UC Riverside Chancellor to Be Named

The next chancellor of UC Riverside is expected to be Raymond L. Orbach, a nationally prominent physicist who has been provost of UCLA’s College of Letters and Science for the past decade. According to a high-ranking UC official, the Board of Regents is likely to approve Orbach’s appointment today at a meeting at UCLA.

Orbach will take over the Riverside job from Rosemary S. J. Schraer, who is retiring July 1 after five years as chancellor.

UC system President David P. Gardner reportedly has recommended Orbach to lead the Riverside campus through an anticipated growth boom in the next few years. With 8,890 students, UC Riverside has the smallest enrollment of the eight general education UC campuses but is expected to double its student body by the year 2005. There are plans for $200 million in campus construction over the next five years.

Reached by telephone Thursday, Gardner declined to comment on Orbach’s candidacy. But another UC official who has close contact with Gardner confirmed that Orbach’s name will be presented to the regents, who rarely act against Gardner’s wishes.

Orbach, 57, was said reportedly returning Thursday night from an annual meeting of the American Institute of Physics in Indianapolis and could not be reached.

As provost of UCLA’s 24,000-student College of Letters and Science, Orbach heads the largest of the Westwood campus’s academic divisions. The college employs nearly 1,000 faculty members in 36 academic departments and 48 research units and interdisciplinary programs.

Although his current job involves supervision of far more students, the Riverside chancellor position represents a big jump in responsibility. At UCLA, he answers to the senior vice chancellor of academic affairs, Richard Sisson, and Chancellor Charles E. Young. At Riverside, his bosses will be the UC system president and the regents.

At UCLA, he has been involved in a controversy surrounding a proposal to create a Chicano studies department. The issue is still under review and Orbach denied charges by Chicano activists that he and other officials are trying to kill the idea. Orbach reportedly recommended against the department’s creation because it might attract too few students and instead prefers a better-funded Chicano studies program, a level below departmental status.

After earning a bachelor’s degree at Caltech and a doctorate at UC Berkeley, Orbach won a National Science Foundation grant to pursue postdoctoral studies in physics at Oxford University in Great Britain. He taught physics at Harvard University for two years.