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Gov. Gray Davis on Wednesday announced that he will fill the last vacancy on the UC Board of Regents with a longtime Modesto educator, making good on his pledge to install a San Joaquin Valley representative on the board. Odessa P. Johnson, 59, dean of community education at Modesto Junior College, said she plans to use her 12-year appointment to champion the university's plans to build a UC campus near Merced.

A high school teacher was scheduled to be arraigned today in Municipal Court on charges of attempted rape and sexual assault in connection with an alleged attack on an 18-year-old girl two weeks ago on the UC campus here. Police said the girl, who lives in La Mirada, told investigators that she had met Thomas Lawrence Mikalson, 25, of Huntington Beach in a Sunday school class he taught at a Fullerton church. She told police that she was attacked Sept.

University of California leaders Wednesday apologized to black UC San Diego students for recent racial incidents at the campus and proposed changes in admissions policies aimed at boosting enrollment of minorities across the system. UC President Mark G. Yudof and other UC regents acknowledged that the UC San Diego episodes, including an off-campus student party that mocked Black History Month, has brought attention to the low enrollment of African American students on the campus.

The University of California charged the federal government for entertainment, flowers and chartered airplane travel as part of reimbursement for research costs, an internal UC audit has found. To preclude such questionable billings in the future, officials said UC is changing its accounting procedures. The overall value of such possibly controversial UC billings is not known because the review examined only a random sample, UC auditors stated.

A bill in Sacramento supported by The Times' editorial page ("Fundraising, with limits," Sept. 8) turns out to be, on closer inspection, a poster child for the law of unintended consequences. It deserves rejection by the governor. The bill, SB 330, would subject private charitable organizations that raise scholarship funds and other philanthropic resources for public college and university campuses to the state Public Records Act. Sounds good, until you look at the details. At the University of California, campus foundations are nonprofit, nongovernmental entities overseen by volunteer boards.

Shortly after former Costa Mesa Mayor Peter Buffa announced his intention to "revitalize" Costa Mesa's west side, I stated that the ultimate outcome of this would be to oust the area's largely poor Latino population in favor of expensive stores and homes for Buffa's country club buddies. Lo and behold, that is exactly what the city's consultants have proposed. Now, after public pressure has been brought to bear by Hispanic activists, the city has magnanimously offered to allow a Latino "advisory committee" a chance to look at the plans and offer opinions ("Latino Input Sought on Renewal," Sept.

As one who transferred from a community college to graduate from a UC school and returned to teach at the community college level, I can offer a hardy amen to Moore's column. Several years ago, I was asked to teach an "honors" class in introductory psychology. Such courses were established for the benefit of students who had qualified for UC admission but who couldn't be placed on a UC campus (as compared to my regular community college class in the subject, which was already treated as equivalent and transferable to UC)

Re "Message to UC Execs: If It Won't Look Good in the Newspaper, Don't Do It," column, Feb. 16 I'm glad to see George Skelton exposing the corporate-style excess of UC's top administrators. I'm less happy that all his examples are women -- who are a small minority in that mainly male stratosphere. Please keep digging, and shine the same light on men at the top who are doing the same or worse. Let's not set women up to take the fall for what is really a systemic pattern that comes from universities modeling themselves after corporations.