photos, which didn’t give people the opportunity to comment on, to like or to integrate with Facebook,” Cooper said. “So part of building the platform was to post that photo contest as well.”

The photo contest added a new incentive for students to join the network. Kayla Fox, a junior animal science and technology major who studied in University of Sussex in Brighton, said she didn’t even know about the social network until she joined the photo contest.

Gabriel Legaspi-Rodriguez, a sophomore Chicana/o studies major, is currently studying abroad in Havana, Cuba. He said he appreciates how the Aggie Abroad Social Network allows him to connect with other Aggies.

“I look forward to sharing my experiences in the near future. I am sure this will help connect those who have or want to travel abroad,” he said in an e-mail interview.

The Aggie Abroad Social Network is open to all students who are interested in the abroad programs, and can be found at ucdavisabroad.com

CHARLOTTE YOUNG can be reached at campus@theaggie.org.

With a $748,000 grant awarded to the UC system, UC Davis will be offering as many as six new online courses by Winter 2012.

The Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC) program gave UC the grant on April 7, allowing the university to further develop its UC Online Instruction Pilot Program (OIPP). The grant was provided through the NGLC by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlitt Foundation.

“This project could really benefit UC Davis students in a number of ways. There’s a convenience factor in this,” said UC spokesperson Do Quyen Tran-Taylor. “Right now students are saying that there are difficulties getting classes, or some of the classes are larger than they’d like or expect them to be. This project might be a way of alleviating some of those concerns that students have.”

With online instruction there are more options to take classes anytime, anywhere. The higher availability of courses has the potential to shorten the amount of time to obtain a degree, Tran-Taylor said, especially for courses that are normally only offered during specific quarters.

Along with the $748,000 in grant funding, UC is also seeking an internal loan and external funding to pay for the expenses of the project. On average, each course is expected to cost $75,000, although the exact cost of each online class is highly variable.

All nine undergraduate UC campuses should expect to see more online courses over the 2011-2012 academic year. And although UC Davis shouldn’t expect to see its first courses until Winter 2012, there is the possibility that one or two could be available by Fall 2011.

Keith Williams, senior lecturer at UC Davis’ department of neurobiology, physiology and behavior, was essential in launching the OIPP in 2010. The OIPP isn’t necessarily designed to save money, Williams said. It’s designed to help students earn their degrees more efficiently by providing them with the classes they need to graduate.

“We put an emphasis on instructor presence in the courses,” Williams said. “It’s not like you go and sign-in for an online course and it’s just a series of things you do on the web and then never get interaction with the instructor at all. It’s designed to keep students involved.”

If the OIPP is successful, the number of online courses available will increase. If additional funding becomes available there could be a request for additional course proposals from professors for the 2012-2013 academic year, which could bring the total number of classes up to as high as 50, said Kirk Alexander, program manager of Academic Technology Services, in an e-mail interview.

The classes that will be offered at UC Davis are all lower division courses. Professor Robert Blake is developing online Elementary Spanish courses Spanish 2V and 3V; Professor Arnold Bloom is working on Science and Society 25: Global Climate Change: Convergence of Biological, Geophysical and Social Sciences; Professor Carey James is developing Science and Society 7: Terrorism and War; Professor Roger McDonald is designing Neubiology, Physiology and Behavior 15: The Physiology of Aging; Professor Andrew Waldron is developing Mathematics 22A: Linear Algebra and Carl Whithaus is collaborating with UC Irvine and UC Santa Barbara to develop University Writing Program 1: Expository Writing.

“OIPP is an exciting and timely project,” said Whithaus in an e-mail interview. “The $748,000 grant from the Gates Foundation is providing support for developing innovative ways of delivering high quality writing instruction. Working across campuses, the consortium of UCD, UCI and UCSB writing programs demonstrates what I see as a strength of the UCs cross campus collaboration in teaching as well as in research.”

Bloom’s Global Climate Change will be available in both online and face-to-face versions. Both courses will use the same textbook and website, make use of exams, quizzes and assignments and require virtual tours of green industries.

However, the online version will feature five 20-minute video segments each week. The face-to-face version will feature two 50-minute lectures per week. Students in the face-to-face version will be able to access the 20-minute videos as a supplement to the 50-minute lectures.

Each version of the course will feature mandatory discussions. The in-class course will have normal in-person discussions, while the online courses will feature “webinar” discussions this will require students to have high-speed Internet connections and a computer with a webcam and microphone.

Students in both versions of the class will take exams in-person at certified testing facilities.

“These courses will provide information on how students learn most readily and what technological tools aid them the most in their learning process,” Bloom said in an e-mail interview. “They will generate much needed data contrasting online and face-to-face learning. Clearly some learning exercises may work better face-to-face than online and vice-versa, and we will modify the two versions of the course to accommodate the strengths of their learning environment.”

Waldron’s Linear Algebra course is a collaboration with graduate student teaching assistants and other professors and will not be a fully online course. Instead, it will feature the use of online tools specifically online lecture notes in place of a course textbook and online homework assignments to improve students’ learning.

“I think this is a fabulous and potentially transformative project,” he said in an e-mail interview.

For more information about OIPP, visit groups.ischool.berkeley.edu/onlineeducation/home.

