UCSD Stories

UCSD Stories

RSS New story alertsAlerts

Gallstone special

Those with a hankering for gourmet hospital food may hope that a recent sponsorship opportunity by UCSD’s health system is repeated. According to an online fundraising flier, a $25,000 “masters” sponsorship of the health system’s ...

Prepare to be assimilated

Before books travel across town to take their places on the new shelves, they will undergo a technology upgrade and take a fantastic journey through tubular space.

Sixth College at UCSD wraps up Winter GameFest

Fluff crushes enemy

“Fluff,” professional gamer Brian Lee, led a team that crushed the enemy in Defenders of the Ancients on Sunday, January 20, at UCSD’s Price Center. Gamers surrounded the tables and watched over the players' screens ...

Over the Cliff? Nope.

Will legislators allow America to drive off the edge of a cliff? Two San Diego political scientists say no.

Who doesn't want some Freak Sauce on a first date?

Makeout Weird helps bridge the gap between new media at UC San Diego and down-and-dirty experimental performance in the real world.

UCSD’s graduation daze

Though the state’s budget meltdown has boosted tuition and drastically cut local admissions, somebody at the University of California San Diego apparently thinks the show must go on, literally. That seems to be the message ...

Here's the Deal: Porter's Pub

Porter’s Pub at UCSD, known for its underwhelming vittles and exceptional all-ages music venue.

Ron Paul Criticizes DEA for Lockup of UCSD Student

Presidential candidate Ron Paul paid a visit to the UCSD campus on the evening of May 4, attracting an estimated 3500 supporters, mostly students. UCSD’s Youth for Ron Paul group invited the Texas Republican to ...

The UCSD Version

The public relations team on the La Jolla campus of the University of California San Diego is widely regarded in the world of academic flackery as one of the best in the taxpayer-financed business. Every ...

Medical Millionaires

Who was the highest-paid employee at the University of California San Diego in 2010? Not chancellor Marye Anne Fox, at a mere $387,886. Nor Edward Babakanian, chief information officer for the university’s health sciences division, ...

"I Promise" Benefit Show

“San Diego is such a volatile music scene,” says Jesse Kranzler, an organizer of the three-day “I Promise” Che Café benefit show. “One venue or group of bands usually keeps it going, especially in the ...

One of 1 Percent

Molecular biologist Suresh Subramani, appointed earlier this year as senior vice chancellor for academic affairs at UCSD, is pulling down a cool $350,000 a year, plus car allowance of $8916. Besides that, the longtime biology ...

Mary Walshok at the Oasis

UCSD’s associate vice chancellor for Extended Studies and Public Programs and professor of sociology Mary Lindenstein Walshok has long been noted around campus for her many extracurricular activities. She’s on the board of La Jolla ...

Hillel of San Diego Still Battles for a New UCSD Facility

After Hillel of San Diego purchased a parcel for a UCSD facility, the La Jolla Shores Association and a group of La Jolla residents sued the City of San Diego in June 2006. The San ...

UCSD’s best football team

Mayor Jerry Sanders and other local pols seeking a hint about how much longer the Chargers intend to continue playing in San Diego might do well to take a look at a sponsorship deal cemented ...

County Seeks Psychologist to Assess Workplace Threats and Romney Collects Money in La Jolla

It’s a dangerous place out there in the public sector. Witness the County of San Diego, currently seeking a contractor “experienced in risk assessment for public entities in potential workplace violence.” According to a request ...

Designer Genes: Craig Venter Negotiates with UCSD

Genomic-engineering pioneer Craig Venter appears to be on the verge of officially breaking ground on flashy new offices on state land at the UCSD campus, but university officials are reluctant to tell the public the ...

UCSD's HIV Privacy Gap

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has determined that a research project conducted by UCSD’s Antiviral Research Center violated the privacy and confidentiality rights of an unspecified number of human research subjects taking ...

La Jolla's Royalty Sample Jose Cuervo at UCSD

Termed-out GOP state senator Mark Wyland has set up a campaign committee to run for the Board of Equalization and is already picking up big money. Last week he collected $8000 from the California Ambulatory ...

Blue Plate Special: Jess Durfee Roasted at the Tipsy Crow

The City of San Diego is slashing library hours and street repairs, but GOP mayor Jerry Sanders is still handing out big money to City lobbyists. According to its most recent disclosure statement, during the ...

UCSD Considers Closing Four Libraries

The UCSD Library Committee has outlined a plan to close one or more libraries for the 2011–12 academic year as part of a $3 million budget cut to the libraries, reports the Guardian, UCSD's student ...

Korb and Cosmologic — Relaxed and Swinging at UCSD

UCSD's music department has been presenting concerts all week featuring returning alumni and staff, including singer and bassist Kristen Korb, who opened Saturday's show, and the creative free-jazz co-op Cosmologic, which closed it. The event ...

Craig Venter Lab at UCSD on Regents' Agenda

Whether famed UCSD alumnus and genetic-engineering legend Craig Venter will get to lease a parcel of choice UCSD campus land was set to be quietly taken up by University of California regents at their San ...

Cash and Carry

A key political ally of San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders has been on the campaign trail for Democratic congressional candidate Francine Busby, who is battling GOP incumbent Brian Bilbray. Jim Waring, who was forced out ...

They’ve Come for the Machines

June 12 was the deadline for students to move out of UCSD’s on-campus dorms. The next day — with most of the student housing empty — there were at least two reported incidents of people ...

