As you may recall, UC Santa Cruz is establishing a center in Scotts Valley to support approximately 370 staff from the divisions of Business and Administrative Services, Information Technology Services, and University Relations. UC Santa Cruz signed a 20-year lease for two three-floor modules at the Enterprise Technology Centre in Scotts Valley.
The move is on schedule and will occur in phases beginning this month and going through March.
- University Relations staff based at the 2155 Delaware Ave. building are scheduled to move first, during the last week of December.
- Staff in Information Technology Services (ITS), Internal Audit, the Real Estate Office (REO), BAS Operations and Resource Management and Vice Chancellor’s office, and Colleges, Housing, and Educational Services (CHES) are scheduled to move next, with the move expected to be complete in mid-January.
- Staff Human Resources will move at the end of January.
- Business and Administrative Services staff in Financial Affairs will move in early March.
Bringing hundreds of staff members together will better support collaboration across divisions. This change will necessitate the better use of technology for meetings so that participants can be fully engaged regardless of location.
UC has signed a systemwide contract with a video teleconferencing service, called Zoom, that along with Google Hangouts and other videoconferencing software will enable virtual meetings between employees in any location, reducing the need to drive between locations. A workgroup has created a useful guide in order to help ease the transition to utilizing more teleconferencing.
The Scotts Valley Center project frees up space at 2300 Delaware Ave., a university-owned building that will be used for much-needed academic and research-oriented space for the Division of Physical and Biological Sciences, the Baskin School of Engineering, and the Division of the Arts. Renovation work has already begun, with researchers moving in over the next several years.
