Chancellor Gary S. May this week will deliver his first State of the Campus since assuming office last August. UC Davis chancellors give this annual address to the Representative Assembly of the Davis Division of the Academic Senate, and the campus community is welcome to attend.

The State of the Campus address is on the agenda for the Representative Assembly’s regularly meeting scheduled to begin at 2:10 p.m. Thursday (March 1) in the multipurpose room at the International Center. The meeting will start with senate business before the chancellor gives his address, probably starting at about 2:20 p.m.

Following the chancellor’s address, the Representative Assembly will take up other business, including a change to Davis Division Regulation 538, having to do with examinations.

As it stands now, the Academic Senate requires the printing of its examination rules in the general catalog. But the catalog is no longer printed, so the Academic Senate’s Executive Council has endorsed the deletion of the printing requirement, to be replaced by a requirement that the rules be posted in the “Final Examination” section of the online catalog.

Update: Faculty and Staff Satisfaction Survey

If you were hoping to get a free UC Davis staff or faculty T-shirt for taking the 2018 Faculty and Staff Satisfaction Survey, you better act fast! In less than a week, 14 percent of UC Davis and UC Davis Health employees have already taken the survey to evaluate university administrative services. The survey will stay open until March 13, but gifts are only available while supplies last. If you’re a permanent employee, you should have received your survey invitation, with link and access code, Feb. 21.

Read more about the survey.

Call for applications for staff advisor 

Staff across the UC system are once again invited to apply for the position of staff advisor to the Board of Regents. It is a two-year term, July 2018 to June 2020; the first year you are the staff advisor-designate, working alongside the staff advisor, and the second year you move up to staff advisor. The position is open to nonrepresented and represented staff, or non-Academic Senate academic employees, who have at least five years of UC service.

Dwaine B. Duckett, vice president of systemwide Human Resources, encouraged all eligible staff members to consider applying. “Staff’s contributions are critical to UC’s success,” he said. “They enable and execute many of UC’s groundbreaking accomplishments. Serving as a staff advisor to the regents is a unique opportunity to elevate the staff voice — and it’s an invaluable act of service to the university.”

Staff advisors participate in open sessions and designated committees of the Board of Regents, representing UC staff not only in board deliberations but in working with other decision-makers in the Office of the President. Staff advisors serve as nonvoting members of designated regents’ committees, attend and participate directly in committee and board meetings throughout their term of service, and visit many of the campuses to solicit input from staff.

You can find more information and the application link on the “Staff Advisors to the Regents” website. The application deadline is March 23.

Questions about the staff advisor position or the application process? Contact Juliann Martinez, UC Office of the President Employee Relations, by email or phone, 510-287-3331.

The application period also is open for student regent and student advisor to the Board of Regents.

‘New Gradebook’ in Canvas includes ‘late policies’

Phase 1 of Canvas' New Gradebook, now available for faculty, offers some features that UC Davis instructors have been asking about.

Faculty can use the new features by adopting the New Gradebook. The changes:

• Add policies for late and missing assignments.
• Allow instructors to rearrange the columns on the default grades tool page display.
• Allow instructors to add student identification numbers as a secondary ID to the student name menu.

The most significant of these three changes might be “Late Policies,” which lets instructors create automatic rules to deduct points from late assignments or to assign zeroes to missing work. The policy is applied per course, and governs all items submitted online for that course. Also, once instructors use Late Policies, they cannot revert to the current version of the gradebook for that particular class.

There’s no immediate need to begin using the New Gradebook. It won’t replace the current gradebook before calendar year 2019, and its features will continue to evolve during 2018. But assistance is available now for any faculty who want to explore or try its features.

Read the complete article in TechNews.

Follow Dateline UC Davis on Twitter.