Grove to Be Gone

On June 2, UCSD's Associated Students Council voted to close the student-run Grove, the oldest café and first to sell espresso drinks on campus. The Grove is part of the Office of Enterprise Operations, dedicated ...

Naming rights, anyone?

Big cutbacks in state funding have left UCSD students fuming and campus administrators slashing staff, but the same financial constraints apparently don’t apply to the university’s medical center. Approval of a planned “East Campus bed ...

UCSD and TB Now

The San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency is working with UCSD to provide tuberculosis testing to students and faculty who may have been exposed to a student who has been diagnosed with the ...

Brothers Back and Forth

Link and younger brother Booth have virtuoso hands. To hear him tell it, Link was “the Stink,” the “be all end all,” best three-card monte hustler in town. He could “throw” the cards — two ...

Investigating the investigator

Anyone who wants to know how the well-connected world of San Diego’s power brokers works need look no further than Mary Lindenstein Walshok, associate vice chancellor for public programs and dean of Extension at UCSD. ...

Whoa!

A student reports via e-mail that on Tuesday, October 27, at the vendors’ market on UCSD’s Library Walk, she was browsing the “$2 For Everything” booth when a group of six or seven African-American high ...

An Execution in the Hills

MISSION HILLS An Execution in the HillsBy Scafidi, March 24 “Hello, Zack. What’s up?” “Uh, hi, uh, Fred? It’s me, Zack.” “Yup.” “My cat’s got a gopher cornered over here. Can you come quick? And ...

The Big Empty

Beck, the Strokes, and the Pixies have all played UCSD’s 4700-capacity multipurpose RIMAC arena. The school is looking for a concert promoter to take over RIMAC and run it the way Live Nation handles SDSU’s ...

The Pressure

The Canyonview East pool on the UCSD campus is back in operation eight weeks after a steam explosion in the main filter control room. In late August, a heat exchanger failed, allowing pressurized steam to ...

Death of PR

UCSD’s budget crisis has claimed the glitzy job of Stacie Spector, the school’s associate vice chancellor of university communications and public affairs. Deputy communications director in the Clinton White House and deputy campaign manager for ...

Stand-in money

UCSD political science professor Peter Gourevitch, who has taken over as acting dean of the university’s School of International Relations and Pacific Studies while full-time dean Peter Cowhey is away on extended leave advising the ...

Mobley's Money

Some insiders predicted he would be UCSD’s first million-dollar professor, but the state’s financial meltdown apparently dashed those plans. Still, don’t fret for Dr. William Mobley, new chairman of the department of neurosciences at the ...

Dinky Break

UC San Diego chancellor Marye Anne Fox announced on July 15 a temporary reduction in parking fees for faculty, staff, and students. Starting August 1, 2009, annual parking fees will be reduced by 5 percent. ...

Lightning in Chaos

In the sleek, two-story lobby of the Potiker Theater, a soldier saluted, quarter-turned to the east, shoveled imaginary dirt, quarter-turned to the south, peeled imaginary potatoes, turned west, lifted imaginary weights, turned back to where ...

What Do You Know?

Here’s Ben Rothman, 25, a graduate of UC San Diego in psychology, a waiter, a construction worker, and currently ranked number 2 in the USA and 29th in the world. Two weeks back Rothman won ...

Cameras Don’t Lose or Lie

Drivers have another red light camera to watch out for as they make their way around the UCSD/Torrey Pines area. The latest one has been installed at the intersection of North Torrey Pines Road and ...

My Gender Is Bunny

I’m sitting on a leather couch in the middle of a darkened black-walled, black-ceilinged room talking to a man who, at taxpayer expense, takes hormones to become more like a woman yet is in the ...

High-Dollar Doctor

Public relations people at UCSD got ahead of themselves last month in their haste to announce the arrival of a physician who was widely expected to become one of the university’s highest-paid professors. On February ...

On the outs

UCSD alumnus and part-time La Jollan Craig Venter, famous for his race with the federally sponsored Human Genome Project to decode the human genome back in the 1990s, is also well known for making more ...

The eyes have it

The Orange County Register has put up a new online search engine on its website, allowing lookups of the salaries of all employees of the University of California who make more than $25,000 a year. ...

Not retiring

The University of California has decided to take a closer look at hundreds of its pensioners who are double-dipping — receiving fat retirement checks while working as temporary employees at their old jobs, in many ...

For Six Buckaroos

“Where am I from?” says Dzung. “Hanoi.” Wow. We’re sitting ’round the fire pit, chowing down. He’s eating grilled chicken and fries. I’m into pork tacos with chicken nuggets, a cheese enchilada, and a little ...

Anything for a buck

One of La Jolla’s most august and well-heeled institutions is throwing a fund-raising party inspired by the classic 1970s porno movie, Debbie Does Dallas. A flyer for the September 6 bash, “Debbie Does Disco,” put ...

Ephemera

The library at UCSD has just purchased some letters and related miscellanea belonging to Gary Snyder, a Northern California poet famous for hanging out with fellow Beat Generation writers Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Philip Whalen, ...

Top heavy

The University of California just hiked annual student fees by 7.4 percent, but that hasn’t stopped the hallowed institution from handing out of ever-higher salaries. UCSD is still searching for someone to become the school’s ...

Ms. in-the-chips

San Diego State University has been getting more than its share of bad ink lately, what with the campus drug raid last week. But at least one top SDSU executive has good news to report: ...

How UCSD Spent Over $500,000 on a Home Remodel That Never Happened

Perhaps the most prized piece of real estate throughout the University of California, San Diego, is the seven-acre site of University House, home to the UCSD chancellor. The rambling adobe home, with its row of ...