News & Announcements

Dear Colleagues,

In my first message to you as Chair of the San Diego Divisional Academic Senate, I want to begin by simply acknowledging our current reality: the University of California is facing an unprecedented crisis. Federal agencies on which we have long relied have endured chaotic workforce reductions and face potentially devastating cuts. Today’s news of the federal government shutdown creates further uncertainty. All ten UC campuses have been targeted with federal investigations, and the U.S. Department of Justice is demanding the extraordinary sum of nearly $1.2 billion from UCLA. We know that discussions of some kind are occurring between the Regents, UC Office of the President (UCOP), and representatives of the Trump Administration, but that is all we know.

UC San Diego faculty members have been impacted by these developments and the prevailing climate in different ways. Faculty from a wide range of disciplines are questioning whether they can still promote free inquiry and open discussion in their classrooms. Many feel vulnerable due to their citizenship status, public statements, or their ethnic, religious, or sexual identities. Faculty whose grants have been terminated are coping with profound disappointment, layoffs in labs, and loss of income. Those whose work continues to be funded observe the current budget impasse, watch former students seek positions outside the U.S., and wonder what the future holds.

Given all this, what can the Academic Senate do? Every year, Senate committees perform a great deal of essential and time-consuming work – approving courses, evaluating grant applications for the Senate grant funding program, reviewing Academic Personnel files, and much more. This year, we must also respond nimbly to ever-shifting external developments that have a direct bearing on our faculty and the fate of our institution. Senate faculty at UC San Diego hold a wide range of political views, but we can surely all agree on this: our university and the principle of academic freedom are under threat and must be robustly defended. I ask you to join me, Vice Chair Akos Rona-Tas, our Senate Council and other Senate leaders, representatives, and committee members in rising to meet  this challenge.

Goals and plans
Here are the overarching goals that will guide my term as Senate Chair:

Serve as a conduit for clear and accurate information about the status of federal directives and investigations, the UC response, and local impacts. This is not an easy task, as I discovered recently following reports about Berkeley’s release of personally identifying information to federal investigators. Information is being tightly controlled by UCOP. As your Senate Chair, I will do my best to push for greater transparency and clear communication. I strongly encourage all faculty to attend the October 9 meeting of the UC Assembly of the Academic Senate, at which we will hear from Academic Council Chair Ahmet Palazoglu, as well as UC President J.B. Milliken, Provost Katherine Newman, and CFO Nathan Brostrom. You can register here.

Oversee work of the Senate, welcoming suggestions as to how established ways of functioning can be improved. This year, we are launching our new Committee on Crisis Mitigation (CCM), formed in response to resolutions adopted by the Representative Assembly in the Spring of 2024. The aim of CCM, which will be chaired by Professor William Mobley (Neurosciences), is to provide a mechanism through which faculty may play a constructive role in helping to address crises that arise on campus, quickly mustering relevant faculty expertise when appropriate. We also have two important Senate Administration workgroups (SAWGs) underway. The first, co-chaired by Senate Vice Chair Rona-Tas and Associate Vice Chancellor of Enrollment Management Jim Rawlins, is making broad recommendations on how to improve our Admissions process. This effort emerged in response to a serious lack of math preparedness among a significant cohort of incoming students, requiring the Department of Mathematics to introduce courses not previously taught at UC San Diego. The other SAWG, co-chaired by Professor Philip Roeder (Political Science) and Assistant Vice Chancellor of Academic Personnel Marianne Beckett, is studying ways of making the academic peer review process more efficient without compromising its rigor or integrity. In addition, a SAWG co-chaired by Professor Stephanie Fraley (Bioengineering) and Associate Dean of Graduate Education and Postdoctoral Affairs Thad Kousser is currently being formed to provide implementation recommendations based on the 2024 Report of the Senate-Administrative Workgroup on the Future of Graduate Education. Please bookmark the Academic Senate’s homepage to keep abreast of all of our activities.

Ensure that faculty have a voice in decisions about the budget, especially concerning matters that would affect our educational mission. Campus units have already taken cuts ranging from between 4.5 - 5.25% and are now being asked to prepare for additional cuts. While we do not yet know the severity of the budget crisis we will face, we know that we want Academic Senate representatives at the table when hard decisions need to be made. I encourage you to read the interim report recently issued by the Academic Senate Task Force on UC Adaptation to Disruptions (UCAD) which is currently under review by the local divisional UC Senates. UC Provost Katherine Newman has welcomed the report as a useful framework for responding to the crisis. If you would like to weigh in, please send comments to academicsenateoffice@ucsd.edu by October 22.

