Mailing these holidays gifts won’t cost you a cent! But you have to act fast, by the end of this week, to be part of Mail Services’ ninth annual food drive.

All you need to do is leave your donations with your outgoing campus mail, and Mail Services personnel will do the rest: pick up the donations and deliver them to the Food Bank of Yolo County (for Davis campus donations) and Sacramento Food Bank & Family Services (for Sacramento campus donations.

Here’s a list of suggested items: canned, ready-to-eat meals; canned meat, fish and soups; canned vegetables and tomato products; dry beans (any type); enriched rice and pasta; ramen; boxed macaroni and cheese; canned fruit (in juice); peanut butter (plastic container); iron-rich cereal (45 percent or more of the daily value); powdered milk; fruit juice (100 percent, in plastic containers 48 ounces or smaller); and powdered milk formula and Similac baby food.

Governor appoints 2 new regents

Board of Regents Chair Bruce D. Varner and President Janet Napolitano welcomed Gov. Jerry Brown’s latest regental appointments: Long Beach City College Superintendent-President Eloy Ortiz Oakley and former Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez.

Brown announced the appointments on Monday (Nov. 17).

“John Pérez and Eloy Ortiz Oakley will bring very valuable perspectives and insights to the board,” Varner said in a news release. “I hope both will be able to join us this week for the board’s discussions of matters that will shape the future of the University of California for years to come.”

The board is meeting today through Thursday (Nov. 18-20) on UC San Francisco’s Mission Bay campus. If Pérez and Oakley choose to attend, they would do so in an unofficial capacity — because they have not been confirmed by the Senate, as required. Regents receive no compensation.

The Board of Regents meeting agenda is online.

Napolitano said of the regent appointments: “At a time when we are seeking to expand enrollment of California students and improve the process for students transferring from community colleges to UC, I’m very happy that we will benefit from the expertise and experiences of Speaker Pérez and President Eloy Ortiz. I look forward to working with them during the years ahead of us.”

More about the nominees, both of whom are Democrats:

• Oakley, of Long Beach, has led the Long Beach Community College District — which has a single college, split into two campuses — since 2007, and served as an executive in the district’s administrative services from 2002 to 2006. Before that he served as an executive at Oxnard College and manager of risk services in the Coast Community College District, and he was a program coordinator and an adjunct instructor at Golden West College. He earned an MBA at UC Irvine.

• Pérez, of Los Angeles, won election to the Assembly in 2008 and is now finishing up his third and final term (as allowed by term limits). He became speaker in 2010 — the first openly gay man to hold the position — and served until May 2014, when he stepped down. Perez, who left UC Berkeley in his junior year, has been a longtime advocate for affordable higher education and authored the Middle-Class Scholarship Act, signed in 2013, to significantly reduce student fees for middle-class students in the UC and California State University systems.

Medicare-covered lung cancer screening

The UC Davis Medical Center is preparing to screen seniors on Medicare who meet the criteria for lung cancer screening using low-dose computed tomography.

In a Nov. 10 news release, the UC Davis Health System referred to a proposed decision by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to cover the cost of the testing for men and women ages 55 to 74 who smoke cigarettes or who have quit within the past 15 years, and have a 30-pack-a-year smoking history. That means smoking a pack a day for 30 years or two packs a day for 15 years, and so on.

The decision cannot take effect until after a 30-day public comment period. In the meantime, UC Davis’ Comprehensive Lung Cancer Screening task force is working to meet the criteria, as set out by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, that will allow the medical center to bill Medicare for lung cancer screening.

Read the complete news release.

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