Volume 28 · Number 3 · Spring 2011
News & Notes
Shrinking state funds usher in 'new paradigm'
Facing an unprecedented shortfall in state funding, UC Davis is re-envisioning its entire approach to supporting its teaching, research and public service missions.
Planning began in earnest after Gov. Jerry Brown in January unveiled a state budget for 2011–12 that includes a $500 million cut to UC. If this budget were to be implemented as written, it could translate to a $73 million reduction for UC Davis. In addition, the campus in 2011–12 must cover an estimated $26 million in increased fixed costs — increases in health care benefits, negotiated compensation and contributions to the retirement system. In all, UC Davis would face a $99 million shortfall next year. If the governor's 2011–12 budget becomes reality, UC Davis' state funding will have dropped by nearly 40 percent over the past four years.
"To put these stark numbers into perspective," wrote Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi in a Jan. 21 e-mail to the campus community, "consider that under the governor's spending plan, the state's contribution to general support of the university (excluding monies restricted to specific research projects) would shrink to less than 10 percent of UC Davis' total revenues in 2011–12."
She added, "This would be a devastating hit to our university, as these education funds are a key source of revenue for faculty and staff salaries and benefits, for student educational programs and for research and services that benefit the state."
In the wake of the state's proposed budget, UC President Yudof asked all campuses to act quickly on developing initial plans that outline the projected cuts and possible consequences. As it examines its alternatives, UC Davis has established a budget site — budgetnews.ucdavis.edu — for updates. The site also lays out key planning principles and strategies and asks for suggestions from the campus community on how to handle the shortfall.
"We can no longer build our budgets on the budgets of prior years," wrote Katehi. "We require a new paradigm that maintains our mission of teaching, research and public service in this new, more turbulent fiscal environment."
Oil to dry up before fuel alternatives ready
At the current pace of research and development, global oil will run out 90 years before replacement technologies are ready, according to a UC Davis study based on stock market expectations. The forecast, published online in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, is based on the theory that long-term investors are good predictors of whether and when new energy technologies will become commonplace.
"Our results suggest it will take a long time before renewable replacement fuels can be self-sustaining, at least from a market perspective," said study author Debbie Niemeier, a professor of civil and environmental engineering. Niemeier and co-author Nataliya Malyshkina, a postdoctoral researcher, set out to create a new tool that would help policymakers set realistic targets for environmental sustainability and evaluate the progress made toward those goals.
Niemeier said the new study's findings are a warning that current renewable-fuel targets are not ambitious enough to prevent harm to society, economic development and natural ecosystems.
"We need stronger policy impetus to push the development of these alternative replacement technologies along," she said.
Helping put families back together
Methamphetamines are no longer a "fringe" drug problem for families in California. Just ask Tennille Anderson of Lakeport. She lost her five children in February 2006, when Lake County Child Welfare Services placed them in foster care because of her addiction. How Tennille turned her life around and regained custody of her children is a story being replicated by meth addicts throughout the north state, thanks to leadership from the Northern California Training Academy at UC Davis Extension's Center for Human Services.
For several years, that group worked with four Northern California counties to create new practices for how child welfare and drug and alcohol agencies should work together. Key to the success was a $1.5 million, three-year federal grant that UC Davis Extension helped the counties obtain. Because of the program's success, the grant has been renewed for another year.
The change in county strategies started in 2006, when UC Davis Extension hosted a summit, inviting the directors of Northern California county social services, alcohol and drug services, probation, mental health, public health and law enforcement departments.
Tennille Anderson experienced the change in county practice after Lake County Child Welfare Services detained her children and placed them in foster care. "I just wanted to jump through their hoops to get my kids back," Tennille says. "At that point I wasn't really serious because I thought I could quit doing the drugs."
But Tennille — and ultimately her family — benefited from the new interagency cooperation and were reunited.
"Tennille's was one of the first cases that mended our relationship with Alcohol and Other Drug Services," says Sherri DeLa Torre, a child welfare social worker in Lake County, "because we started having conversations and working together."
Before Tennille's case, the alcohol and drug program seemed to perceive social workers as a threat from which they had to protect their clients — the addicted parents, DeLa Torre says. The meth grant opened the door of communication for the first time by creating new practice models for child welfare and drug and alcohol agencies to work together.
Boom: Profs lead magazine about California
Two UC Davis professors are behind a new magazine — Boom: A Journal of California — that promises intelligent and insightful reading about life in the Golden State.
Headed by editors Carolyn de la Peña, professor of American Studies and director of the UC Davis Humanities Institute, and Louis Warren, the W. Turrentine Jackson Professor of Western U.S. History, Boom includes a wide range of works, from scholarly articles to shorter, informal work, and aims to create a dialogue about the "vital social, cultural, and political issues of our time, in California and beyond."
The first issue was released in March, both in print and online. Article titles for that issue include "How to Fix a Broken State," "Race and the California Crisis" and "The Crossroads of Mission Viejo," among others.
Helping poor farmers help themselves
Rural farmers will get better advice on what crops to plant and how to grow them sustainably under a new effort to modernize the agricultural extension systems in 20 of the world's poorest countries.
UC Davis' College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences is joining five other research universities and several private organizations in the new $9 million, five-year Modernizing Extension and Advisory Systems project. The consortium, led by the University of Illinois and funded by the United States Agency for International Development, will identify the activities and investments needed to make improvements in the target countries.
"This is a critically important opportunity to improve the agricultural extension systems in Africa, Asia and Central America so that they can effectively meet the information and training needs of small farmers," said Jim Hill, a Cooperative Extension plant scientist and associate dean of international programs in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at UC Davis.
The consortium partners will help train local extension workers so that they, in turn, will be able to draw on the expertise of the most innovative and successful local farmers and provide other farmers with information and links to markets.
Why is President Obama considered a black man?
Why is President Barack Obama — the son of a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya — considered a black man?
While historic, social, political and more sinister factors almost certainly influence the prevailing view of the president's race, a new study co-authored by UC Davis psychology professor Jeffrey Sherman has found that a basic learning pattern also is involved.
People learn about new things — such as diseases, dogs or cars — by noting attributes that distinguish them from the same types of things that they already know, past research has shown. The study by Sherman and two colleagues demonstrated for the first time that the same learning pattern also applies when people place others into ethnic categories based on facial characteristics.
"Features that are more typical of minority group members draw more attention," Sherman explained. "So, when someone has a mixture of features, the minority features are the ones that we tend to grab onto. We pay more attention to them and they are used more heavily in our judgments. They influence us to a greater degree."
The study was published in the online edition of Psychological Science.