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UC Office of the President
The UC Office of the President provides UC Observatories a stable budget for Lick Observatory.
In October 30, 2014, UCOP reversed a previous decision to pull funding from Lick Observatory by 2018, according to a written statement issued by UC Provost and Executive Vice President Aimee Dorr and Executive Vice President Nathan Brostrom. The letter confirms that Lick Observatory operations will continue under UC Observatories.
In the letter to UCO Interim Director Claire Max, Dorr wrote: "Given the current state of affairs and trajectory for UCO and UC astronomy, we are rescinding the stipulations in our September 16, 2013 letter as to how Lick is to be funded and managed. It is no longer UCOP's intention to require that Lick Observatory be self supporting, begin a glide path to self-supporting status no later than FY 2016-17, or be managed by an entity other than UCO." The letter gives the UCO Director, with advice from the UCO Advisory Committee and others, the flexibility to determine the best distribution of available UC resources between Lick and other UC-related astronomical facilities such as the 10-meter Keck Telescopes in Hawaii, the instrumentation labs at UC Santa Cruz and UCLA, and the future Thirty Meter Telescope now under construction.
Lick has an annual operating budget of approximately $1.5 million. Ongoing fundraising efforts and potential partnerships currently being explored may provide additional funding for Lick.