Dear Colleagues,
Despite this being a very challenging budget year for California, the Legislature passed and the governor has now signed a final state budget for the 2024-25 fiscal year, which does not cut funding for UC. We are deeply grateful for the steadfast support of the governor, and our elected officials, for higher education in California.
With the budget signed, President Drake has formally approved the 2024-25 systemwide salary program. The 4.2% salary increase for policy-covered staff and academic appointees at all locations recognizes the extraordinary efforts of employees during this past year. Pay increases will take effect on July 1, 2024, for employees who are paid monthly and on June 23 for those who are paid bi-weekly.
Thank you for your dedication and passion for our mission of improving the lives all Californians. As we head into the 4th of July holiday, I hope you can enjoy some quality time with friends and family.
Best wishes, Glenda
Glenda Humiston
Vice President
- Author: Pamela S Kan-Rice
Dear Colleagues,
Despite this being a very challenging budget year for California, the Legislature passed and the governor has now signed a final state budget for the 2024-25 fiscal year, which does not cut funding for UC. We are deeply grateful for the steadfast support of the governor, and our elected officials, for higher education in California.
With the budget signed, President Drake has formally approved the 2024-25 systemwide salary program. The 4.2% salary increase for policy-covered staff and academic appointees at all locations recognizes the extraordinary efforts of employees during this past year. Pay increases will take effect on July 1, 2024, for employees who are paid monthly and on June 23 for those who are paid bi-weekly.
Thank you for your dedication and passion for our mission of improving the lives all Californians. As we head into the 4th of July holiday, I hope you can enjoy some quality time with friends and family.
Best wishes, Glenda
Glenda Humiston
Vice President
The University of California plans to provide a general 4.2% salary increase for eligible, policy-covered staff employees and academic employees, contingent on the outcome of the state budget allocation. UC President Drake recently shared his support of the general increase, along with the expectation that should the state budget be significantly altered, an updated announcement may be shared.
Policy-covered staff employees
- Salary increases will be implemented as a general increase, where all eligible policy-covered staff employees would receive a 4.2% increase to their base salary, effective July 1, 2024, for monthly and June 23, 2024, for bi-weekly paid employees.
- Although this year's salary program for policy-covered staff is not a merit program where performance is a consideration related to the salary increase amount, the importance of the annual performance review process should not be discounted. All policy-covered staff employees should continue to receive, at least annually, a performance review per policy.
Policy-covered academic employees
- For policy-covered academic appointees, the academic salary scales will be increased by a general range adjustment of 4.2%. The adjustment to the academic salary scales will be effective July 1, 2024.
- The regular peer-review merit advancement process for policy-covered academic appointees will continue per academic personnel policy.
Represented staff and academic employees
- Salary increases for exclusively union-represented employees are governed by their respective collective bargaining unit agreements, which are separate from this salary plan.
Eligibility criteria and guidelines will be available and shared shortly. For additional questions, please feel free to reach out to Human Resources at humanresources@ucanr.edu.
- Author: Deanne Meyer
Last week Program Council met to review programmatic budget requests. February was our warm-up when Jennifer Bunge of Resource Planning and Management (RPM) walked us through the budget request process. Each of the statewide programs and institutes have funding that is allocated as permanent and other funding allocated as temporary. In some instances, the temporary has gone on for many years making it appear permanent. We went through each line of each budget and each organizational chart. Thank you to Jennifer and Han (RPM), each of the Program Council members and Katherine Webb-Martinez and Kit Alves for their phenomenal facilitation. A special shout out to Joni Rippee for her institutional and ability to provide important historic information.
Glenda, Erik Prose (Director of the California Institute for Water Resources) and I met with Magalí Muria-Tunon and Isidre Sala Queralt to discuss the UC Catalonia Memorandum of Understanding. Glenda and Doug Parker had visited Catalonia previously after the MOU was signed. Since we are now in a new phase after COVID 19 it's an opportune time to more fully identify the activities that will occur between the two groups. Given our climates, drought, impacts of changing climate there is no time like the present to strengthen this working relationship.
Following the UC Catalonia meeting I drove to Ukiah to work with John Bailey and Lenya Quinn-Davidson. The drive over 20 and around Clear Lake was fantastic. Hills were green and the lake was full! A year or so ago as I drove around the lake nearly all boats were out of the water and docks seemed like they were in a different zip code since water levels were so incredibly low. What a difference a year makes!
