Dear Colleagues:

These excerpts from some "Letters to the Chancellor" sent to my Web site will give you a flavor of the feedback I receive from people at UCSD and out in the community. I thank everyone who has written. I learn from each letter, and I'm glad to share these ideas and my own responses with all of you.

With warm regards,

Marye Anne Fox

Energy Saving

Passing by the Leichtag and the CMM buildings at night, I realized that all the lights inside the labs were on. Aren't we supposed to save energy? Why do those lights need to be on? After a certain time they should automatically be turned off. UCSD is a large campus, if the lights of many others buildings are also on all night long, what a huge amount of electricity UCSD is using. Turning off unnecessary lights will save a lot of money to UCSD and save energy for the sake of environment.

Chancellor Fox: Energy conservation is a critical issue, especially as we head into the summer, when peak usage puts us at risk for electricity alerts and rolling blackouts. While it’s true that some campus operations, like hospitals and laboratories, require round-the-clock energy use, most of us can help cut costs and protect the environment by using power more efficiently, especially at nights and on weekends. In many labs and offices across the campus you can help by turning off the lights in areas not occupied or when otherwise unnecessary. In the Leichtag building, we are developing a plan to install occupancy sensors to automatically power down unoccupied areas, and we hope to include this approach as a campus-wide standard for future construction.

UCSD has won praise for innovations in power usage; just last month, we announced that two energy-saving projects are together saving us $1.5 million a year, and one of the projects earned us a San Diego Excellence in Energy Award. I want to thank all whose hard work resulted in this honor. I urge all campus managers to discuss energy use with your staff, and I invite everyone to learn more about energy conservation by visiting the Blink Web page on “Energy Conservation: What You Can Do."

Post Docs

Please consider adding a tab to the main UCSD website to link to information for post-docs. We aren't staff, and we aren't students, and we aren't faculty. Despite the new UC policy, we still feel left out of the UCSD community.

Chancellor Fox : I’m very glad you wrote, because the excellence of our post-doctoral programs is and will continue to be a prime factor in UCSD’s success, and post-doctoral scholarship is a personal focus both for me and for Senior Vice Chancellor Marsha Chandler. My own experiences as a post-doctoral fellow in physical chemistry and environmental chemistry at the University of Maryland impressed upon me the need for vigorous support during this critical era in a researcher’s career. I will confer with campus officials on ways to increase the accessibility of post-doc information.

Promoting Diversity and Fairness

I welcome the additional efforts to ensure that women and staff, faculty, and students of diverse ethnicities and cultural backgrounds are actively recruited, admitted to, and/or hired at UCSD if they are the best qualified candidates. I am concerned that the renewed focus on ensuring diversity may result in some people being selected because they enhance our community's diversity even if they are not the best qualified candidates. I believe that our diversity efforts will succeed only if we are true to our sense of fairness.

Please monitor closely how selection decisions are accomplished to ensure that the process is fair to all candidates. I have recently learned of some hiring decisions being based primarily on race and not on qualifications. While this was not done in an overt way that demonstrates a blatant violation of the requirements of Proposition 209, I believe that only with the Chancellor's reminders of the importance of adhering to our responsibilities to not base selection decisions on race or gender, will people realize that a fair process is essential to our goal of enhancing the selection of diverse, well-qualified candidates for admission and for hiring.

Please emphasize this as you direct Vice Chancellors and others to increase the number of students and employees who meet a diversity goal.

Chancellor Fox: Two of my top priorities as Chancellor are to ensure the quality of our student population, faculty, and work force, and to increase the diversity of the UCSD campus community. Those goals are mutually inclusive. A commitment to diversity should never mean lowering admissions standards or hiring standards for faculty or staff. We are not aware of any hiring transactions involving violations of our state or federal requirements. In fact, we already have checks and balances within each vice chancellor area to monitor each hiring action before it is finalized. In his Q&A published on my Web site in March, Jorge Huerta, my Chief Diversity Officer and Associate Chancellor, challenged all of us to broaden our conception of diversity when he said, “I want people to be aware that diversity doesn’t just pertain to race and ethnicity.” Professor Huerta also reminded us that, in terms of faculty hiring, national research has produced data on qualified women and minority scholars in every academic field. The same is true of applicants for admission and employment. As we see each day at our campus Preuss School, talent and achievement transcend color and gender lines. Our efforts will be consistent with University standards of quality and excellence, and will conform to all current legal and regulatory requirements.

