By Donna Hemmila
With an aim to highlight the university's problem-solving expertise, UC faculty tackled some of California's most pressing challenges during a forum held in conjunction with UC Day in Sacramento.
The annual UC Day brings together alumni from the 10 campuses to talk with legislators and their staffs about the importance of the university's contributions to the state and the need for public support. More than 300 attended the event held on March 10. This year's theme – Today's Ideas, Tomorrow's Solutions – emphasized the role UC innovations play in driving the state's economy.
The faculty forum, held in the Governor's Council Room in the Capitol, focused on the federal stimulus package, water, energy efficiency and the mortgage crisis. UC President Mark Yudof moderated.
"The UC is a very important research client for us," said Norman Bourassa, a California Energy Commission staffer who attended the forum. "At any given time we have $12 million to $15 million in contracts with UC research groups."
Bourassa is the buildings program manager in the commission's Public Interest Energy Research department. He attended the panel discussion to hear what UC experts had to say about the impacts of the federal stimulus funding and the latest in energy efficiency.
"This is no time for business as usual," said Arun Majumdar, director of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. "We need some major changes and innovation."
Energy efficiency. Majumdar challenged UC to become a test bed for energy-efficiency strategies by cutting the energy use of its campus buildings by 50 percent. Buildings use 40 percent of the energy in the United States and, Mujumdar said, represent the biggest opportunity to cut energy consumption and costs.
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| Arum Majumdar talks about smart buildings at UC Day forum. |
California has made great strides in designing energy-efficient buildings, he said, but the next innovation has to be based on how occupants use a building. Researchers at several UC campuses and labs are developing smart building systems that marry occupant preferences for light, heat and air-conditioning with power-saving technologies.
Economic stimulus. Nicole Biggart, dean of the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, talked about the impact UC has on the economy as an employer and innovation partner fueling job creation in private industries. UC is poised to benefit not only from federal stimulus funds for education, she said, but also for improvements to the energy delivery system and electronic patient records systems, both areas where UC technology can shape development.
“An investment in us is an investment in jobs in a very powerful and big way,” Biggart said. “We transform the economy … with new industries and new technologies, with more efficient and better ways of doing things.” Read UC Davis story.
Drought. Jay Lund, professor of environmental engineering at UC Davis, said California needs to manage surface and groundwater resources better and to work on water conservation in urban areas. In response to an audience question about desalination as a solution to water shortages, Lund said the cost would have to be cut in half for seawater to become a real commercial option.
Mortgage crisis. James Wilcox, professor of finance at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, offered his solutions to the mortgage crisis, suggesting "desecuritization" of securitized mortgage pools to make restructuring individual mortgages easier.
Wilcox has a plan to save both homeowners and lenders from the heavy costs of foreclosures through an equity-sharing lending program. A third of the value of a home at the time of foreclosure is lost during the foreclosure process, he said. Under his plan, lenders would still absorb losses from the "underwater" mortgages, but not as heavily, and there is potential to recoup loss when the home is resold.
For example, on a home with a mortgage of $400,000 that is now worth $200,000, Wilcox suggests lenders offer the owners a conventional loan for the current value. In exchange for absorbing the $200,000 loss, the lender would get a percentage of the profits when the home is sold.
"This gives homeowners an incentive to stay in the house and maintain it," Wilcox said. "This could be used for currently distressed homeowners and new home owners."
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| UC Davis alumna Carolyn Vara, a San Joaquin Valley resident shows off her UC Merced bobcats. |
Alumni stand up for UC. Earlier in the day, alumni visited legislative offices to talk about the importance of UC in their communities.
Carolyn Vara, a UC Davis alumna from the San Joaquin Valley, attended UC Day as part of the UC Merced contingent.
"I have 10 years of UC Day," said Vara. "I started coming here to lobby for funds to get UC Merced built. Now we are promoting all the accomplishments of our wonderful faculty and students. "
Using kirigami, a type of origami, Vara immortalized the UC Merced bobcat mascot in gold foil to decorate the tables reserved for UC Merced alumni, friends and students attending the UC Day luncheon in the Sheraton Grand Hotel across from the Capitol. She has folded more than 1,500 paper bobcats over the years as part of her lobbying efforts on behalf of the newest UC campus.
“UC Day is a wonderful opportunity to engage our alumni and our students and parents to come and speak on behalf of UC with our legislators as to why it’s important to continue to support the programs that we do and the impact that it has overall on the economy and the citizens of California," said Jorge Ancona, assistant vice chancellor of UC Irvine Alumni Relations.
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| UC President Mark Yudof emphasizes need for human capital investment. |
Human capital. Yudof asked alumni and advocates attending the luncheon to carry the message of UC's impact on the state to their legislators and to remind them that California won't get out of the recession without a bigger investment in human capital.
"It is human capital that will make this state strong. It is human capital by which I mean educating the young people," Yudof said. "The best tech transfer we do every year is the graduating class."
Without a renewed commitment from the state to support higher education, Yudof said, the greatest public higher education system in the world will "wither on the vine."
UC Day ended with the Alumni Associations of the University of California presentation of awards to former Assemblyman Gene Mullin as Legislative Advocate of the Year and the 24 members of the UC President's Board on Science and Innovation as Advocates of the Year.
Mullin was honored for his work in the creation of the Researcher Protection Act of 2008. The board was honored for its efforts to promote the importance of UC's research and technology transfer initiatives.