UC Davis will hold a public hearing this week to take comments on the draft environmental impact report that has been prepared to accompany the 2018 update of the Davis campus’s Long Range Development Plan.

The hearing is set to begin at 7 p.m. Thursday (May 3) in Room 1310 of the International Center. Complimentary parking will be available in Lot 14, Lot 15, Lot 25 and the Quad parking garage.

People are invited to give their comments orally or in writing. The deadline for written comments is 5 p.m. May 29.

• By mail to Matt Dulcich, Director, Environmental Planning, Campus Planning and Environmental Stewardship, UC Davis, 1 Shields Ave., Davis 95616.
• By email to environreview@ucdavis.edu.

The LRDP serves as a framework for future campus development, including student housing, research facilities and other services, while targeting environmental goals in such areas as energy and water use, transportation and waste management. The EIR assesses the potential environmental impacts of new development.

The draft LRDP and EIR are available online via links on the Campus Tomorrow website.

Files lost from old SmartSite system

An accidental deletion of files contained in old SmartSite course and project sites has led to the loss of about 161,000 uploaded files, or about 2 percent of all files uploaded to the former learning management system.

The lost files varied in size and type, ranging from homework assignments and syllabi to files attached to emails. All were uploaded to SmartSite from June through December 2016, except for about 100 files from early 2017. Of the total, about 9.3 percent were uploaded by instructors. Almost all of the rest were uploaded by students.

Read more in this TechNews article.

Going for the Slammy in UC Grad Slam

UC Davis Grad Slam winner Tooka Zokaie will compete in the systemwide final this Thursday (May 3), vying for the Slammy trophy and $6,000 prize as the graduate student judged the best at explaining his or her research for a general audience, in three minutes or less.

Zokaie, a master’s degree student in public health, earned her spot in the systemwide competition by besting a field of more than 80 master’s and Ph.D. students in the campus’s Grad Slam that concluded April 5.

Read more about Zokaie and her win in the campus Grad Slam.

Each of UC’s 10 campuses is sending one representative to the UC Grad Slam. It will held at LinkedIn headquarters in San Francisco, with UC President Janet Napolitano as the emcee. A livestream will begin at 10:30 a.m. on the UC Grad Slam website.

Zokaie’s Grad Slam talk is titled, “At the Mouth of Health Access,” about how early access to oral health care resources contributes to the development of healthful maintenance habits and disease prevention.

Judges from media, business and academia will decide first, second and third place. People watching at LinkedIn or online are invited to vote for the audience favorite. Cast your votes here (the link will go live May 3). Winners will be announced at 1 p.m.

Opportunity to advise the chancellor

Applications are being accepted for the 2018-19 Chancellor’s Graduate and Professional Student Advisory Board, comprising 15 to 20 students who work with administrators throughout the year to advocate on behalf of graduate and professional students from all disciplines and degree programs. 

The application form is available here. The application deadline is 11:59 p.m. May 17; submit your application as a PDF by email.

Questions or comments should be directed by email to Jeanelle Hope, graduate student assistant to the Graduate Studies dean and the chancellor, and chair of the Chancellor’s Graduate and Professional Student Advisory Board.

Correction: Cristobal Heitmann obituary

Cristobal Andres Heitmann’s friends and colleagues hosted a celebration of his life April 22 at Putah Creek Lodge on campus. Dateline UC Davis identified the host incorrectly in Heitmann’s obituary April 24. He was killed in a traffic collision April 17, while riding his bicycle near Shasta Dam. He was just finishing up his master’s degree in the Department of Plant Sciences.

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