University of California, Santa Cruz
PA-3: Inclusive and Participatory Governance

UC Systemwide:
The University of California (UC) Board of Regents is the highest form of governance for all ten UC campuses. The board consists of appointed regents, ex officio regents, a student regent, regents-designate, faculty representatives to the regents, and advisors to the regents.

The student regent is a voting member of the UC Board of Regents, attending all meetings of the board and its committees and serving a one-year term. This position is not elected but is filled by application and open to all students currently enrolled in the UC system. From the time of appointment as a student regent, but prior to the commencement of service as a member of the board, the appointee holds the title Regent-designate and is invited to participate in all meetings of the board and of its committees, but without a vote.

UC faculty in the Academic Senate carry out shared-governance responsibilities established by the board. They exercise direct control over academic matters of central importance to the university – to determine academic policy; set conditions for admission and the granting of degrees; authorize and supervise courses and curricula; and advise the administration on faculty appointments, promotions and budgets.

The Systemwide Academic Senate and the ten Divisional Senates (one for each UC campus) provide the organizational framework that enables the faculty to exercise its right to participate in the university's governance. The faculty voice is formed through a deliberative process that includes the standing committees of the Senate, the Academic Council, the Assembly of the Academic Senate, and their divisional counterparts. Consultation with the senior administration occurs in a parallel structure: at the systemwide level between the academic council chair and the president; and on the campus level between the divisional senate chairs and the chancellors. With some exceptions and as defined by the Standing Order of the Regents 105.1, Senate membership is granted to individuals who have a ladder-rank or other selected academic appointment at the university.

Two faculty members — the chair and vice chair of the Academic Council — sit on the Board of Regents as non-voting members. The Academic Council elects its chair and vice chair.

Staff members can participate in governance on a UC-wide scale as advisors to the board. The staff advisors are selected from all staff and non-senate academic employees and are appointed by the president in consultation with the chair of the board. Serving as non-voting advisors to designated board committees, the staff advisors have direct input into the Board's deliberations and decisions.

UCSC Specific:
Students - Two of the many examples of shared governance by students are the Carbon Fund and the Campus Sustainability Council (CSC).
The Carbon Fund is a granting body that oversees the distribution of over $100,000 a year to faculty, staff, and student carbon reducing projects each year. The Carbon Fund Committee votes on how to distribute these funds and is run by student coordinators. Seven out of the Committee's ten members are student positions.
https://sustainability.ucsc.edu/engage/funding/carbon-fund/committee/index.html

The Campus Sustainability Council is another granting organization that provides funding to registered UCSC student organizations for programs and events that create, implement, and monitor environmentally sound practices on campus. The CSC is student run and has seven voting members and one staff.
https://www.enviroslug-csc.org/past-current-voting-members

Faculty - The UC Academic Senate shares governance with the Board of Regents of the University of California in that it is charged with direct control over academic matters, including authorizing, approving, and supervising courses, conditions for admissions, certificates, and degrees. Each campus's Academic Senate is a division of the UC Academic Senate. In addition to their governance role in academic matters, on the Santa Cruz campus, the Academic Senate makes recommendations, advises on campus administrative decisions, and coordinates academic program development with Campus Provost/Executive Vice Chancellor Tromp.
https://cpevc.ucsc.edu/organization/shared-governance.html

Staff - The Staff Advisory Board (SAB) is an elected group of staff members who meet regularly with the chancellor and campus provost/executive vice chancellor (CP/EVC) to discuss ongoing staff issues. The SAB also holds fall and spring forums with the chancellor that focus specifically on staff issues. The advisory board is dedicated to promoting better communication and relations among UC Santa Cruz employees and administration. The SAB hosts and members are invited to sit on a number of campus and system-wide leadership committees: https://sab.ucsc.edu/outreach-committees/committees-sab.html
In addition to the SAB there are additional staff affinity groups based on job function, such as Administrative Management Professionals and Academic Divisions and Academic Personnel Coordinators.

-- Police Advisory Board
The UC Santa Cruz Police Department has had a Police Community Advisory Board since Fall 2014. Since its inception, the Advisory Board grew to over 40 community members (including "At-large Community Members"), and informed community policing decisions on a broad range of issues impacting the UC Santa Cruz community.
https://police.ucsc.edu/report/police-advisory-board.html

-- Campus Safety Community Advisory Board - The Campus Safety Community Advisory Board will help develop a shared vision for campus safety for all members of our community. Santa Cruz Community Member holds a position on the committee. https://chancellor.ucsc.edu/committees/community-advisory-board.html

-- Since 2018, UCSC formed a Community Advisory Group (CAG) for the purpose of getting community participation and feedback related to our next Long Range Development Plan. More information about the membership of this group (which is very broad across many community groups), can be viewed here: https://lrdp.ucsc.edu/2021/participation.html

-- UCSC has a variety of formal and informal planning meetings with city and local stakeholders. As part of our current Long Range Development Plan and our Comprehensive Settlement Agreement we have regular (bi-monthly) meetings with city agencies to talk about mutual planning and coordination efforts including water conservation projects, ways to conserve resources, transportation projects including coordination of things like our Zipcars, bus routes, and bike share programs. Those meetings also cover housing projects both on and off campus with a focus on density, sustainability, and mitigation of traffic impacts.

-- UCSC has also developed a Workforce Housing Task Force that is made up of the city, county agencies and the area’s largest employers to talk about employee housing and potential areas of collaboration on workforce housing projects.

The UC systemwide STARS Working Group discussed and agreed upon the following issues within this credit:

The STARS Technical Manual does not provide clear methodology or guidance for how to report for this credit in the absence of formal self-identification of gender or underrepresented groups status.

The UC Board of Regents’ office stated that it would be inappropriate to survey board members regarding gender identities or other identification regarding under-represented groups because of privacy concerns. With input from the AASHE STARS Team, UC Office of the President and campuses devised a count based on the pronouns used on the board’s website biographies.

The pronouns used in the public biographies of the 26 people listed on the Board of Regents Members and Advisors web page were used as the proxy to determine the number that are women and/or individuals who do not self-identify as men. Fifteen people had “he/him” pronouns in their bios and eleven people had “she/her” pronouns, resulting in a count of 42% women/individuals not identified as men. These data form the basis for our response regarding gender.

Because there is no clear methodology or guidance for how to ascertain underrepresented groups status of individual members of the Board of Regents, in the absence of self-identification, the UC campuses have chosen not to respond to the optional question about underrepresented groups. In the future, the UC will continue to work with the system-wide diversity and engagement office, who also seek more official board demographics data, in an attempt to get official public reporting of gender data, and, as appropriate, underrepresented groups status.