IRVINE : Humanities Dean Appointed at UCI

UC Irvine historian Spencer C. Olin has been named dean of the university’s School of Humanities, campus officials announced Monday.

A popular founding faculty member at UCI, Olin was the only Irvine campus candidate among the five finalists for the post.

“Spence Olin personifies all that is UCI,” Chancellor Jack W. Peltason said Monday in announcing the dean’s appointment. “As one of our founding fathers and through his many administrative roles (at UCI), he has made a profound impact on the stature and character of this university.”

Olin, 55, has served as acting dean of the humanities since Jan. 1. He took over from Terence D. Parsons, a philosophy professor who returned to teaching and research.

Olin recently finished a three-year appointment as director of the Humanities Core Course, a series of classes that integrates the study of literature, philosophy, history and language arts. He also headed the UCI Academic Senate from 1986 through 1988, at a time when the faculty was grappling with ways to improve undergraduate education and require students to learn more about different cultures at home and abroad.

Multiculturalism, as the graduation requirement has come to be known at UCI and elsewhere, was particularly controversial at campuses such as UC Berkeley, where some faculty criticized it as an effort to impose a “politically correct” curriculum. At UCI, however, the program was devised and imposed with little disagreement, which some attribute to Olin’s efforts to involve every facet of the faculty community in drafting the program.

Olin concedes that these are difficult times to assume the role of dean of one of the largest schools on the 17,000-student UCI campus. Because of the continuing state economic crisis and resulting cuts for the UC system, Olin said the school will have slashed discretionary spending by $800,000 for a two-year period. Such cuts have virtually eliminated visiting professorships and resulted in a freeze of some support staff.

Why take on such a job at a time when the university is trying to slash at least $15 million, or about 10%, of its operating budget?

“One big impetus for me accepting this job in the middle of a budget crisis is precisely because I think the School of Humanities is poised to become one of the best . . . in the United States,” Olin said. “In addition to our strengths in critical theory and Southern history, our graduate program in English and comparative literature recently ranked in the top 15 in the nation. And four departments--philosophy, German, French and Italian, and Spanish and Portuguese--are ranked in the top 25.”

Olin said he hopes to preserve the quality of these departments and position them for the future despite the budget cuts. To that end, he vowed to seek out the best faculty to replace those lost to an early retirement incentive program, as well as to attract top graduate school students.

Olin, who lives in Irvine, is married and has a 23-year-old son.