NOVEMBER • 2009
UC to raise $1 billion for students
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
Power of 10: News from UC
campuses
2
UC grows future faculty
3
Students lobby for more sustainable food
3
UC-sponsored Doctors Academy turns 10
4
Among my top priorities as president of the University of California is keeping higher education accessible and affordable. On
a recent visit to Sunnyside High School in Fresno, I came face-toface with hundreds of reminders of why that goal is so important
to the future of UC and the state of California.
FROM THE DESK OF
Mark G. Yudof
RESEARCH IN ACTION
WORKING FOR THE PEOPLE
OF CALIFORNIA
Battling California’s
Alzheimer’s crisis
(page 5)
did you
know?
• The Institute of Higher
Education at Shanghai
Jiao Tong University in
China ranked seven UC
campuses among the
top 50 universities in
the world: Berkeley (3),
UCLA (13), San Diego
(14), San Francisco
(18), Santa Barbara
(35), Irvine (46) and
Davis(49).
• U.S. News & World
Report’s 2010 America’s
Best Colleges guide
ranked UC Berkeley
and UCLA as the No. 1
and No. 2 best public
universities.
I had gone to the campus to announce Project You Can, a new
effort to raise $1 billion for student support. We chose that
particular school because its students represent just the type of
young Californian who benefits most from our work to create
educational opportunities.
In a part of our state where poverty is no stranger, the recession has delivered plenty of
hardships. At Sunnyside High School, 87 percent of students are considered low-income.
But the kids I met there did not let hardship define their lives. They were full of hope, ambition and pride in their community, school and themselves.
I had the privilege of talking to many students from the school’s Doctors Academy, a UCsponsored academic enrichment program. Founded by UC Davis med school alumna Katherine Flores, the program encourages teens to pursue health professions. Hearing these students
talk about their ambitions to become doctors, nurses and researchers — and to return to the
Central Valley to practice — I came away even more determined to keep UC accessible.
Continued on page 2
UC Davis leads attack on global pandemics
UC Davis is spearheading an international effort to detect and control diseases that spread from
animals to people.
Over the next five years, a global early warning system named PREDICT will be developed
through a $75 million grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development as part of its
Emerging Pandemic Threats Program.
Among the 1,461 pathogens recognized to cause diseases in humans, at least 60 percent are of animal origin. Examples of diseases that spread this way include AIDS, which moved from chimpanzees to people, and avian influenza from birds.
“To establish and maintain global pathogen surveillance, we will work directly with local governments and conservation organizations to build or expand programs in wildlife and human health.
Together we want to stop the next HIV,” said Jonna Mazet, director of the UC Davis Wildlife
Health Center. “This collaborative approach is key to PREDICT’s success.
UC Davis’ primary PREDICT partners are Wildlife Conservation Society, Wildlife Trust, Global
Viral Forecasting Inc. and the Smithsonian Institution. The PREDICT teams will be active in
global hotspots where wild animals have significant interactions with domestic animals and dense
human populations. These conditions have become more prevalent as humans have spread deeper
into wilderness areas and travel more extensively. Historically, global pandemics have erupted
every 30 or 40 years.
POWER OF
10
SYSTEMWIDE NEWS
Yudof continued from page 1
News from UC campuses
UC Berkeley is creating a plan to turn a former
gold mine in South Dakota into the world’s
deepest laboratory with a $29 million National
Science Foundation grant.
UC Davis will lead a federally funded Horticulture Collaborative Research Support Program
to fight hunger and malnutrition in rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa, southern Asia
and Latin America.
UC Irvine researchers have discovered what
causes a cancer-causing toxin to form on moldy
nuts and grains. Their discovery would help
prevent some cancers.
This month UC Regents must vote on fee increases for the rest of 2009-10 and for
2010-11 that would total roughly 32 percent. Believe me, none of us at UC wants
to take this action. We know that for many students, fee increases will seem an
insurmountable impediment. That is why our campuses are stepping up their student support efforts with a $1 billion systemwide private fundraising drive. Project
You Can will seek to double the money the 10 campuses collectively raised over
the last five years for undergraduate, graduate and professional school students.
In addition, I’m asking Regents to raise the income ceiling on the Blue and Gold
Opportunity Plan to $70,000 to cover more lower-income families. Currently,
the plan pays the systemwide fees for California students with household incomes of $60,000 and below who qualify for financial aid.
