Minutes of the UC-CPS Meeting at UCSB, 1:00 to 4:30 pm, Feb 26th, 2008.

OVERVIEW: These meeting minutes are split into two parts, the first two pages contain a chronological account of discussions held. The third page lists tasks that need to be acted on between now and the next meeting planned for May/June 2008.

ATTENDEES: Jason Triplett (Chair, UCSC), Michelle Juarez (UCSD), Fabian Filipp (UCSD), Matthew O’Connor (UCB), Amanda Stiles (UCB), Judy Ho (UCLA), Markus Kauffman (UCLA), Ajay Gopal (UCLA), Lachelle Hannickel (UCSB), Dan Cao (Stanford) and Tom Garnett (Garnett-Powers).

MEETING RECAP
1. Opening statement: The meeting started with an introductory note from the chair, Jason Triplett, followed by a listing of the highlights of the meeting of CPS with postdoctoral administrators earlier in the day.

2. Health Insurance Update: Tom Garnett, owner of Garnett-Powers and associates, provided an update of the postdoctoral insurance plans. This included enrollment statistics from February 2008 and historical enrollment data on a per-campus basis. With regard to the maternity and premature birth utilization, utilization data indicate a higher than average usage of maternity benefits. The accompanying potential of premature births could at some point impact premium rates. Industrywide, healthcare costs have risen in the last year at a 9% rate for PPOs and at an 11% rate for HMOs. The 2008 renewals for UC's PSBP came in at a 7.5% increase on the HMO and a 0% increase for the PPO.

3. Student Health Service Access: Matthew O’Connor inquired whether campuses like Berkeley have access to their student health center via their PSBP health plans. Tom Garnett said that this is not currently the case at Berkeley and would be willing to be part of any discussion on the issue. This would affect five UC campuses. Those with medical centers as listed at the UC website are Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco.

4. Group Legal Plan: At the 10/2007 meeting at Stanford, the issue of group legal insurance was raised by CPS members. Tom Garnett is of the opinion that such a program may not have a large subscription base, therefore, making premiums unaffordable and the program unviable.

5. Postdoc Retirement Plan: It is not possible to have a seamless retirement plan for all postdocs, which will include paid-direct titles. The solution may be either to coarse-grain the plan so that payroll deduction and pre-tax retirement savings are provided for employees, while post-tax annuities and IRAs are provided for both employees and paid-directs. Tom Garnett informed the group that UCOP has suggested that CPS survey the postdoc community to determine the level of interest. Garnett-Powers is not in the retirement business but would be happy to recommend companies who could become involved if such a direction were of interest.

6. New UC postdoc association: Lachelle Hannickel gave an overview of the birth and growth of the postdoc association at UCSB. Starting with a “founders meeting”, they were able to meet again to create a group of postdocs actively meeting and organizing events for the community. The following events were organized and are detailed in their campus reports: Pub Nights, Panel Discussions, Grant Writing Workshop.

7. AAG Status and Interaction with COGD: Jason led a discussion of the progress towards becoming an academic advisory group to UCOP, a project headed by Niranjana Nagarajin (UCB). It appears that since all the campus postdoc associations are AAGs (UCLA soon will be), requisition for similar status for CPS becomes redundant and would not be required. CPS can plans to begin a dialogue with COGD, potentially attending quarterly meetings and delivering at least an annual report. If COGD will have us, a CPS representative will attend the next COGD meeting at Irvine in May.

8. CPS Website: It was decided the most sustainable model for the future of our website would be to have the hosting and technology managed by UCOP. In response to a request from Mark Westlye, CPS will prepare a proposal statement with estimated costs and IT support required to transition. After the transition, the website contents will be controlled by CPS members while the software will be kept upto date by UCOP IT Dept.

9. CPS Newsletter: It was decided that CPS will distribute newsletters after each meeting that would include a meeting review from the chair, a collection of campus updates, pictures, and highlights of postdocs on UC campuses. The individual campuses will distribute these to their local communities. Amanda Stiles will serve as the first Editor-In-Chief of the newsletter, a role that will rotate each meeting.

10. CPS Mailing List: With impending departure of Ajay Gopal, the management of the CPS mailing list hosted at the UCLA listserver would be taken over by Jason Triplett.

11. Sloan Foundation Funding Request: CPS will make a formal request for funding to the Sloan Foundation. This project will be headed by Judy Ho (with assistance from Fabian Filipp, Abhinav Bhushan, and Jason Triplett) and shall request funding for the following activities:
a. Travel money to bring all postdoc representatives to meeting venues (expecting 2 members each from 10 member campuses and 4 ex-officio members for 3 meetings a year)
b. Refreshments for the meetings
c. Half-time employee at one of the UC campuses to administer CPS communications, newsletter compilation, event programming and website maintenance.
d. Regional programs highlighting underserved postdoc demographics, specifically humanities and social science postdocs.
e. Survey raffle awards for UC-wide postdoc experience testing.
f. Northern-California and Southern-California workshops on common postdoctoral training, for example Grant writing, Non-academic Careers etc.
g. Outreach assistance to new and upcoming PDAs in terms of funding for specific high-impact programs or newsletters.

12. Surveying international postdocs: UC Berkeley will be surveying their postdocs about visa/immigration issues. Future surveys may be conducted by CPS or could contain standardized questions that all member campuses would be requested to add into their annual surveys.

13. Campus Reports: Representatives from all 6 universities presented their campus reports. These were provided to council members before the meeting by email.

14. Campus Survey Results on Website: A results or links to results of campus surveys held at various member institutions would be provided as a resource at the CPS website. Jason will e-mail the CPS member list to collect this information.

15. Next CPS Meeting: Abhinav Bhushan from UC Davis has offered that the next meeting be held at their campus. Jason will serve as chair for this meeting, and a new CPS Chair will be elected during this meeting.

So Attests,
Jason Triplett, Chair
UC Council of Postdoctoral Scholars