The quality of work conducted at the three UC-managed Department of Energy labs is terrific and UC does a service to the nation and itself in continuing to manage them, the UC Regents were told in January, but an institutional group led by the University of Texas believes it's time for a change in management at one of the facilities, the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
"Please consider this letter as a most serious expression of interest in becoming involved as the contractor of [Los Alamos], beginning in October, 1997," UT Chancellor William Cunningham wrote to DOE Secretary Hazel O'Leary in December. Speaking for a group of institutions that includes New Mexico State University -- and may come to include the University of New Mexico -- Cunningham said he was following up on earlier letters from Sen. Jeff Bingaman and Rep. Bill Richardson, both of New Mexico, who asked that the contract to manage Los Alamos be opened to competitive bidding.
In January, however, Richardson said he was considering withdrawing his call for such bidding, given the lab's responsiveness to some concerns he had raised over the level of the lab's contracting and economic development in northern New Mexico. Los Alamos' relations with its surrounding community have been strained in the past year, as the lab was forced to remove 915 members of its 10,000-person payroll.
In March, DOE is expected to announce whether it intends to offer UC an extension of the management contracts for the Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley labs or open the management of one or more of them to competitive bidding. In the past UC has taken the position that, should the labs' management contracts be put out for bid, UC would not be among the bidders.
Institutional positioning on the contracts was taking place just as the labs were receiving assessments of the quality of their science and engineering from UC's President's Council on the National Laboratories. Reporting to the Regents, President's Council Chair Sydney Drell, a Stanford physicist, said that the Council's Science and Technology Panel gave an "excellent to outstanding" to the quality of the work done at all three labs after carrying out an extensive review of the major units in each lab.
Drell went on to note that the President's Council "urges that the University of California support extension of the contract to run the three national laboratories. Your oversight and management assure their independence and high standards of work that in our view are essential to protect the very high quality that makes these three labs such outstanding technical and scientific institutions." Taking note of the University of Texas offer, Drell said"I view with great concern the possibility of the loss of common management and oversight of both nuclear device labs, Livermore and Los Alamos, with their highly integrated national security programs."
The Manual of the Academic Senate is now available on the electronic "home-page"of the statewide Academic Senate at the Internet address: http://www.ucop.edu/senate. The Manual includes the Bylaws and Regulations of the Academic Senate and appendices that include Legislative Rulings issued by the Senate's University Committee on Rules and Jurisdiction; the University's policy on faculty conduct, as codified in the Academic Personnel Manual's Section 015; and excerpts from the Bylaws and Standing Orders of the Regents In its electronic form, the Manual has "hypertext links" embedded into its text, meaning highlighted references that can take the reader to the referenced text with the click of a mouse button. An electronic version of Notice is also available through the Senate's home-page.
The meeting of the Senate's Universitywide Assembly scheduled for February 27 has been canceled for lack of business. The Assembly will thus hold a single meeting this academic year, on Thursday, May 23, at UC Irvine.
Fertility Doctors' Pay Stopped
A situation that could have developed into an ongoing embarrassment for the University was partly defused in January as the UC Regents took two UC Irvine physicians off the University payroll. The base salaries of Ricardo Asch and Jose Balmaceda were terminated even though both technically remain on the UC faculty. Together with a third UCI physician, Sergio Stone, Asch and Balmaceda were partners in the now-closed Center for Reproductive Health in Orange County, the site of alleged wrongdoings that included "unconsented" egg and embryo transfers.
All three physicians had been on paid leave from UCI since May of 1995. In late summer, UCI Chancellor Laurel Wilkening moved to terminate their faculty appointments -- in the cases of tenured professors Asch and Stone by transmitting charges against them to the UCI Senate's Privilege and Tenure Committee; and in the case of Balmaceda by letting his one-year in-residence appointment lapse. Stone apparently has chosen to contest the charges against him. However, Balmaceda and Asch have left the United States to set up what appear to be permanent practices in Chile and Mexico, respectively. Given their continued absence, and unwillingness to cooperate in the University's investigations of their conduct, the Regents took the unusual action.