UC Blog
ANR Building modular addition project approved
Dear Colleagues,
Last week, Senior VP Dan Dooley approved the initial phase of a project to design, estimate cost, and build a modular building adjacent to the existing ANR Building on Hopkins Road in Davis. The building will house the Research and Extension Centers - Administrative Office (REC-AO), Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S), Risk Services, the Statewide IPM Program (IPM), and Communication Services and Information Technology (CSIT).
The need for this facility is driven by a number of factors. First, to reduce facilities costs, UC Davis authorities have been relocating units housed in off-campus leased space to campus facilities. For CSIT, that was going to mean relocation to at least three different structures on campus and the loss of studio, technology infrastructure, and other production facilities. As the lease for the space CSIT currently occupies was to expire late this summer, the need to relocate that unit has been compelling. Additionally, elements of IPM have been in separate locations, one of which is significantly sub-standard.
More importantly, establishing a single location for major administrative, support and programmatic units of ANR will prove essential to improving administrative efficiency and to capitalizing on our new administrative structure and on new common collaborative tools and technologies to support it.
ANR plans to support this project primarily with funds that are restricted to use on capital projects and facilities. Moreover, the planned 18,000 sq ft facility, estimated to cost approximately $2.8 million, will provide a permanent home to key ANR units and, within a relatively short period of time, save both ANR and the UC Davis campus significant lease, improvement, relocation and infrastructure expenses. This project will be funded without impacting current operating budgets and resources, academic recruitments, or funding for our Strategic Initiatives.
While no construction on this project will begin before we have a state budget, we must move ahead with the project planning to be ready when we do. This project will use modular construction technologies that provide functional space at low cost and very short construction times. The UC Davis facilities staff has conducted preliminary analysis of this project and agrees on its potential long-term benefits to both ANR and UCD.
REC-AO, EH&S, Risk Services, IPM, and CSIT will remain in their current locations until they can relocate to the new building projected to be ready by early 2012.
We have long wanted to expand the ANR Building and the current construction economy and significantly improved modular construction technologies make this project possible, affordable and desirable.Kay Harrison Taber
Associate Vice President – Business Operations
View or leave comments for the Executive Working Group
This announcement is also posted and archived on the ANR Update pages.
Op-ed outlines board's reasoning for farm sale
An op-ed written by members of the Hansen Trust Advisory Board appeared in the Sunday Ventura County Star with details about the board's reasoning for recommending that the University of California sell the Faulkner Farm in Santa Paula.John Krist, Chris Sayer and Edgar Terry wrote that the historic Faulkner Farm, which now operates as the Hansen Agricultural Center, did not provide the boon for agriculture that was expected when the facility was acquired by the trust 13 years ago.
On the contrary, "ownership of the property has saddled the organization with crippling financial and logistical burdens," the authors wrote.
The op-ed says Thelma Hansen's objective when she bequeathed much of her estate to the University of California in 1990 was to support and maintain University research and extension activities and related facilities in Ventura County.
However, a large share of the Hansen Trust's annual budget has been devoted to maintaining the Faulkner Farm's historic structures and grounds. Only 10 percent of the trust’s annual budget of approximately $1 million is now available for direct support of activities benefiting local agriculture.
The Hansen Agricultural Center entrance.
Hansen Trust board advises UC to sell the farm
The Hansen Trust advisory board has recommended that UC sell the historic Faulkner Farm in Santa Paula because it has become too expensive to maintain, according to a article in today's Ventura County Star.The farm now houses the UC Hansen Agricultural Center, named for Ms. Thelma Hansen. She left almost all of her family's estate -- nearly $12 million -- to the University of California when she passed away in 1993 to benefit and sustain local agriculture through research and education. In 1997, funds from the trust were used to purchase the 27-acre Faulkner Farm.
The stately Faulkner House, built in 1894 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is the facility's centerpiece. Designed in the Queen Ann style, the house has a basement, two main living floors and a finished room in the tower. A large red barn on the Faulkner property was built in 1886.
John Krist, a member of the Hansen Trust advisory board and chief executive officer of the Ventura County Farm Bureau, said the trust has not been able to carry out its mission with Faulkner Farm, according to the article. Only 10 percent of the trust’s $1 million annual budget now directly supports education and research, he said.
An aerial view of the Faulkner Farm.
Healthy eating begins in preschool
Two early childhood healthy eating education programs offered by UC Cooperative Extension in Placer and Nevada counties are featured in a San Francisco Examiner blog post about the 25 healthiest foods.Written by Anne Hart, who bills herself as the "Sacramento Nutrition Examiner," the story detailed "Growing Healthy Food, Minds & Bodies," a UCCE hands-on preschool nutrition program.
The program helps young children make the connection between growing and eating healthy food by, for example, studying grasses we eat and then sprouting them. The children learn about edible seeds and how to plant and grow them.
The second nutrition program featured in the post is "Let's Eat Healthy," which is available for qualifying Placer and Nevada county schools, preschools and other youth organizations and groups. (Schools with at least 50 percent of the students receiving free or reduced-price lunch qualify for this program.) Let's Eat Healthy offers teachers a variety of curricula choices:
- Go Glow Grow-Preschool
- Happy Healthy Me...Moving, Munching & Reading Through MyPyramid for 4 to 6 Year Olds
- Eating Healthy from Farm to Fork . . . Promoting School Wellness, Kindergarten Curriculum
- Eating Healthy from Farm to Fork . . . Promoting School Wellness, First Grade Curriculum
- Eating Healthy from Farm to Fork . . . Promoting School Wellness, Second Grade Curriculum
- Reading Across MyPyramid-Elementary School
- Nutrition To Grow On-Upper Elementary
- Eatfit-Middle School
- Jump Start-High School
Teaching USDA's "My Pyramid."
Private eye for peach pie
The Fresno Bee profiled a local business over the weekend that pursues confidential research projects to help clients - such as fruit breeders, growers and sellers - identify fruit varieties that look great, taste delicious, grow easily and store well.
Fruit Dynamics monitors 10 stone-fruit breeding programs, evaluating 400 to 600 unreleased cultivars each year for the fresh and processing fruit markets.Tree fruit growers are looking to the company to boost their industry, in which profits have dipped due to high production and competition from a greater diversity of fruit choices, such as relatively new California blueberries.
Fruit Dynamics owner Eric Gaarde has been collecting fruit variety characteristics since the 1990s, the article said."Their database is, without a doubt, the most unique fruit database in the world," UC Cooperative Extension tree fruit farm advisor Kevin Day told reporter Joan Obra.
"What they've done across geographic breeding lines is absolutely unparalleled," Day was quoted in the story. "It's staggering, the data they have."
Day offers information on tree fruit fresh-shipping, production practices, fruit growth and development, pruning and training systems on the Tulare County UC Cooperative Extension website.
Fruit Dynamics maintains an extensive tree fruit database.