With April 1 comes the official start of “retirement season”. Whereas Daniel Obrist has the excitement of hiring new academics, I get the pleasure of thanking others for their service and wishing them a happy next chapter in their lives. Although a letter of intent to retire is not necessary, it is appreciated so we may track position gaps. It's the UC Path documentation that every retiree needs to get straight! Many in ANR have contributed for decades and likely will continue to contribute in one capacity or another. Recently I signed a plan of work for a retired advisor who continues to work 25% time (near 50 years now). It's a testament to a passion for identifying driving questions, designing, and deploying research, summarizing information, and making change happen.
Everyone working on the All ANR conference is in high gear getting the last details in place. Thank you to all committee and subcommittee members, Kathy Eftekhari and Katherine Stein as well as Sherry Cooper and Program Support for all your efforts. A huge shout out for our phenomenal IT team who in between patches has been loading new equipment for us to use.
Speaking of IT, please have patience as they work through very complex and at times unpredictable issues with our website. Keep your eyes alert for ANR updates that provide additional information. There may be a few more bumps in the road. In the meantime, any new information on outages will be available on the ANR IT information zoom channel.
- Author: Deanne Meyer
This last week started with us waking up to learn of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that rocked Turkey and Syria. Drone footage, satellite imagery, news reports all show the devastation. The World Health Organization estimates some 23 million people impacted by this natural disaster and the news outlets indicate more than 33,000 people dead. That doesn't count all the people who know those impacted. Our thoughts are with first responders, those in need of healing and those traumatized by the temblor. Many groups and organizations are on the ground to help including Californians. Californians know how long recovery can take and how lives change in an instant. Many in my family see earthquake disasters and are grateful to first responders from throughout the world. My great grandmother was married in 1903 and moved out of her family's home to live with her in-laws. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake (magnitude 7.9 estimate) and fire destroyed building, property and people. Because Grammy lived with her in-laws she survived and a few years later my grandmother and her sisters were born; decades later my mother, her brother and her three first cousins; my generation has 6 and the next generation has 4. I for one understand the value and importance of first responders and international help that came to San Francisco's aid in 1906 and I'm grateful to be able to help now.
How's our footprint doing? January was a busy month for hiring. Academics included: Eric Porse, Director California Institute Water Resources; Advisors [Ellie Andrews, Sonoma; Natalia Ott, Tehama; Justin Tanner, San Joaquin; Eddie Tanner, Humboldt; Tobias Oker, Kern; Haris Gilani, Riverside, and Ahmed Kayad, Intermountain REC. and Flavie Audoin, Central Sierra MCP]. It's exciting to have new Advisors from one end of California to the other! Two Project Scientists joined: Francisco Benitez, Berkeley Food Institute housed at Kearney and Alexis Zaragoza working with Vice President Humiston. There are also two new Staff Research Associates: Cristal Hernandez (Kern) and Nicole Dutch in Plumas/Sierra. Tim Nguyen joined the statewide IPM program as an applications programmer.
Great progress is being made toward the California Conservation Planning Partnership (C2P2) technical assistance agreementrollout meeting at the end of the month. You may remember previous discussions on this collaboration between ANR,CARCD (California Association of Conservation District), CDFA (California Department of Food and Agriculture), NRCS (Natural Resources Conservation Service) and Resource Conservation Districts. We provide service to the same people and this agreement helps all staff align with the responsibilities of their organization.
What else is happening within ANR? The biweekly meetings with the Vice Chancellors for Research continue with discussions to incorporate the UC data policy into local policy. Specifically, we need to ensure data are protected when academics transfer, leave or retire. As a reminder, all data associated with research projects are the property of the Regents of the University of California. Also happening at this time of year is our Directors of State wide Programs and Institutes are working on the budget call for 2023/2024. These are due later in February and go to Program Council for discussion in April.
Winter rains may or may not be done. Yet, we're at that time of year when millions of workers invade California: bees! Often, almost every healthy beehive in the country is in California as we prepare for a big bloom. I remember reading there's a new technology that made the top 10 at the World Ag Expo related to hive management. Maybe I'll get a chance to see it in the week ahead. May the weather be warm enough for the bees to be buzzing around and doing their job as buds bloom. Bees teach us that the mighty are mighty because of what they do and not because of their size.