Uc Campus

Santa Monica College, known for sending many students on to four-year universities, especially UCLA, last year raised its transfer rate to all University of California campuses by 32%. College officials credit the increase, which was well above the 9.6% record growth last year for such transfers statewide, in part to a larger counseling staff, more courses transferable to UC and aggressive efforts to attract well-prepared students.

UC Merced could one day have an Ernest and Julio Gallo School of Management. The Gallo family and E.&J. Gallo Winery are offering a $5-million "challenge gift" to be matched with other donations to raise an endowment of $10 million for the management school. The donation would be the second-largest contribution to the new Merced campus, which is scheduled to open in the fall of 2004.

SANTA BARBARA -- The University of California here is about to strike the next blow in the nation's "greener than thou" competition to build the most environmentally friendly building. When the 85,000-square-foot Donald Bren Hall formally opens today, it will employ some of the most leading-edge construction and design techniques, from furnishings made of old Buicks to waterless urinals and restroom stalls made from plastic soda bottles.

The proposed University of California campus near Merced moved another step closer to reality Friday with the final acquisition of 7,030 acres, including a golf course, for the campus site, university officials announced. The land was acquired from the Virginia Smith Trust in the successful completion of a deal that was announced a year ago.

Re "UC Tuition Cut OKd for Some Immigrants," Jan. 18: For every illegal immigrant accepted to a UC campus, a legal resident will be denied admission. Subsidizing illegal immigration will serve only to ensure that there will be more of it. Anyone who is in this country illegally should be deported, not rewarded. Randle C. Sink Brea

County supervisors voted this week to ease building regulations around the new UC Merced campus. Supervisors decided not to require developers to substitute other farmland for acreage lost to development and not to require phased development around the campus. The decision follows weeks of plan revisions and hearings.

Sudden oak death syndrome, a pathogen that has devastated wide swaths of California's oak trees, has been discovered on the UC Berkeley campus, officials said. The microbe has infected three host species but has not been detected in any of the trees on campus, suggesting that the disease has only recently arrived. About 50 groundskeepers, gardeners, arborists and horticulturists from the university's Botanical Garden are being trained to identify the infection.

University of California faculty meeting in Los Angeles on Wednesday approved a proposal that could lead to significant changes in student admissions. The plan to allow personal factors, not just academic criteria, to be taken into account in evaluating all UC applicants was approved by the systemwide academic assembly meeting at UCLA. University regents are scheduled to vote on the issue when they meet this month.

The proposed University of California campus in Merced could severely damage the habitat of the endangered conservancy fairy shrimp and plans for the school may have to be altered, a federal wildlife official said. The school would have to minimize the impact or offer an alternative to encroaching on vernal pools where the shrimp live, said Vicki Campbell of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Construction of UC Merced will begin in February, with groundbreaking set for May 3, University of California officials said. The complicated permit process for the 10th University of California campus should be completed by then, said James Grant, UC Merced's director of communications.