"New directions" is one way to describe higher education in California and at UC Davis, according to Bruce Madewell, chair of the UC Davis Academic Senate.

Presiding on Monday over the first of this year's regular meetings of the Academic Senate's Representative Assembly, Madewell noted the importance of several unfolding events on faculty life on campus:

• The selection of Robert Dynes as the new UC president;
• The rise of Arnold Schwarzenegger to the Governor's office;
• The upcoming state budget deliberations;
• The impact of budget cuts on student enrollments; and
• The new landscape of Division I athletics on campus.

"We have a lot of issues in the year ahead," Madewell told an audience of 75 faculty members in the Memorial Union. "What new directions will the university take in the future?"

Madewell also noted other issues likely to be discussed, including faculty workloads and career equity reviews, UC's management of its national laboratory at Los Alamos, and the comprehensive review process for student admissions.

The latter issue gained high visibility last month when UC Regents Chair John Moores reported his findings on the UC Berkeley admissions process. Moores claimed that students with SATs below 1000 should not be admitted to Berkeley.

Madewell said the UC Academic Senate, both "here and elsewhere, will have to react to some of these concerns" as this issue is scrutinized.

The Academic Senate represents all tenured faculty on campus.

Another item of concern was the recent transfer of funds from the Kearney Foundation of Soil Science. "This is a major change in how these funds are to be used," said Madewell in response to a faculty member's suggestion that the funds might be diverted from researching and teaching purposes to use for operational expenses in Cooperative Extension.

Madewell said the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at Davis has decided not to use those funds until the matter is resolved. Madewell also noted that Dynes was asked about this situation in one of his first chats with faculty, and he promised to promptly look into the matter.

In other business, the Senate approved a change in Bylaw 88, which will now allow the Committee on Public Service to present the recipients of the Distinguished Scholarly Outreach Award at a regular meeting of the Representative Assembly in "winter or spring" instead of only winter. The justification was that it is difficult to complete the selection process in a timely manner in years where there are fewer Academic Senate meetings.