Dear Campus Colleagues:
Today I am announcing an important appointment to the campus’s leadership group and a related change in our organizational structure. These actions are in response to the new opportunities and challenges we face when it comes to planning, financing, constructing and maintaining our buildings and facilities.
The diverse set of revenues supporting Intercollegiate Athletics’ facilities financing continued to grow through the first quarter of the 2014 fiscal year with additional revenue anticipated to be realized later in the year.
Read the rest of this story and the Athletic Facilities Financing Report on the Cal Athletics website.
Our campus community worked together to achieve an ambitious goal in significantly less time than we had set as a target: we have reduced our carbon footprint to 1990 levels two years earlier than we anticipated! Congratulations and thank you to our Office of Sustainability, the Cal Climate Action Partnership, and all our dedicated students, faculty, and staff for supporting this effort and reaching new heights in conservation at UC Berkeley. Let's keep up the good work!
Read about how our Office of Environment, Health, and Safety is helping make our labs safer!
Read a recent graduate's article on how UC Berkeley influenced the creation of a green business and why we lead the world in green campuses.
And, congratulations to alumni Rohit Kumar and Rohit Sahdev on the success of their Brush with Bamboo company!
This month, as we focus on our Operating Principle “We are accountable to each other,” I am reminded of the importance of looking for opportunities to give and receive feedback – at the individual, team, unit, and campus levels.
This new video highlights two bright spots on campus where our staff effectively elicit, analyze, and act upon feedback to improve performance.
Check out all they've done for the campus this year on our We Imagine and Innovate page.
And don't forget to share your team's accomplishments! It's easy and takes just a couple of minutes to submit the online form.
Read Armando Fox's blog on the role of MOOC's (Massive Open Online Courses) in higher education.
Just ten years after the launch of the Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Sustainability, we now have an impressive list of accomplishments in support of our efforts to green the campus and significantly lower our carbon footprint! Congratulations to the Green Team! Read all about it in NewsCenter article.
Check out the Top Ten Reasons Cal is a Sound Financial Investment developed by the Office of Planning and Analysis.
Last Friday, I was invited to give the welcoming remarks at UC Berkeley's first campus-wide career development conference for staff: the NOW Conference. I was impressed to hear that the event had completely filled up within the first 24 hours of opening registration. I also learned that we have made hundreds of new hires since July 2012. The number of people taking courses and pursuing training opportunities is also astounding.
Feb. 15, 2013
BERKELEY - The University of California Department of Intercollegiate Athletics (IA) has published the most recent financial statement on the progress of the Endowment Seating Program (ESP). Going forward, IA will issue statements regularly after the close of each quarter to ensure transparency and support clear communications on ESP sales progress.
Recent attention by the media and elected officials has focused on the affordability of a college education. Berkeley, including our campus leadership and Financial Aid and Scholarships Office, is determined to keep our university an affordable choice for students and their families. Forty percent of undergraduates pay no tuition and 65% receive some form of financial aid. For the 40% that take loans, the average level of student indebtedness is around $17,000, an amount that is lower than many car loans. In addition, Berkeley made history by becoming the first public university to cre
Dear members of the VCAF community,
There is no question that we have had a terrific year in terms of accomplishments. We were able to undertake several campus-wide system implementations and start a whole new area of work around revenue generation. We plan to continue to challenge the status quo and take risks for the benefit of Berkeley in the new year – plus have some fun. We cannot do any of this without the care, commitment, and hard work of everyone in our organization.
Last week, we had another great win on the Procurement side that will benefit many of our academic units directly. UCSF and UC Berkeley identified 44% savings ($200,000) by competitively bidding a portfolio of chemicals in a reverse auction. Over the course of the 90-minute bidding event, the team collected approximately 50 bids from 4 different suppliers. The new pricing is expected to be implemented at UCSF and UC Berkeley in the January Quarter and could benefit other campuses across the UC system as well.
Dear Campus Community,
The campus has spoken! Over the course of the last two years, more than 10,000 voices have contributed to articulating a working culture that can help us succeed. Great ideas were generated in CultureCal, the online brainstorming event in October in which thousands of Berkeley’s staff, faculty, and student employees rated principles, created new ones, and shared passionate comments.
As the Thanksgiving Holiday approaches, I feel very fortunate that we have so much to be thankful for in VCAF. Everyone in our organization continues to show an incredible amount of talent and motivation, despite the many challenges we face. The elections are behind us and the outcomes look promising for California and higher education. The passage of Prop 30 sends an important message: clearly, voters think that spending on education is the right decision.