UC will continue to set aside a third of undergraduate fee increases and half of
graduate fee increases for financial aid. Increases in UC, state and federal grants
and in federal tax credits are expected to cover the 2009-10 fee increases for
three-quarters of undergraduates with household incomes below $180,000.
UCLA’s Center for Health Policy Research
has concluded that if any of three national
health care reform plans under discussion are
approved, about 4 million uninsured Californians would be covered.
This month, UC Regents will also vote on a budget that seeks to stabilize the university’s finances with a request for increased state funding of $900 million. The
budget request is part of a vigorous advocacy campaign to ask the state to restore
all of the money it took away last year, to begin contributing to the UC Retirement
Plan and to renew California’s commitment to public higher education.
UC Merced’s economic impact in California has
reached nearly $1 billion since July 2000 when
operations began. The campus has generated
nearly $456 million in payroll, construction jobs
and purchases in the San Joaquin Valley.
With the state facing projected budget deficits of $7 billion or more, I know
everyone must share the pain of California’s economic crisis, and UC is doing its
share of sacrificing. But we can’t continue to slice away at academic programs,
staffing levels and faculty and research support without jeopardizing the university’s quality and its ability to serve California.
UC Riverside is giving 40 middle school math
and science teachers an opportunity to learn
teaching methods aimed at reducing the achievement gap among racial and ethnic groups.
State per-student support has shrunk by half in the last 20 years. That downward
trend creates financial obstacles to education that Sunnyside High students and
thousands more like them throughout the state should not have to face. It’s time
to reverse this trend.
UC San Diego researchers have found an
enzyme that slows the progression of Lou
Gehrig’s disease in mice. They hope to test the
treatment on humans within five years.
UC San Francisco and San Francisco VA Medical Center researchers collaborated on a study
of surgery survival rates among veterans with
post-traumatic stress syndrome. PTSD patients
had a lower one-year survival rate than patients
without PTSD.
UC Santa Barbara Chancellor Henry Yang has
been elected chair of the Association of American Universities, a group of 60 U.S. and two
Canadian elite research universities.
UC Santa Cruz researchers will help lead an
Antarctic expedition to drill a half-mile through
ice sheets to study subglacial lakes, among the
last unexplored aquatic environments on Earth.
For more campus news, visit
www.universityofcalifornia.edu/youruniversity
Many thousands of students and families across the state will be counting on
these fundraising and state advocacy efforts to succeed. Much is at stake. During these challenging times, UC needs help from all its supporters and friends.
Whether it’s contacting legislators, joining an advocacy effort or contributing
to a student scholarship, you can make a difference by standing up for higher
education and the California students who deserve one.
Contact me at president@ucop.edu.
Although I will read all your e-mails, I am not able to personally respond to every one. I encourage you to follow me on Facebook and Twitter, where you can
share your ideas and find updates on our student support efforts.
Click for it!
Visit www.universityofcalifornia.edu/youruniversity for these Web-only features:
Project You Can – Invest in the future of California.
UC Health – Follow UC health news.
Provocative thinking – Check out the Berkeley Blog for expert opinions on everything.
Track UC budget crisis – Follow news of how state funding cutbacks impact UC.
2
SYSTEMWIDE NEWS
UC grows future faculty
The UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program offers
new doctoral degree recipients get a jump-start on their academic careers while helping campuses diversify their faculty.
“I probably wouldn’t be a professor if it wasn’t for the fellowship,” said Wayne Yang, an assistant professor in the ethnic studies program at UC San Diego since 2006. Yang graduated from
UC Berkeley in 2004 with a doctorate in social and cultural
studies in education and took part in the postdoctoral program.
Founded in 1984, the fellowship is one of the pioneering programs designed to foster diversity in academia. The program
encourages doctorate recipients whose teaching, research and
service contribute to diversity to pursue academic careers. UC
Regents made achieving diversity among students, staff and
faculty a policy goal in 2007.
UC’s ladder-rank faculty members are more diverse than the
faculty at the public and private universities who make up the
elite Association of American Universities, according to UC’s
diversity accountability report. Yet white men still account
for the majority of faculty at all UC campuses. The fellowship
program seeks to change those statistics.
“These are scholars who bring critical skills on how to be a
more diverse and inclusive University of California,” said Sheila O’Rourke, program director. “They understand the needs of
minority students. Many of them have worked in minority or
with minority communities, so they are fluent in those issues.”