Speed Bumps on Gilman

I applaud you for having this opportunity for an open forum. I am a relatively new staff member in Chemistry and I am responsible for setting up a new Electron Microscopy facility in Bonner. I also commute to work by bicycle most days. There is one spot on campus that I would like to bring to your attention and ask that something be done to resolve a potentially dangerous situation.

There are a series of warning bumps on Gilman that warn motorists of the upcoming Library Walk. While I agree that some warning is needed here, the white plastic buttons, for lack of a better term, can become very slippery to bicyclists when they are wet and are somewhat hazardous even in dry conditions. I have been commuting by bike for almost 30 years and I teach a nationally certified course on bicycle transportation. Falls are caused when the front wheel of the bicycle is diverted while the rider continues in a forward momentum. Anything that can divert the front wheel is a hazard and the several rows of these buttons are difficult to navigate. I would like to request that these buttons be removed.

Alternatively, if only the buttons within four feet of the curb were to be removed then motorists would still get their gentle reminder and bicyclists would be able to avoid the buttons in the center. These buttons are great for improving the safety of pedestrians but they should not be a hazard for bicyclists.

Chancellor Fox : At my request, UCSD Chief of Police Orville King ordered a safety survey of the area. The survey found that, while there were no reports of injury as a result of these raised dots, it was clear that they presented an unnecessary obstacle and potential safety hazard to cyclists, particularly during wet weather. The raised dots have been removed from the bike lane, and we are inspecting other campus bike lanes to see if there are similar hazards that must be removed. Thank you so much for bringing this to my attention and for helping ensure that UCSD has the safest possible campus environment.

Staff Appreciation Week

I want to respond to the Staff Appreciation week, which was announced recently, for April 25-29th. At first look, we, staff members of UCSD, were excited to see the various activities planned for the special week. After reviewing these lunch invitations, I was aghast to see the pricing of these meals. At $15.95 for a BBQ, this is way too much for a staff to pay and enjoy the festivities, especially during times of zero cost-of-living and merit increases for the past two years. And skyrocketing costs of living in San Diego. The meal prices were not listed on your email announcement to the UCSD staff community. Why? There was confusion among our staff when they were surprised to learn about these costs for the "staff appreciation" lunches. What a disappointment. Is there a way to provide a free activity, snack or lunch for the UCSD staff without having to search in our pockets to feel appreciated?

Chancellor Fox : UCSD offers a yearlong variety of campus community programs for staff. Many, like the winter Holiday Pancake Breakfast and the summer Staff Appreciation Picnic, are subsidized by the UCSD Staff Association, the Chancellor's Office, and other campus groups. One such activity, the Chancellor's 2005 "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" celebration, will take place Friday, June 10, at Petco Park when the San Diego Padres host the Chicago White Sox. We also offer an array of professional development activities for employees, such as the Staff Equal Opportunity program announced April 19 by Business Affairs Vice Chancellor Steve Relyea for staff seeking a promotion or career change. This program offers eligible employees individual grants of up to $500 for training activities, and it provides financial assistance to support departmental training and development programs that will help prepare staff for career advancement. Please be assured that prices for all staff events are kept as low as possible, and many events are offered at reduced prices or are free of charge.

Fairness and Accountability

While I believe UCSD staff are horrendously underpaid, I do think an issue has to be addressed. There seems to be little accountability and consistency amongst some supervisors of Faculty and Staff to require absence slips to be turned in promptly, if at all. Furthermore I've even heard a couple of employees say things like, "The pay here has become so deplorable that I don't have to turn in all of my absence slips!" I can concur with these sentiments, but I think it is horrible for any employee to avoid turning in their absence slips, and negligent for supervisors to allow this to happen. I strongly believe Campus HR needs to remind staff/faculty that failure to report accurate hours is stealing and hurts us all. In addition Campus HR needs to set stronger standards for holding supervisors accountable for their supervisees to report their hours promptly.

Chancellor Fox : Ethical conduct in every aspect of campus life is integral to our mission as a public university dedicated to public service. I am dismayed to think that anyone at UCSD would behave irresponsibly, especially at a time when, as noted by UC Associate Vice President Michael Reese in his Q&A this month, we are striving to build enduring, broad-based support among citizens and constituents for our university missions. I have pledged to improve business practices and accountability here at UCSD, and I need every member of our community to help me make that happen. All faculty and employees must comply with university requirements for accurate timecard reporting, and all supervisors and managers must be vigilant in overseeing adherence to these requirements.