Global Affairs is developing a global education program for UC Davis students

The Global Education Initiative is a program being developed by UC Davis Global Affairs that intends to incorporate the realities of a globally-connected world into UC Davis students’ education.

Vice Provost and Associate Chancellor of Global Affairs Joanna Regulska is one of the individuals leading the initiative.

“Global Education for All was selected in the first round of UC Davis’ call for ‘Big Ideas’ and I am the ‘champion’ of the idea,” Regulska said via email. “This means I am ensuring that we develop robust programming for students with many diverse opportunities of engaging domestically or abroad in global learning. I am serving as a spokesperson, working with faculty, academic units, alumni and potential donors to make this ambitious goal a reality.”

Nancy Erbstein, the director of Global Education for All, explained that UC Davis put out a call for what they called ‘Big Ideas’ a few years ago, and Global Education for All was selected out of the pool of ‘Big Ideas’, as it was the only proposal focused on student experience rather than research.

Regulska said that her personal experiences have allowed her to recognize the value of global learning.

“I was an international student here in the U.S. so I know what it means to gain and have a global and intercultural perspective and to learn surrounded by faculty and classmates from different cultural backgrounds and countries,” Regulska said. “I also know through lived experiences, my scholarly and professional career, and emerging trends that international and intercultural experiences are more valuable than ever in preparing our students to succeed.”

Students with skills that can be developed through global learning, such as “problem-solving, adaptability and connecting across cultures,” are in-demand upon graduation.

Erbstein explained why she believes it is important for students to engage in global education.

“We recognize that these days a lot of the major world challenges have a global dimension to them — whether you’re talking about climate change, spread of disease, inequality or migration,” Erbstein said. “We have all these new forms of transportation, new technologies, and new global institutions that are increasing our ability to connect around the world and to connect with people across cultures. If UC Davis is going to really take seriously its responsibility to be preparing students to live in that kind of world, we need to be supporting students to get connected globally and develop the skills to work globally.”

According to Erbstein, there all multiple ways to engage in global learning and studying abroad is just one of them. Global Education for All will also focus on expanding global learning within the coursework offered on campus.

“There could be virtual collaboration happening through a course with people even in another country or on another campus,” Erbstein said. “We’re looking at expanding global learning opportunities through experiential learning opportunities, so that could be involvement in research, internships, or externships or some sort of community engaged service learning. It could involve working with the refugee community that’s based in Sacramento or working with a business that has offices in northern California that works globally.”

Regulska specified three pathways through which UC Davis students might incorporate global learning: academic, experience and living and leading. The academic pathway includes participating in study abroad programs, “global, international, or intercultural dimensions” in classes students already take on campus and virtual collaborations with universities in other countries.

“Within the experience pathway, there will be an emphasis on hands-on learning experiences, whether it be internships/externships, participating in research or in service learning programs or other ways of putting classroom learning into action,” Regulska said via email. “And within the living and leading pathway, we will expand opportunities for students to gain leadership and intercultural skills on campus, in the dorms, and in the community through various student groups, community organizations and campus partners.”

Erbstein said that the initiative’s long term goal is to engage every UC Davis student in global learning. The project coordinators are still sorting through the multitude of possibilities for enhancing global learning on campus, including an enhanced global learning minor.

Erbstein also stressed student involvement in the initiative, particularly in a campus-wide steering committee with faculty, staff, administrators and four students.

“We’ve worked with … four students to convene a larger student advisory committee,” Erbstein said. “We have students from all the different colleges, undergraduate, graduate and professional students. We’re really trying to hear from students what they want global learning to look like and how it would be useful to students to have it be recognized by the campus as they think about going on and applying to grad school or postgraduate programming or jobs.”

Tiffany Trinh, a fifth-year community regional development major, is part of the Millenium Fellows cohort, which is involved in the global education initiative and engaged in incorporating a program that links their fellowships to global education for all.

“A group of us were selected to become part of the U.N. millennium fellowship, and we are branching off global education for all and trying to get the campus involved with global education either through events or performances or anything these student organizations can think of,” Trinh said. “We’re currently reviewing some pre-proposals for student organizations’ ideas and these will give us an idea for what people want to do, and there’s also applications for mini grants.”

According to Regulska, “students with ideas, questions, feedback or interest in getting involved are encouraged to email globaleducationforall@ucdavis.edu.”

Written By: Sabrina Habchi — campus@theaggie.org

“Equal Pay for Equal Work” petition calls to eliminate seasonal pay discrepancy

Duane Wright, a graduate student instructor in the Department of Sociology, has alleged that there is a “serious problem” with graduate student assistant instructors (AIs) receiving lower pay during summer sessions than they would for teaching courses during the normal academic year.

