Star Quality : Critics, Admirers Praise UCI’s New Chancellor

When a panel of top scientists reviewed NASA’s 1989 proposal to fulfill President George Bush’s mandate to revamp the nation’s space program, most were appalled by what they saw as a lack of vision in the report and at the agency.

Feelings ran so high within the advisory group that a report blasting the National Aeronautics and Space Administration seemed imminent. Planetary scientist and University of Washington Provost Laurel L. Wilkening, as chairwoman of the panel, pushed instead to take the concerns directly to the space agency’s chief.

With astronomer Carl Sagan, physicist Edward Teller and other panelists watching, Wilkening informed then-NASA Director Admiral Richard H. Truly that his agency’s report was a disaster. NASA, she told him during the tense White House meeting, must become more imaginative, and less insular and bureaucratic.

Truly was fired by Bush in early 1992 over continued disagreement about the direction of the nation’s space program. But thanks to Wilkening, said Mark Albrecht, executive secretary of the National Space Council during the Bush Administration, “this pivotal meeting was really the first step toward positive change in the culture of NASA.

“Laurel was capable of being frank and candid . . . in a way that wasn’t just critical, but also supportive and constructive. She was committed to making sure that the net effect of their criticism was a strengthened, revitalized agency,” Albrecht said.

At the University of Washington, where Wilkening became provost in 1988, colleagues say she displayed similar skills as problem-solver, consensus-builder and agent of change.

Now, as Wilkening, 48, is set to become UC Irvine’s third chancellor on Thursday, critics and admirers say she will bring to the job a tenacious intelligence, directness and a willingness to listen to all sides--qualities that enable her to lead independent-minded academics with imagination and sensitivity.

At Washington, she insisted on hiring more women and minorities, improved the lot of undergraduates and upgraded research facilities. Washington colleagues say she probably will proceed cautiously at UC Irvine, gathering as much information as possible before acting. But when she moves, expect decisiveness, they say.

“She gets work done without being ham-fisted or directive about it,” said John M. Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. “And let me tell you, getting university professors, who are the biggest prima donnas in the world, to work together is no mean feat.”

Wilkening, one of a small but growing number of women to reach the top rungs of academia, dismissed such praise with self-effacing good humor in a recent interview in her Seattle office.

“I don’t know if I’m good at it,” Wilkening said, laughing. “I’m a realist. . . . It’s hard to make a unique contribution (as a university chancellor). What you can do is create opportunities for others to take ownership of initiatives--so it doesn’t become the whim of one person, but instead a shared goal of the group.”

Her skills may be sorely tested at Irvine, according to many faculty members, staff and students at the research university, which opened in 1964.

Like many University of California campuses, Irvine is reeling from two years of deep budget cuts, layoffs and soaring fees. There is a growing malaise among many faculty members and administrators, who complain of feeling isolated from top campus decision-makers.

Students, too, have grown increasingly restive. Several hundred UC Irvine students demonstrated this spring over escalating fees and expected cuts in services, and more than 200 students staged a monthlong hunger strike to force creation of a long-promised Asian-American studies program at a campus where 43% of the students are of Asian descent.

Women faculty members complain about salary inequities, and the slow pace in recruiting and promoting women and minorities. In particular, many women at UC Irvine’s College of Medicine are demanding changes to correct pay inequities and lack of tenured status for women, a problem the school’s dean has promised to solve.

Wilkening’s five years at the University of Washington as provost--the university’s chief officer for academic policy and budget--provided training for the Irvine chancellor’s post because of the similarities between the two campuses, which are strong in biological sciences and engineering, among other disciplines.

At the University of Washington, which receives the most federal research money of any public university in the country, Wilkening perhaps will be most remembered for spotlighting undergraduate education. She diverted money to reduce huge survey classes and add lab sessions for courses such as freshman chemistry and physics. And she backed programs to link freshmen with faculty members and upper-class students as a way of building human bridges at the vast campus of more than 34,500 students.

Wilkening also takes pride in what she terms steady gains in the hiring of highly qualified minority and women faculty members, a priority she set for the campus soon after her arrival. Under Wilkening, Washington Prof. Wallace Loh became the first Asian-American dean of a major U.S. law school.

Wilkening also helped convince the state Legislature that funding for new research facilities was key to keeping the university, and the state of Washington, at the cutting edge well into the next century.

“She is one of 10, maybe 20, university presidents in this country who understand the new technologies, who understand modern-day competition, information highways . . . and the concept of creating networks of regional libraries,” said Dr. John N. Lein, Washington’s director of federal relations. “She’s one of the few who understand the way science is going to have to change . . . and how we can turn these big ships--by that I mean universities--around.”

Wilkening considers herself a product of the student ferment of the 1960s. The mere presence of Wilkening, a staunch feminist, challenged those who believed that women did not belong in the arena of science. A visiting chemist at UC San Diego once told her as much.

“He said women, children and dogs belong in the home,” Wilkening said as she posed patiently, if reluctantly, for a photographer in the Seattle campus’ bustling Red Square. “I thought he was joking, so I made some smart remark back. But I discovered he was completely serious.”

When she became an assistant professor at the University of Arizona in 1973, she learned that a male colleague hired at the same time with identical credentials was paid $1,000 a year more than she was. “I went to the chair of the department about it,” she said. “He said: ‘I think you’re right, we’ll change it.’ ”

She won that round, and many more. But Wilkening acknowledges that women in science and other fields “still feel that chilly climate” of sexism on the nation’s university campuses. “A lot of it is subconscious, I think. So you have to raise consciousness.”

University of Washington student leaders generally praise Wilkening for her open-door policy and her responsiveness. After groups of women and minority students complained about their treatment on campus, she created ad hoc committees to combat racism and sexism. These were not empty gestures, they point out, because she attended most of the meetings and prodded action.

Beverly Sandeen, a UC Irvine graduate student who served on the chancellor’s selection committee, is hoping that Wilkening will pull the campus out of its doldrums, inspire confidence and provide a vision of the future.

“If she can get us together and get us through this crisis, then she will really have accomplished something,” Sandeen said. “We’re pinning a lot of hopes on her.”