Editorial: New chancellor must, above all, be an educator

Wanted: new leader of public university in Los Angeles; must
have work experience in higher education, public or private;
charisma and multi-billion-dollar fundraising skills a plus; 40+
hours/week; $222,000/yr., plus benefits.

You won’t find that job posting on Monster.com, but you
can bet it was on the minds of a lot of people when Chancellor
Albert Carnesale announced this month that he would step down at
the end of June.

His announcement means UCLA is in the market for a new leader.
It will be the university’s third chancellor in 37 years, and
its ninth chief executive since UCLA opened its doors in 1919.

Carnesale says he’s ready to retire from the limelight
““ he will be pushing 70 in July ““ and don the more
modest, but nonetheless important, role of a professor; he said
he’d like to stay at UCLA rather than return to Harvard,
where he was provost.

The jury’s still out as to whether the Bronx native and
son of a cab driver, who one of his former students described as
“about as Ivy League as you can get,” successfully made
the transition from running a private institution on one end of the
country to a public one on the other.

And though Carnesale’s nine-year term might pale in
comparison to his predecessor’s (former Chancellor Charles
Young served for 29 years), plenty has happened under his watch for
UCLA to remember him by.

Carnesale steered the university through the terrorist attacks
of Sept. 11, 2001; through crippling state budget cuts and
skyrocketing student fees; through dismal drops in minority-student
enrollment; through a period of relative mediocrity for
UCLA’s once-vaunted football and basketball teams; and
through a period of considerable campus growth during which the
construction projects were impressive in scale ““ if not
always on budget or on time.

To Carnesale’s credit, the biggest things that went wrong
at UCLA ““ namely the drops in state funding and minority
enrollment ““ were largely out of his hands. And he has
demonstrated substantial support for university outreach programs
and the ethnic studies departments; both Chicana/o and Asian
American studies gained departmental status in the past year, and
the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies has
garnered much prestige during Carnesale’s tenure.

But just as John Wooden knew basketball inside and out, there
was one game Carnesale was the undisputed master of:
fundraising.

Before Carnesale came to UCLA, administrators were doubtful they
could successfully launch a billion-dollar fundraising
campaign.

Now, UCLA is on track to raise $3 billion before the campaign
ends in December, making UCLA 10th in the nation among receivers of
donations raised by colleges ““ and the first among public
schools. Carnesale has tried to deflect most of the credit for the
campaign’s success, but it should be noted that when he was
provost of Harvard, the university launched a $2.1 billion
fundraising drive.

Yet, while Carnesale has demonstrated foresight by funding parts
of UCLA through private donations ““ allowing the university
to keep money in the bank during a time of shaky state funding
““ one can’t help but ask where, exactly, those billions
are going, and whether they could have been used more creatively to
better directly help students.

A good part of the chancellor’s fund went toward
construction projects and research, which will benefit future
Bruins. But it might seem incongruous to some current Bruins that
as UCLA raised more money than some African countries make in a
year, they still saw their fees climb.

And Carnesale probably won’t go down as the guy who cut
through UCLA’s infamous bureaucracy and diminished
superfluous spending ““ especially after the university blew
$100,000 on a new logo that looks like the letters
“U-C-L-A” ““ in italics.

It goes without saying that the next chancellor of UCLA will
have to find a way to productively address declining minority
enrollment and smaller shares of state funding to the university,
as Carnesale tried to do with varying degrees of success.

But what might help make a better chancellor has little to do
with education policy or rubbing shoulders with donors. It’s
one thing: better visibility ““ and accessibility ““ to
students.

When it was announced in March 1997 that Carnesale, then at
Harvard, would be moving to UCLA, this newspaper quoted a Harvard
student who asked, “Is that the guy who was on the front page
of the Harvard Crimson (student newspaper) today?”

Granted Carnesale was provost then, and student interaction
wasn’t necessarily high up on his job description. But sadly,
nine years and an entire job change later, it’s a fair bet
that the student newspaper is still the only place most students
see the chancellor on a regular basis.

Most UCLA students can probably count on one hand the number of
times they’ll see the chancellor during their time here: once
at orientation, once at graduation, and a couple sightings in
between. If they’re lucky, they are one of six students a
quarter who get to meet with the chancellor during “office
hours” ““ for about 10 minutes.

A lot can happen in 10 minutes. But something that probably
won’t is a meaningful discussion, even if it’s just a
get-to-know-you chat. (To be fair, former Chancellor Young
didn’t even have student office hours.)

Should the chancellor of UCLA be on a first-name basis with all
students? Of course not. But if the chancellor doesn’t know
his students, how can he meet their needs?

It is true Carnesale has met with students when they’ve
voiced specific concerns on issues ““ and he should be
commended for that. Just last year, for instance, when students
expressed concern over the possible firing of a prominent UCLA
professor, and later when students rallied in support of on-campus
labor unions, the chancellor set up meetings to hear them out.

But it would have been nice to see Carnesale put in an
unscripted, unplanned visit to the dorms or the dining halls once
in a while ““ or even come down to the classroom more often
““ for some casual chancellor-student interaction.

When UC President Robert Dynes took office two years ago, he
made it a point to visit every campus for an early-morning jog and
breakfast with anyone ““ students, faculty, staff ““ who
showed up. Such visits did little to make UC policy more
student-friendly ““ our fees still went up, after all. But it
was nice to see Dynes step down from his pedestal for once.

Having a similar gesture from the chancellor every now and then
would go a long way toward diffusing some students’
perception that it’s them versus the administration ““
or at least that the administration doesn’t know and
doesn’t care about them. And it would help clear up some of
the impenetrable fog that surrounds the goings-on in Murphy
Hall.

Clearly, there are many factors the as-yet unnamed
chancellor-selection committee will have to consider as it looks
for the ninth leader of one of the UC system’s flagship
campuses. Should the new chancellor come from a UC campus or
outside California? Is it time to have a woman or ethnic minority
as chancellor? Should his or her background be in the sciences or
the liberal arts?

When Carnesale was hired, some people in the UC system and the
L.A. community compared being chancellor of UCLA to being the CEO
of a company. Others compared it to being the mayor of a small
city. Both comparisons badly miss the point.

UCLA is not a Fortune 500 company ““ though arguably it has
been moving in that direction with the trend of increased
privatization. Nor is it a political post ““ though there are
plenty of politics involved in leading one of the top universities
in California, and possibly the nation.

First and foremost, UCLA is an institution of public education.
It is where people go to learn. And whoever picks up the reins from
Carnesale on July 1, 2006, must have a vision for UCLA as a place
of academic growth and public service, a place accessible to all
Californians who have a will ““ and not just the means ““
to succeed.

That is the uncompromising standard to which the selection
committee should hold potential chancellors. UCLA expects nothing
less.