According to Wright, summer AIs receive two-thirds of the payment that regular session instructors receive. In response, he created the “Equal Pay for Equal Work” petition which demands equal compensation year-round.

Wright believes that since the summer sessions are equivalent to a normal academic year class with regard to courseloads, fees and academic units, graduate student teachers should also receive equalized pay.

Claire Doan, the director of media relations at the UC Office of the President, dismissed Wright’s petition, claiming it was an improper action to take.

“UAW leaders agreed to the summer compensation rates as part of the four-year contract they reached with UC in August,” Doan wrote. “The proper forum for addressing this issue was and is at the bargaining table.”

Wright, however, said a pay formula exists to determine salaries. Because graduate student instructors were not aware such a formula existed, they were not able to bring the pay disparity up during negotiations.

Doan clarified the pay formula, saying the explicit parameters for determining summer compensation rates was clearly outlined in the recent contract.

The compensation rate for teaching assistants, fellows, graduate student instructors or associate ins who have a 50 percent appointment during summer session is “the rate resulting from dividing the academic term gross salary by the maximum workload of 220 hours (quarter) or 340 hours (semester) and multiplying the result by 120 hours (for a six-week summer session),” Doan wrote via email.

“This compensation rate shall apply proportionately to other percent appointments and/or to summer sessions of different lengths,” Doan wrote. “ASEs and groups of ASEs who are currently paid at a rate greater than this in summer 2007 shall continue to be paid on that basis (plus any additional wage increases that ASEs in the unit received in the previous academic year).”

Wright, however, alleges there was an omission of the formula in the contract, making it so administrators are unclear about this stipulation to summer pay, making it harder to uncover and fix.

“That formula cannot be found in the contract, so no one reading the contract would even know that people get paid less in the summer,” Wright said. “I can personally attest to this because I was on the team that negotiated the contract in 2013-2014 and I had no idea AIs were paid less over the summer, and I never heard my colleagues speak of it — the entire time we were discussing in depth each article of the contract. It wasn’t until years later, this recent summer, when I was hired as a summer instructor that I discovered this practice.”

Wright is unsure whether this is a UC-wide or UC Davis-specific situation.

Furthermore, Wright questioned UCOP telling workers to wait till contracts expire, in four years, for any pay increase. According to wright, fairness in payment towards graduate student workers should be a higher priority.

“I think it says a lot about the executives at UCOP that when an issue of fairness comes up like this their response is to say to not address it until this contract is expired in four years,” Wright said. “I won’t be here then. I want fair pay now. And you know all those executives making six figure salaries at UCOP aren’t making 2/3rds pay over the summer either! Graduate students are struggling, especially student parents like myself.”

Wright accused the UC administration of continuously under-valuing graduate instructors that teach at the university. Graduate students who are already struggling to pay for rent and food need to make the same as their fall, winter and spring quarter counterparts, he said.

“Graduate students make very little money, yet without their labor the university would cease to function,” Wright said. “When you consider that without summer employment we make about $20k per year, that is not much to live on and certainly isn’t a living wage for those of us with children or dependents. By not getting equal pay for equal work over the summer it really hurts us.”

Another issue for Wright is that summer session AIs often don’t have teaching assistants for courses that would otherwise have assistants during the regular school year, leading to additional work for these instructors.

In the petition description, Wright emphasized that the principle of “Equal Pay for Equal Work” is common sense, and what he sees as an undervaluing of instructors by the university.

“We demand that UC Davis recognize the amount of work that graduate student summer session instructors put into these courses, and that UC Davis compensate them as such — by paying them the amount they make for teaching the same course during the normal academic year,”  Wright wrote in the petition. “We believe that this is is about the principle of ‘Equal Pay for Equal Work’ — which is about fairness and justice.”

Ellie White, a graduate student in the Center for Watershed Sciences, commented on the situation via email, and said that if these instructors knew they were being compensated at a lower rate than during the regular school year, they would “be outraged.”

“Why should my labor be valued differently from one season to the next?” White said. “Do chancellors, vice chancellors, and provosts get paid any less? No.”

The petition is currently circling through several affected groups.

“As of right now, the petition has over 100 signatures and it is just getting started because the Davis unit of the UC Student Worker Union UAW 2865, which represents AIs as well as TAs, readers and undergraduate tutors, just endorsed the petition and will be sending it out to all its members at Davis,” Wright wrote. “I expect it to get an even bigger circulation and many more signatures by next week.”

Written by: Aaron Liss — campus@theaggie.org