Support faculty members who feel vulnerable due to who they are or what they research and teach. We have begun to plan a Know Your Rights faculty workshop for later this fall. Faculty should also be aware that the Academic Senate has a Committee on Academic Freedom charged to “study and, at its discretion, report to the Division any conditions within or without the University which, in the judgment of the committee, may affect the academic freedom of the members of the University.”

Work to bridge the divide between general campus and the Health Sciences. Last year, all UC divisional Academic Senates considered two memorials from the UC San Francisco Senate Division to extend Academic Senate membership to the Health Sciences Clinical and Adjunct Professor series. The memorials did not pass at the other nine divisions, leaving hard feelings on our own and other campuses. Over the course of this academic year, I hope to foster greater mutual understanding and collaboration across the “Gilman divide.” I am looking forward to the opportunity to connect with Health Sciences colleagues at GI Grand Rounds in November.

Continue to push our campus forward on climate-related goals. While it is easy to be preoccupied with day-to-day events, climate change is arguably the single biggest threat that we face. Our Committee on Campus Climate Change will seek to build on the progress that past Senate leaders and committee members, galvanized by concerned faculty and students, have made in this area.

Host an Academic Senate Seminar Series on AI and Education. This year’s Academic Senate Seminar Series will explore how new AI tools are shaping higher education. We are interested in hearing from professors who have experimented with incorporating AI into their teaching and have positive, negative, or mixed experiences to share. If that is you, please reach out to me at senatechair@ucsd.edu. We are also collaborating with Associated Students to host a panel featuring student speakers who will share how they and their peers use AI, and how they perceive its effects on learning and cognition.

Communicate with faculty on the status of UAW negotiations and provide guidance in the event of a strike. As reported by Provost Newman, contract negotiations between the University and the United Auto Workers (UAW) for the recently unified Academic Student Employee (ASE – TAs/Readers/Tutors) and Graduate Student Researcher (GSR) unit, officially began in July. UCOP, in collaboration with the Academic Senate, is planning to issue communication updates throughout the 2025-26 ASE/GSR bargaining process, and I will receive updates through Academic Council. In the event of a strike, the Academic Senate will help to field questions and provide clear guidance about faculty options.

Strengthen knowledge of and participation in shared governance among our faculty. Amid our current challenges, there is renewed interest in shared governance that I hope to cultivate. I will be continuing the departmental visits initiated by Immediate Past Chair Olivia Graeve in order to connect with faculty face-to-face. The Senate is also introducing new quarterly afternoon coffee sessions that will showcase a particular area of work in which Senate members are involved. At the first one (November 13), Vice Chair Rona-Tas will lead a discussion on the recommendations of the SAWG on Admissions described above.

Pursue new funding streams to support faculty research. We are hoping to work with Advancement on a fundraising campaign to support faculty research. Discussions are still very preliminary, but if you know of potential donors who might support such an initiative, please reach out to me at senatechair@ucsd.edu.

Final Thoughts

We have never faced a situation like the one we are now confronting, but as a university and a system, we have weathered crises before. During the pandemic, our Academic Senate worked closely and collaboratively with our Administration to craft our response, making us a model for the nation. Perhaps more pertinent to the current moment, we can look all the way back to the severe cuts to the UC that followed Ronald Reagan’s 1966 election as governor. In 1970, San Diego Divisional Academic Senate Chair Gabriel Jackson lamented, “The combination of de facto salary cuts, increasing workload, decreasing support money for laboratories, library, etc., and hostile criticism from the public and the Legislature have created really serious problems of faculty morale. We have not heard much shouting yet, but I think this is simply because people are numb from the repeated blows.” For Jackson and his colleagues, circumstances must have felt quite bleak, but UC San Diego went on to flourish.

We should also take heart in knowing that we are fighting to protect something that is truly worth preserving. What each of us values most about UC San Diego no doubt looks somewhat different. For me, it is the fact that, in an era marred by the inexorable concentration of wealth, we are a top-tier research institution that is also a tremendous engine of social mobility. Well over a third of our students are first-generation college students, and the boost that a UC degree provides is often life-transforming. The work that we do here—in classrooms, laboratories, studios, clinics, and the broader community—matters. Today, it matters more than ever.

Vice Chair Rona-Tas and I look forward to representing you this year. You should always feel free to reach out to us at senatevicechair@ucsd.edu and senatechair@ucsd.edu.

All best,

Rebecca Jo Plant

Chair, Academic Senate, San Diego Division