Academic Senate looks at gender gap

  DAVE HILL/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Stephen
Yeazell,Chief of UCLA’s Academic Senate, addresses faculty
members during a meeting Tuesday afternoon.

By Timothy Kudo
Daily Bruin Senior Staff

A discussion of problems facing gender diversity and equity was
the main item on the Academic Senate’s Legislative Assembly
meeting agenda Tuesday.

The two-hour meeting at the Faculty Center was attended by
Chancellor Albert Carnesale, who gave his annual speech to about 50
faculty members at the senate’s first meeting.

The gender discussion, based on results of a six-month study
that showed discrepancies in pay for tenured faculty, focused on
the need for action.

At the meeting, however, talk focused more on the lack of female
professors on campus compared to national numbers.

“This report was the start, not the end, of
discussions,” said Stephen Yeazell, chair of the academic
senate.

He said diversity in faculty is something the administration and
faculty must address together because hiring and promoting rests
primarily with the Academic Senate.

Additionally, the report showed a lack of women on key
committees throughout the university.

“Too often in recent years I have found myself to be the
only woman on some of these committees,” said law professor
Carole Goldberg, president of the Association of Academic
Women.

In the next 10 years, the large influx of students, the children
of the baby boomer generation, may make it necessary to hire
additional faculty.

Those who participated in the gender study noted the importance
of using this time to ensure that female professors are hired to
lessen the gender gap.

“We can’t afford to miss the opportunity,”
Yeazell said.

At the end of the meeting, Yeazell recommended creating a joint
administrative faculty task force to examine the implementation of
the study’s recommendations with a specific focus toward
hiring faculty.

To kick off the meeting, the chancellor discussed this
year’s budget and some of his ideas for UCLA.

He spoke specifically about the importance of expanding the
university’s role in the field of genetics, information
technology and in the city through his “UCLA in L.A.”
initiative.

He also touched upon the fiscal problems facing the UCLA Medical
Center and the need for private support.

In the public comment period, the only question asked was in
regards to the naming of certain buildings in honor of donations
and the feasibility of stopping this practice.

The chancellor responded by discussing the importance of
donations if the university plans on competing with other
comparable institutions on all fronts.

The university is publicly funded but receives only a small
portion of the money it needs to operate from the state. As a
result, other sources of funding, such as private donations, must
be sought.

“We don’t have the option of raising prices,”
Carnesale said jokingly.

The fiscal problems UCLA faces often mirror problems the UC
system as a whole deals with.

Though the university has received increased funding since the
early ’90s, this funding has been based on investments, said
Steve Olsen, vice chancellor of budget and finance.

“This is not the type of revenue base you want,”
Olsen said.

Though the economy is currently strong, and will continue to be
so for awhile, these profits may vanish if the economy were to take
take a turn for the worst, he said.

“Tomorrow they may go away,” Olsen said. “And
when they go away, they do it in a hurry.”