UC fellows, who can be of any race or gender, receive research
suppport, professional development and faculty mentoring. The program offers 15 to 20 fellowships a year. From
2001 through 2006, more than 75 percent of fellows received
Wayne Yang spent 15 years as a high school teacher before joining the
faculty at UC San Diego.
tenure-track positions, and UC campuses hired more than 40
percent. Since 2003, the UC Office of the President has provided a partial salary supplement for five years to UC campuses
that appoint current or former fellows to ladder-rank faculty
positions. Overall, 77 former fellows have been hired by a UC
campus since 2003. UC Davis and UCLA have hired the most
fellowship participants with 17 each.
O’Rourke said enhancing faculty diversity may become more
difficult as budget cuts curtail hiring, but programs such as
this are “more important than ever if we’re going to be relevant
to the state of California.”
“If we’re going to have any credibility with the state and serve
the needs of the people, we have to address diversity,” she said.
Students lobby for more sustainable food
Responding to requests from thousands of students, UC has
expanded its sustainability policy to deliver more organic and
locally grown food to campus and medical center dining.
UC Regents received 10,000 postcards from students asking for more sustainable food options. As a result, university
policy was updated to require that 20 percent of all food
purchased be designated sustainable by 2020.
“UC has taken a bold step toward protecting our environment
and nourishing all of the people in our food system — not
only the students and staff who eat in our dining halls, but
also the many people who grow, process and serve our food,”
said Kelsey Meagher, a UC Irvine senior who was one of 40
students, food service workers and dining hall staff members
who worked on the policy.
Last year, Meagher and Hai Vo, who has since graduated, conducted a sustainability assessment of UC Irvine food purchas-
ing. Both are leaders in the Real Food Challenge, a nationwide
student network advocating for colleges and universities to
buy more sustainable food. More than 300 universities have
chapters.
The definition of sustainable outlined in the UC policy includes products such as fair trade-certified coffee, USDA certified organic products, cage-free, grass-fed or pasture-raised
food and products purchased from cooperative businesses or
employee profit-sharing ones. Locally grown food must come
from within 500 miles of the UC location.
By December 2010, at least one dining facility at each UC
location must be certified by an outside agency as a green
business if financially feasible. Each campus must also
provide sustainability educational outreach to students and
work with the surrounding community on common sustainability goals.
3
IN THE SPOTLIGHT
UC-sponsored Doctors Academy turns 10
preparation, financial aid workshops and parent empowerment workshops. Students are required to take AP courses
and participate in community service learning activities and
cultural competency/health disparity projects.
“We want our kids to believe in themselves,” said Flores, a
practicing family physician and graduate of UC Davis medical
school. “If you raise the expectations, they can meet them and
exceed them.”
Despite Fresno’s high dropout rate, all Doctors Academy
graduates have attended two- or four-year colleges, with 43
percent going to UC campuses. Some are in medical school
and dental school, while others are nurses and many plan to
help fill a hometown shortage of health professionals.
Dr. Katherine Flores talks about medicine with Doctors Academy students.
Raised by her migrant farmworker grandparents, Fresno native Katherine Flores worked in the fields herself as a youth,
picking apricots, pears and plums. The first in her family to
attend college, she became a doctor and now her hometown
community is reaping the fruits of her labor.
Flores, a UCSF assistant clinical professor and director of
UCSF Fresno’s Latino Center for Medical Education and
Research, started the Doctors Academy in 1999 at Sunnyside
High School. The innovative, University of California-sponsored program prepares disadvantaged students for college
and for health science careers.
The Doctors Academy now includes three high schools in
Fresno County, a Junior Doctors Academy at three middle
schools and the Pre Health Scholars program at Fresno State.
Their combined annual enrollment is 430 students – a diverse
group with 55 percent of the participants Latino, 17 percent
Southeast Asian, 12 percent East Indian, 7 percent African
American and 7 percent white.
“As a farmworker, you see a lot of social injustice,” Flores
said. “What stood out to me were the health inequities. My
grandfather was diagnosed with diabetes when I was very
young. I remember him developing gangrene in his leg,
which required an amputation, and I lived through the culturally incompetent health care process with him. I believe
that there should have been a better way for my grandfather
to have received care.”
