News
News
Executive Dean Retires
Message from Chancellor Gene Block
Message about College governance from Executive Vice Chancellor Scott Waugh
Letter from Executive Dean Patricia O’Brien
September 28, 2007
Dear Colleagues:
With reluctance, I am writing to share with you the news that Patricia O'Brien has announced her resignation as executive dean of the College, effective January 1.
In her three-and-a-half years leading the College, Pat has made major progress in the recruitment of new faculty and in fundraising, where she has achieved record levels of support and forged strong and lasting ties with alumni, donors and friends of the campus. She saw the College through some major fiscal challenges, placing it on a new trajectory toward fiscal health, while strengthening its public mission.
Pat has been instrumental in building new bridges to national foundations, including strong new support for the humanities and social sciences. Pat will be missed, and her contributions will benefit the College for years to come. Meanwhile, we will have the benefit of Pat's guidance and counsel through the end of the year.
At a later time, I will communicate leadership plans for the College. Right now, it's important to thank Pat for her outstanding contributions and service to UCLA.
Sincerely,
Gene D. Block
Chancellor
December 20, 2007
Dear Colleagues:
As you know, Patricia O'Brien is stepping down as Executive Dean of the College at the end of the month. I want to thank Pat for her service to the College over the past three and a half years. Our students, faculty, and staff have benefited from her leadership. She has brought to the College high academic aspirations, as well as energetic and successful fundraising.
In light of Pat's resignation, I asked the Deans of the College to formulate a proposal for managing the College, between January 1 and July 1, 2008. In response, they developed an interim governance plan -- which is closely modeled after the College organization at Berkeley, Davis, and Santa Barbara -- that Chancellor Block and I have accepted.
Under this plan, the five College Deans will form a "College Cabinet" that will be convened for weekly meetings by one dean who will serve as Chair of the Cabinet. In addition to responsibility for their divisions, the Deans will take responsibility for the duties inside and outside the College currently performed by the Executive Dean.
Dr. Julie Sina will serve as the College Chief of Staff and in that capacity will lead and manage College administrative offices and staff. I am confident that these arrangements will provide continuity and stability in operations and strong leadership to the College during the next six months.
Early in the New Year, the Chancellor and I will appoint a College Governance Advisory Committee with the Academic Senate to make recommendations on the long-term governance of the College after July 1, 2008. We will also ask the Deans to assess the effectiveness of the interim governance plan and expect that they will interact with the Committee regularly.
Issues concerning interdisciplinary programs with wide College and campus purview will be an important element in these discussions. In addition, the Chancellor has asked me, working with the College Deans, to resolve issues related to resources and development. All of us welcome your ideas and suggestions regarding the long-term governance of the College. The goal of these deliberations will be to maintain the unity of the College and to secure its academic preeminence.
Please join me in expressing our appreciation to Pat for her dedication to the College over the past three years and to the College Deans for working together to keep the College strong and unified during this time of transition.
Sincerely,
Scott L. Waugh
Acting Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost
December 18, 2007
Dear UCLA College Faculty and Staff:
As my time as executive dean is drawing to a close, I have been weighing what kind of message I want to send to you in my final e-letter. I think it has to be something about my experiences in university administration because it has been a consuming part of my recent life and it is a topic on which I have a few things to say. The challenges I have experienced are more than my personal odyssey; these are issues that confront all of us in higher education.
Like most faculty who become administrators, it was never my goal to step away from my archives, my books and my teaching, which necessarily I have had to do in order to perform in this all-consuming job. Nor did I ever consider that in so doing I would become a manager of large staffs and enormous budgets. I never imagined I would become a fundraiser. I have lived through a transformation at the University of California in a period when university business everywhere has become more complex, more corporate and more conflicted.
When I became a department chair twenty years ago, I did it out of a sense of responsibility that it was “my turn,” and that as the only woman in my department I could make a difference in helping diversify our faculty and graduate programs. And I did have an impact. That sense of accomplishment led me back to other administrative challenges in spite of my repeated attempts to resist the call. When I started in administration there was a “gentlemanly” Oxbridge model of rotating deans and chairs doing their bit and returning to the life of scholarship after brief stints. Deans now tend to stay in their positions or advance in administration as a career trajectory. Academic administration has professionalized, while it is increasingly difficult to recruit chairs. Too few faculty are now willing to be department chairs because they accurately perceive the difficulties of these positions, often burdened with responsibilities and little authority.
As for deans, the acquisition of new skills sets is time-consuming, and the learning curve is steep. Many of my science colleagues do maintain the life of research and grantsmanship at some level. I have theories why that may be more easily done in the sciences than in humanities and the social sciences. That fact may explain in part why the majority of leadership positions in universities are now held by scientists -- a distinct trend in higher education since the 1980s. I also have theories about the historical trajectory of that phenomenon.
The earlier age of renewal and regular turnover in the ranks of academic administration has been replaced by an environment of career administrators. Faculty have been heard to talk about “the administration” as an alien group. All of these phenomena deserve more analysis and discussion than I am able to give here. Give me a call for a cup of coffee some time and I will share with you my own theories.
In the UC system we face bifurcating leadership between academic and non-academic leaders with pending reforms of the Senior Management Group (SMG), which is an attempt to reconcile the conflicts between being a faculty member and being an administrator, although the reforms may result in yet other problems without achieving resolution. We at UCLA need to discuss the talent gap in good candidates for administrative jobs, a problem that is a national one.
Although I have created an apprenticeship with an administrative fellowship in the College, I am sorry I have not been able to do more in promoting succession planning for academic leadership. In my final e-Newsletter, I would like to list some unmet needs that can be addressed in concrete ways:
- The need for diversity in academic leadership: gender, ethnicity, and discipline diversity.
- The need for apprenticeship experiences for faculty to try out administrative posts for a defined period in their careers. None of us is born to these jobs.
- The need for ongoing discussions and forums on the challenges of being an academic leader in an environment of scarcity and even one of abundance.
- The need to acknowledge how the requirements of academic administrators (chairs, dean and others) have changed our ability to function as scholars, teachers and researchers.
- The need to motivate the new generation of faculty to take up the challenge of leading the university.
No university is able to sustain greatness in this complex environment without the new generation of our best faculty willing to take up the challenges and enjoy the rewards of administration. New academic leaders will set the tone and shape the vision for UCLA in the future. It has been an honor and a privilege to be part of that endeavor.
Sincerely,
Pat