TRISHA PERKINS can be reached at campus@theaggie.org.

UC Davis students are advocating for the passage of an act that would make student housing cheaper and improve the standards of living.

The Collegiate Housing and Infrastructure Act (CHIA) seeks to amend the current tax codes and ensure that donations to not-for-profit student housing will be completely tax deductible. Currently the act is looking for sponsors, but supporters of CHIA aim for the act to pass by the end of 2011.

The act would benefit fraternities and sororities at UC Davis and may also help student housing facilities such as the Cal Aggie Christian Association, the International House, the Solar Community Housing Association and other cooperative student communities. “This act would allow more not-for-profit student housing to expand and have more life-saving equipment,” said Anisha Chikarmane, senior international relations major and sister of Tri Delta who went to Washington D.C. to lobby on behalf of the act. “More students will be able to get affordable housing.”

Introduced in 2003, the bi-partisan act states that all donations will go toward expanding and updating safety features to non-university owned student housing.

Currently, if alumni donate money to the university, it is completely tax deductible. This is not the case if donations are given to non-university owned housing. The donation has to be directed toward educational facilities, not infrastructure.

Under this act, all donations and grants given to not-for-profit student housing will be 100 percent tax deductible. Funds aim to repair the infrastructure of housing and increase standards of living through the installment of central heating and cooling systems and fire sprinklers. The act excludes funding toward social, recreational and physical fitness facilities.

Greek Housing is one of the largest not-for-profit student landlords, Chikarmane said. CHIA would allow more spots for students to live in the houses.

“The act would improve the vibrancy and health of the Greek community,” said Joaquin Feliciano, Greek life coordinator with Student Housing. “It will indirectly benefit the whole campus by providing more opportunities for philanthropy and other events.”

Feliciano said that not all members of Greek life can afford to live in their houses, but CHIA could change that.

“CHIA will encourage more alumni donation,” said Emily Rankin, a UCLA senior and Tri Delta sister. “It is a cheaper alternative and a unique way to approach the housing issue.”

ASUCD unanimously passed a resolution supporting CHIA on March 29. The resolution stated that CHIA would make college more affordable at no cost to taxpayers by offering housing that’s less expensive than university-affiliated housing.

“The major thing to do is to spread knowledge of this act to those who can take advantage of it,” said Tatiana Moana Bush, an ASUCD senator and senior political science and sociology major. “We are supposed to keep students informed and updated on issues we are supposed to fight for.”

As of 2009, the cost of living on campus is on average $12,000; the cost of living off campus averages around $8,000, said Chikarmane.

“Hopefully, it will be a more proactive act toward housing,” Bush said. “The benefits will outweigh the costs.”

Introduced in 2003, the act was reintroduced in the beginning of April this year to Congress. It passed with 237 sponsors in the House of Representatives and 33 sponsors in the federal Senate.

The act has still not been touched on the floor and is currently looking for sponsors from both Democratic and Republican parties, according to Chikarmane.

ALICIA KINDRED can be reached at campus@theaggie.org.

Avoid partners in crime

A junior was referred to Student Judicial Affairs (SJA) for suspected unauthorized collaboration after it was observed that his homework assignment and another student’s were virtually identical. The student explained that he and another student had worked on the homework together but each had written their own answers, as the professor required. He stated that a third classmate (who was also referred to SJA) had asked to see his completed homework “just to check answers.” The third student admitted that he had copied the answers word for word without the first student’s knowledge. It was therefore determined that the first student had not copied any work or knowingly allowed his classmate to cheat, so the case against him was dismissed. He was advised, however, that providing completed work to classmates and friends is ill advised because if the other student copies the work, that generally leads to both students being referred to SJA.

Avoid partners in crime, still!

A student was referred to SJA for suspected collaborating or copying on a midterm in an upper-division class. The professor contacted SJA after noticing many unusual similarities between the two students’ tests, which indicated that some kind of cheating had taken place although it was impossible to determine whether the two students had collaborated together or whether one had copied from the other. The classmate admitted to a judicial officer that he had looked at the other student’s exam without her knowledge and had copied her answers. With this information, it was found that the first student had not collaborated or copied during the test and she was found innocent of the charges. This means that no sanctions will be imposed, and she will not have a disciplinary record.

Careful recycling

A first-year student was referred to SJA for suspected plagiarism in an English class. Specifically, the professor found sources and information in her paper that were not cited and were not covered in the course material. This caused the instructor to suspect that the student had previously submitted the paper for a different class, which is against the rules and/or that she had plagiarized. In her meeting with a judicial officer, the student stated that she had written on the same topic in a previous class and thus had prior knowledge of the subject, but she insisted that she had not simply recycled the same paper and that she did not use any ideas or sentences from the Internet. The student was able to provide credible assurance that she did have some background knowledge of the topic, so she was found “not in violation” and was simply given an administrative notice. Although not a disciplinary sanction, the notice outlines the guidelines regarding the charge the student was referred for and puts her officially “on notice” with respect to those rules. Then, if the student is found in violation for something related in the future, the sanctions will likely be steeper as she has been given official notice of what the rules are in this area.

CAMPUS JUDICIAL REPORTS are compiled by members of Student Judicial Affairs.