The Doctors Academy, a partnership with UCSF Fresno,
the Fresno Unified School District, Fresno County Office of
Education, Fresno State University, Fresno City College, local
hospitals and community health centers lays a foundation for
easing those health inequities. It includes summer enrichment
programs, tutoring, mentoring, guidance counseling, SAT
4
“I’m just really thankful to the Doctors Academy,” said
alumnus Nathan Singh, a second-year medical student at
UCSF. “It’s hard to put into words the impact this program
is having.”
“We want our kids to
believe in themselves.”
Dr. Katherine Flores
The academy pushed Singh to do well in classes, provided support and offered opportunities to volunteer. In a “seminal moment,” Singh changed the dressing on someone shot in the leg.
“It really gave me
a face-to-face personal experience
with medicine
that I hadn’t had
before,” he said.
Singh plans to return to the valley
to practice orthopedic surgery or
family medicine.
And help with the
Doctors Academy.
“I look at it as a
way to give back
to a community
that has given a
lot to me in my 23
years,” Singh said.
“I look at it as a way to give back to
a community that has given a lot to
me in my 23 years.” Nathan Singh,
second-year medical student at UCSF
Research in Action
Working for the people of California
Bill and Susan Long sometimes bicker playfully when he can’t
recall simple things, like where he left his keys just a minute
ago. But their real fight is for time.
Bill Long, 70, was diagnosed two years ago with early stages
of Alzheimer’s disease, and some days he can’t remember the
names of his grandchildren. Still able to work two days a week
at Home Depot, Bill keeps a tight grip on the independence he
has left, knowing full well that the disease can eventually rob
him of all his mental and physical abilities.
He admits that his wife may be the tougher of the two. It
was her “pit bull mentality,” he said, that cleared health care
hurdles to get her husband properly diagnosed after his
forgetfulness and changes in behavior were more serious than
“just getting old.” She also got him referred last year to the
UC Davis Alzheimer’s
Disease Research Center
“We have a medical system
and into a clinical trial of
and societal infrastructure
a drug which they hope
that’s not at all prepared to
will slow the disease and
deal with this problem.”
extend Bill’s good and
Joshua Chodosh
healthy years.
UCLA geriatrician
Although tenacious, Susan Long is the worrier.
She frets about someday not being able to provide the 24/7
attention that her husband may need, that he will end up in
a nursing home and they will lose their entire savings to pay
for his care, or that someday her husband of 48 years will not
even recognize her.
“But I’m hopeful that the drug, or another that will be discovered, will work,” she said. “I want to be with the Bill I know
and love for a long, long time more, and in our home.”
Pending epidemic
The clinicians, researchers and advocates battling Alzheimer’s
disease know that the clock is ticking for the Longs and hun-
dreds of thousands of others like them. A UC report earlier this
year sounded the alarm with projections of a dramatic rise in
the number of Alzheimer’s cases in California. A state task force
was formed recently to develop a plan on how California can
best respond to an impending Alzheimer’s epidemic.
“As the baby boomer generation ages and as people live
longer, Alzheimer’s disease has become an urgent issue,” said
Patrick Fox, co-director of the UCSF Institute for Health and
Aging and an author of the report.
He noted that among California’s baby boomers age 55 and
older, one in eight will develop Alzheimer’s.
“The data indicate the economic and human costs of Alzheimer’s disease will be insurmountable for our state if we don’t
Key findings from UCSF’s Institute
for Health and Aging report for the
Alzheimer’s Association
• The number of people in California with Alzheimer’s will nearly double from 588,000 today to nearly 1.1 million by 2030.
• One-tenth of the all the nation’s Alzheimer’s patients reside in this state.
• The number of Caifornia’s Latinos and Asians living with
the disease will triple by 2030 and the number of African
Americans will double.
• The annual cost for caring for Californians with the disease
could soar to nearly $100 billion in the next 20 years.
• Some 1.1 million Californians today take care of people
with Alzheimer’s. Three-fourths of these caregivers are
family members.
• Alzheimer’s is now the sixth leading cause of death in
the state.
5
Research in Action Working for the people of California
act now,” said state Senator Elaine Alquist when the state task
force was announced in late September.
The UCSF report, partly funded by the California Department
of Public Health, offered several recommendations, including
building a comprehensive health and long-term care service
network for Alzheimer’s patients, improving access to care for
diverse racial and ethnic groups, developing policies and services to support family caregivers, increasing the number of
workers trained in geriatrics, and more funding for research.
