Open Forum
September 14, 2009 •
A message from President Yudof:
As a constitutional lawyer who specializes in freedom of expression issues, the open exchange of ideas and views about important topics of the day is near and dear to me. I also believe that open dialogue is critical to the health of an organization, especially a public institution like ours. I encourage you to use this Open Forum feature to raise a topic, submit a question to leadership, or offer an idea or comment about something that you think is of interest to the UCOP community.
– Mark
Mark Yudof, President
How Open Forum Works
Open Forum is intended to help foster dialogue throughout UCOP about the important (and perhaps sometimes trivial) matters we deal with. Click on the comments button below or leave a reply to share an idea, question, comment or insight with your colleagues.
I was wondering how the Bagels with Mark is going, and if those of us not getting invited will ever have a chance to know what’s being discussed in there? IT seems like it will take a long time to get around to the rest of us.
Oh, Jim… that’s a good question. I’d actually forgotten about the Bagels With Mark thing because we hadn’t heard more about it. I also would be very interested in hearing an update on how they’re going.
We’ve held three Bagels with Mark sessions, and the attendance has been great.
There have been candid conversations discussing the realities of the UCOP budget, furloughs, workload, business processes, and employee development. Importantly, we’ve also talked about many of the successes UCOP has seen in the last few years, including increased multi-campus collaboration, improving business management systems at UCOP and better communications and transparency. There has also been significant focus on improving the culture within UCOP.
President Yudof has appreciated the conversations with UCOP employees, and has taken note of many of the ideas employees have put forth in the meetings.
Those invited to the meetings have been selected at random. However, we’re considering having an option for employees to sign-up to attend. We’ll give more information on that in the near future.
We encourage those who have attended the meetings to share with the rest of UCOP some of the things you have learned, or things you have discussed at the meetings in the comments below.
Stan-
Is there available information regarding the questions/issues that have been raised thus far in the Bagels with Mark sessions? I think there has been a sense of mystery for those who haven’t been invited and we’d like to hear what actually happened.
I’m hoping you move towards a sign-up model for attendance.
Thanks!
Patricia
I attended one, and it was interesting and informative. The majority of time was taken up with Yudof answering three questions that had been posed by attendees, and the discussions that grew out of that. The questions were about free speech issues on UC campuses, and…I’m drawing a blank on the others but I know we ended up going over furlough issues, etc. The sort of stuff you’d expect people to have questions about. I felt that the meetings were a sincere step in the direction of transparency, and I appreciated that.
Patricia
You should see an article in the UCOP Newsletter today giving some insights into the Bagels with Mark sessions. And we are definitely working on a sign up process for at least half of the participants. As indicated previously, these details are still being worked out and will be communicated just as soon as they are finalized.
Stan