After its first year in operation, the Office of the Ombuds has released its first annual report, for 2013-14.

The report actually covers almost 13 months, going back to the office’s opening day on the Davis campus: June 3, 2013. The office began serving the Sacramento campus in September.

Susan Kee-Young Park, ombudsperson and office director, in a message in the annual report, wrote that UC Davis leadership “has opened their doors to the ombuds office, and — always of supreme importance to an ombuds office — has been consistently supportive of the ombuds unique standards of practice,” including functional independence.

The report provides basic demographics on the 267 individuals and groups who sought ombuds service. The report breaks down the visitor count as follows: 172 on the Davis campus and 95 on the Sacramento campus.

The report provides information on the nature of the issues the visitors raised, as well as recommendations to address what the ombuds office observed as systemic issues.

According to the report, visitors’ most frequent concerns involved poor communication, disrespect (including bullying behaviors) and distrust with a person of higher institutional status.

The report offers recommendations in three areas:

• Abrasive behaviors and hierarchical relationships
• Hiring and reclassification issues
• Institutional change issues

Alum takes seat on Board of Regents

Rodney Davis, a past president of the Cal Aggie Alumni Association and a former trustee of the UC Davis Foundation, has taken a seat on the UC Board of Regents, to serve as an alumni regent-designate for a year and then as an alumni regent with voting rights through June 30, 2016.

Also, Ramak Siadatan, vice president of the CAAA board of directors for the last two years, has moved up to president for 2014-16, and Debby Stegura has been elected to replace him as vice president and president-elect.

Read more.

Campus email migration is underway

Get ready to say goodbye to Cyrus/Geckomail, the central email system that much of the campus has used for several years. UC Davis will retire it, as well as dozens of smaller departmental email systems, as departments move to one of three main options for email, shared calendars and related collaboration needs:

• DavisMail, based on Google's Gmail and Google Apps
• uConnect Cloud, which is based on Office 365 from Microsoft and is sometimes referred to simply as Office 365
• uConnect Local, the existing campus uConnect service, also known as "uConnect on premise" or "on premise Exchange"

Read the complete story in TechNews.

UC Ready tabletop exercise set for Aug. 15

Campus departments and units with UC Ready plans in progress or completed are encouraged to participate in a tabletop exercise on Friday, Aug. 15.

The annual exercise helps units assess their plans to quickly resume or continue essential operations in the context of an emergency scenario (it changes every year). The UC Office of the President’s goal is for every unit on all campuses to have UC Ready plans by December 2014.

Two tabletop sessions are being offered: 9 a.m. to noon, focusing on administrative units; and 1 to 4 p.m., focusing on research and academic units. Both will be held at the Conference Center.

To sign up, send an RSVP by email, providing department name and number of participants.

The UC Ready website includes an online planning tool that provides a framework, and prompts users to identify critical functions, key personnel, vital information, supplies and more.

A slow year on I-80 'Across the Top'

Many of us UC Davis commuters dealt with “Fix 50” for two months, but that was nothing compared to what some of our colleagues are dealing with for a year on Interstate 80 in north Sacramento.

That’s right, an entire year of work — and travel delays that the California Department of Transportation estimates at 10 to 15 minutes during peak commute hours.

Crews are repaving 10 miles of eastbound I-80 between the Sacramento River and Watt Avenue as part of the “Across the Top” project (the “top” of Sacramento). The project, already 2 years old, is adding 10 miles of new bus-carpool lanes in both directions and a mile of new auxiliary lanes.

To accommodate the repaving work that began July 19, Caltrans is shifting lanes and diverting traffic from old lanes to new lanes. Cars in the left lanes may not have access to all exit ramps. Authorities have reduced the speed limit to 55 mph (from 65) in the construction zone and say traffic fines will be doubled.

In a year, get ready for the same type of work in the westbound direction.

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