Creating a Strong Foundation

March 4, 2006

A dynamic plan for hiring top faculty for the UCLA College of Letters and Science is building the next generation of campus scholars.

For Dolores Bozovic, finding the ideal faculty position required seeking out a university with just the right setting for her unique approach to scientific exploration. Bozovic—a physicist whose work bridges academic disciplines in physics and neuroscience—studies the basic processes of hearing. She focuses on how sound is processed by "hair cells," the specialized cells of the inner ear that detect sound waves and convert them into electrical signals that go to the brain. The mechanisms behind hair cell activity are still not fully clear, which makes hearing one of the least understood senses.

For Bozovic's work to flourish requires a university with an exceptional combination of academic programs; Bozovic found that combination at UCLA.

"For my field, I need an environment with strong physics and biology," said Bozovic. "They have both here at UCLA. The physics department has a lot of technical expertise, and at same time the medical school and life sciences are very extensive. So I found that UCLA has both of my fields very well represented, and it seems like a good place for this kind of interface between the two."

Bozovic, who started work at UCLA this year, is one of 22 new faculty hired by the College of Letters and Science for the 2005-06 academic year. With competition fierce for the finest scholars among the nation's best research universities, hiring new faculty is a constant and critical priority to ensure that institutions maintain—and increase—the strength and depth in their best academic fields of study.

Now, hiring in the College will take a giant leap forward. Beginning this year, the College will embark on an ambitious program with the goal of hiring 150 new top scholars to UCLA over the next three years.

"We have indeed created an ambitious plan for bringing top faculty to the campus," said Executive Dean Patricia O'Brien. "This increase in our hiring is absolutely necessary to ensure that we maintain the quality of our teaching and research programs.

"By hiring at such a level, we can reinforce our current fine fields of study, and also expand into new disciplines where we have not been before."

Encouraging New Directions in Scholarship

The College will be seeking a range of academic talent—established veteran faculty with years of distinguished achievements in their fields, as well as new scholars who are already making their mark as post-doctoral investigators or as teacher-researchers at other universities.

UCLA's reputation as a university with academic departments that encourage new directions in scholarship and collaborations across traditional disciplines is a strong attraction for many dynamic scholars.

That nurturing view toward new approaches to research was precisely what Olivia Bloechl sought when she joined the Department of Musicology.

Bloechl, who came to UCLA from Bucknell, specializes in the early modern music cultures of France, England and colonial North America. Her research also explores identity and social difference as expressed in music.

"UCLA's Ph.D. musicology program is known as one of the more experimental and risk-taking, compared to the more traditional programs," said Bloechl. "That aspect was very exciting to me."

"I'm trying to reframe European music history to recognize that it was not an isolated process but happened in dialogue with colonialism and other issues," said Bloechl, who is currently writing a book titled Native American Song at the Frontiers of Early Modern Music. "This kind of revisionist approach is something this department welcomes."

Matching Faculty Expertise with New Academic Needs

A key element in the College's faculty hiring plan is matching the scholarship of recruits with the changing academic priorities of specific departments.

"There are very few positions in my field," said Aaron Burke, assistant professor in the archaeology of ancient Israel and early Judaism—a post that was created as a result of expansion in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures.

"UCLA is the cream of the crop in terms of my field because of the university's standing," said Burke, who in his work on ancient warfare is completing research on the fortifications of cities in the eastern Mediterranean during the Middle Bronze Age (2000-1500 B.C.E.) "It's a boon to the program here to have created this position."

Creating a new faculty slot in a specific field not only advances a specific new field of study, but also serves as a channel for new collaborations and expanding broader academic inquiries.

"One of the very attractive parts of being an archaeology faculty member here is that there is automatically an affiliation with the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology," said Burke, who will teach "Jerusalem —the Holy City" for undergraduates in the Winter Quarter.

"That means close proximity with archaeologists working in various geographic regions who have different backgrounds and experiences, which creates a fantastic dialogue," said Burke. "There are specialists in many different sub-fields who are available to consult on any of the archaeology projects university-wide."

For Joshua Dienstag, a professor of political science who came to UCLA this year after teaching for 13 years at the University of Virginia, "the key to collaboration is not just being part of a very good political science department—which we have here. It's equally important to have colleagues in departments of history, sociology and philosophy—the sister disciplines for my work. So having a constellation of excellent departments, and being able to talk to, listen to and learn from people who have different perspectives on the same material is enormously valuable."

Creating collaborative academic partnerships can begin quickly—even in the always-complex early stages of a new faculty career.

"I wanted to be able to do more basic research, while industry is more applied," said Matteo Pellegrini, a new assistant professor in the Department of Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology who worked in the pharmaceuticals industry and at a start-up biotech company before joining UCLA this year.

Two months into his work at UCLA, "I'm surprised that I've already been able to start some collaborations with groups on campus," Pellegrini said. "People are extremely easy to work with—very pleasant and supportive."

Financing Our Success

The financial issues involved in faculty hiring are particularly acute in Los Angeles, where the basic costs required to establish research and teaching programs for new faculty are compounded by skyrocketing housing prices and intense competition from other top American universities in markets with lower property values.

"Los Angeles is attractive for faculty, but it can be difficult to settle here on an academic salary," said Dienstag, who studies political thought of the 18th to 20th centuries. "UCLA recognizes the challenges of housing and schools for faculty with children. The campus recruiters appreciated the issues we faced in relocating from a semi-rural environment to an urban environment."

What will it take for the College's three-year hiring plan to succeed? The solution is primarily financial—in particular identifying new sources of private funding to create endowed chairs that provide faculty resources, and graduate fellowships to strengthen the academic core of the campus.

"Clearly, we face a tremendous challenge to ensure that we achieve our goals for faculty hiring," said O'Brien. "We need to recruit more faculty while we simultaneously build the assets to support their efforts. But the results will produce long-term benefits that will shape the future of teaching and research in the College for decades to come."