UC Walks returns for its eighth year on Wednesday, May 17, 2017, bringing together faculty, staff, students and retirees to take a walk, share wellness tips and (with luck) enjoy the spring sunshine.
UC Walks is a free, systemwide event that began in 2010 as a way to raise awareness about the importance of making time for walking or fitness. Over the years, UC Walks just keeps growing, highlighting UC's commitment to becoming among the healthiest places in the country to live, work and study. Wellness managers and benefits professionals organize the events, making sure that each location offers something special – like UC Berkeley's signature flash mob, free health screenings at UC San Diego, and a Wellness and Safety Fair at UC Irvine.
Visit the UC Walks page on UCnet to check out this year's video and find out what's happening at your location. Although most events will take place on Wednesday, May 17, UCSF's event will be held on May 10, and UC Berkeley's event will be held on Friday, June 16. Participants will receive a free T-shirt while supplies last, courtesy of UC's medical and behavioral health plans.
Show your UC Walks spirit by sharing photos of you and your colleagues on Twitter, using #UCWalks. A collection of #UCWalks photos will be posted on UCnet after the event. Check out a photo slideshow of last year's event.
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The Staff Advisor to the Regents, LaWana Richmond, and the Staff Advisor-designate, Jason Valdry, spent a day at the UC ANR building in Davis April 20 to reach out to UC ANR's early-career professionals, take questions at an all-staff meeting and meet with UC ANR leadership.
The University of California, in partnership with Vox media, has launched Climate Lab – a new six-part video series on climate change. Hosted by conservation scientist and UCLA Visiting Researcher M. Sanjayan, the videos explore the surprising elements of our lifestyle that can contribute to climate change and the groundbreaking work being done to mitigate its effects. The series aims to take the overwhelming subject of climate change and break it down into manageable topics to inspire viewers to transform the planet. The videos discuss everything from clean energy to food, and from religion to smartphones, through interviews with experts, scientists, thought leaders and activists, including many researchers and experts in our UC community.
The first two videos, "Why humans are so bad at thinking about climate change” and “Going green shouldn't be this hard,” can be viewed at climate.universityofcalifornia.edu.
Future videos in the series will be released each Wednesday at 6 a.m. through May 24 and will be available on UC's Climate Lab website (climate.universityofcalifornia.edu).
This project builds on the UC system's ongoing commitment to address climate change. At a time when the importance of robust and sustained funding for climate change research is being debated on a national level, it's more important than ever to invest in ambitious research about issues important to our state and nation's economic health, prosperity and innovation and to communicate about it in a way that's fact-driven as well as relevant and engaging.
In 2013, President Janet Napolitano launched the Carbon Neutrality Initiative, establishing a systemwide goal of UC becoming carbon neutral by 2025. To date, energy efficiency measures and clean energy projects implemented across the UC system have generated savings of $28 million per year.
“As Climate Lab shows, investments in research and technology are critically important as we work to address global climate disruption,” Napolitano said. “Achieving carbon neutrality and addressing climate change are not merely operational or research goals at the University of California – they are moral imperatives. That's why I launched the Carbon Neutrality Initiative and committed UC to becoming carbon neutral in our operations.”
You can help spread UC's messages about climate change by sharing the videos on blogs, social media, websites or by email. If you follow UC's Facebook (facebook.com/universityofcalifornia) or Twitter (twitter.com/uofcalifornia) accounts, you can see and share the videos directly as they release. Or you can draft you own posts directing folks to climate.universityofcalifornia.edu – sample Facebook posts and tweets are below if you would like to modify them for your use.
Facebook:
The University of California has put together an amazing video project on climate change. Check it out at climate.universityofcalifornia.edu.
Twitter:
Our friends at the @uofcalifornia are releasing a series of innovative videos on #climatechange with @voxdotcom: climate.universityofcalifornia.edu
The @uofcalifornia & @voxdotcom seek to change the way we think, talk & act around #climatechange. Watch videos at climate.universityofcalifornia.edu
- Author: Jodi Azulai
Time management? Work-life balance? Are you talking to me?
If you believe that you don't have time or work-life balance, remember that you have the same number of hours in a day that Mother Teresa, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Marie Curie, Pablo Picasso, Rosa Parks, Stephen Hawking and other highly productive people have or had.
If you're running ragged and insist you don't have time to learn time management skills, your most likely and probable future is more of the same. How does that prospect sound? How does the adage “Work smarter not harder” sound?
The good news is that Lynda.com breaks courses into chunks so that you can set aside about 5 minutes per day or a couple times per week to devote to getting a handle on your workload. Here are some examples of the Lynda.com video courses presented by leading experts in the field:
- Time Management with Dave Crenshaw
- Time Management Tips Weekly with Dave Crenshaw
- Efficient Time Management with Chris Croft
- Balancing Work and Life with Dave Crenshaw
- Enhancing Your Productivity with David Crenshaw
- Getting Things Done with David Allen
- Managing Your Time with Todd Dewett
Grab some time management tools and run with them! Sign up for a Lynda.com account if you haven't already done so. There is a link to Lynda.com under “My Links” in the ANR Portal. ANR Learning & Development would love to hear what you have learned and how it has helped!
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
The Western Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program has announced the Call for Pre-proposals for Research & Education Grants for 2017. The deadline is 12 noon Pacific Time on June 1.
Congress mandates that the SARE grant program depart from “business as usual.” To that end, the Western SARE Administrative Council requires evidence that agricultural producers are involved from inception to finish in the planning, design, implementation and educational outreach of any SARE-funded project.
Applications are submitted online at http://wsaregrants.usu.edu.
The application process for this competitive grant program consists of two stages: 1) submission of a pre-proposal and, 2) after notice of selection, submission of a full proposal. The pre-proposal step assists the WSARE Administrative Council in selecting proposals that exhibit diverse subject matter, cover diverse geography, meet the basic requirements of the Congressional mandate for the grant, and contain original and innovative research, the results of which can be readily adopted by producers. The pre-proposal also spares preparation time of the unsuccessful applicant. Applicants with the most promising pre-proposals will be invited to develop more extensive full proposals.
For more information, see https://wsaregrants.usu.edu/grants/docs/CFP_PRE.pdf.