California ramping up a plan
The report also urged the state to speed up a plan for dealing
with the burgeoning number of Alzheimer’s cases. “The state
has not conducted a thorough review of its policies and practices related to Alzheimer’s since 1987,” said Fox. “Certainly,
a lot has changed, and not just the numbers. We know a lot
more about the disease than we did 20 years ago.”
But Fox acknowledges a much too familiar conundrum – so
much need, not enough money. The state, with its budget crisis
this year, made severe funding cuts to Alzheimer’s research
centers, caregiver resources and adult day health care.
“The state forecast shows the perfect storm,” said Joshua
Chodosh, a UCLA geriatrician who researches dementia and
health services utilization. “We have the anticipated increase
in the numbers of cases of Alzheimer’s and dementia and at
the same time a drastic state budget situation.”
Chodosh was named co-chair of the state’s Alzheimer’s disease
plan task force, which will present its findings to the state in
early 2011.
“We have a medical system and societal infrastructure that’s
not at all prepared to deal with this problem,” said Chodosh.
“At the same time, we have a chance to be creative in finding
solutions and using the limited amount of dollars for some
critical needs. California needs to be at the forefront in tackling Alzheimer’s and dementia.”
The UCSF study found that California employers lose $1.4
billion in productivity because many employees miss work,
reduce their hours or change jobs when a family member is
stricken with Alzheimer’s.
Research importance
“Accelerating state research funding will hasten the day when
people will be able to delay the debilitating symptoms of
Alzheimer’s,” noted the UCSF report. “A delay of just five years
could cut prevalence rates in half.”
Throughout the UC system, hundreds of researchers are
studying Alzheimer’s disease. Scientists seek what triggers the
excess protein production that forms plaques and tangles that
jam brain signaling and eat away at the brain. Imaging experts
develop tools to detect the disease at its earliest stages, clinical
researchers test drugs that may stave off the disease, and social
scientists and policy experts study the impact of the disease.
“UC people and researchers throughout the state have been
invaluable leaders and partners in raising awareness of the
disease,” said Debra Cherry, associate executive director of the
Alzheimer’s Association in Southern California.
Cherry cites the leading work at the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Centers of California, established by the state in 1984
to provide comprehensive care to sufferers of Alzheimer’s
and related disorders and to aid in ultimately discovering the
cause and cure of the disease. Of the 10 centers in the state,
UC directs seven.
The UC Davis Alzheimer’s Disease Center serves not only as top
referral center for the Alzheimer’s patients, it trains health professionals and advocates for national and statewide changes in
health policy and practice that will improve diagnosis and management of the disease. The center was founded with state funds
some 25 years ago, but blossomed into a national center, too,
attracting key federal funds to conduct more than 30 research
projects and clinical trials. For many of its studies, it collaborates
with its sister UC centers and other research institutions.
Increases projected for blacks, Latinos
One of the center’s priorities is reaching out to various ethnic
groups, said director Charles DeCarli. One major federally
funded study has recruited some 430 white, black and Latino
patients with some cognitive impairment to be studied until
they die. Researchers may determine unique factors in development of Alzheimer’s in these ethnic and racial groups, particularly African Americans, faced with a projected doubling
in the number of cases in 20 years, and Latinos, whose rates
will triple. “For many Latinos and in other cultures, caring for
an aging parent or grandparent is something you automatically do when the time comes,” said Esther Lara, a clinical
social worker and research administrator at the UC Davis
center. “Often when they see senility or what may even be
Alzheimer’s, they think its part of the process and they never
seek outside care for the elder or themselves.”
.Lara sees first hand the soaring number of Alzheimer’s
cases. She’s saddened that many aren’t getting the proper care
because primary care doctors and clinics are not prepared
to handle them. She is also seeing an increasing number of
people in their early 50s with early stages of dementia or
Alzheimer’s. “They are still working, paying a mortgage and
supporting their families,” she said.
Still, she’s heartened by those who volunteer for the research.
They travel far to the center for periodical cognitive and
physical tests. “They’re very proud to be part of important
research.”
Bill Long, the UC Davis Alzheimer’s Center patient and clinical trial participant, gives his time and even his blood for the
sake of science. “I’m willing to be a human guinea pig if it
helps find a cure for this disease.”
Your University is produced 10 times per year by the Integrated Communications department of the University of California Office of the President. For suggestions or
comments about this report, contact: Donna Hemmila, editor, 1111 Franklin St. 12th Floor, Oakland, Calif. 94607, 510.987.0793, donna.hemmila@ucop.edu