UCI Eager for Chancellor to End Silence : Education: Many praise her accessibility but say it’s time for her to ‘stand up and be counted.’

Less than a year into her tenure as chancellor of UC Irvine, Laurel L. Wilkening’s task of reshaping the young university in an age of budget cuts, faculty buyouts and a shrinking cast of key administrators has been compared to those confronted by a mythological hero.

“It’s a little like cleaning out the Augean stables,” said James Fallon, a professor of anatomy and neurobiology at UCI’s College of Medicine. “She’s trying to divert two rivers to clean out what was there and get things moving again. I don’t envy her at all.”

As her challenges seem to mount--tuition and fees are up, budget woes linger, some key university posts are vacant, the university’s growth spurt has slowed and campus morale has slumped--Wilkening has been conspicuously silent.

To Wilkening, it has been more important to listen during her first year than make broad pronouncements or act precipitously. “I think it would be arrogant and possibly stupid to come in here and say ‘UCI, I’ve got the answer for you. Just listen to me. Here’s how it is,’ ” she said. “People would reject that, and reasonably.”

But now the pressure is building for Wilkening to act. “There is a general feeling among the faculty that the campus is sort of adrift,” said R. Duncan Luce, distinguished professor of cognitive science and economics and a member of the committee that helped select Wilkening. “And it’s understandable that people feel that way.”

While Luce and many others agreed that Wilkening gets high marks for consensus building and accessibility, very soon “she’s going to have to stand up and be counted,” he said.

Wilkening has given few hints so far of her vision of the university’s future. But no later than this summer, she faces a series of formidable decisions that finally will tip her hand on the direction she hopes to lead the school in years to come.

At immediate issue are recent recommendations from two task forces on how UCI can slice an additional $10.8 million from next year’s budget, even as it struggles to absorb another $13.7 in state funding cuts ordered over the past three years. Together, the reductions represent the loss of more than 16% of UCI’s base budget since 1990-91.

The recommendations, which include eliminating the departments of education and physical education and the program in comparative culture, have brought howls of protest from those who would be affected and a flurry of anguished comments from across the campus and community.

In the face of the storm, Wilkening has sought to reassure the university.

“I don’t like to be this quiet, but I thought it was important to the process,” Wilkening said in an interview. To speak out prematurely, she said, would undermine the broad-based, at times impassioned, discussion that has occurred throughout the campus since the task force reports were issued in February.

A university committee is now synthesizing the comments from various groups and will deliver them to Wilkening by early June. Decisions that would affect the 1994-95 budget, including the elimination of departments, must be made before the end of June, with the rest likely to be reached during the summer.

For the 17,139 students, 1,028 faculty members and 8,700 employees at UCI, that means continuing to wait.

“It’s a time of great concern on campus,” said pharmacology Professor Sue Duckles, a former chair of the university’s Academic Senate, which represents its faculty. “A lot of things are up in the air, and we’re going through very difficult times, which creates a lot of anxiety about the future.”

Nine months since her arrival on campus as UCI’s first female chancellor, Wilkening, who served as provost of the University of Washington before she was selected for the top spot at UCI, has won high marks from faculty, staff and students for her accessibility, her listening skills and the quality of her interim appointments to a growing list of key administrative openings.

“She even gave out her e-mail code at a faculty meeting,” one professor raved. Several also praised her ability to remain calm under tremendous pressure.

“Any time somebody walks into the head position of an institution undergoing this kind of stress, the challenge is enormous,” said John King, an information and computer science professor. “I think she’s done a good job. She has not been party to any panic behavior and has shown a high degree of equilibrium and poise.”

But Wilkening’s continuing silence on specifics of her goals makes it difficult to assess her tenure in any substantive way, several faculty members said.

“She has said quite consciously that she is not yet trying to paint her image of the university,” said Luce.

The degree of anxiety on campus is evident. Several professors, speaking privately, said they even worried about whether the university under Wilkening’s leadership was likely to remain a major research university. And they said they wished she would clarify at least this fundamental aspect of the university’s future.

Wilkening agreed, at least in part.

“Maybe I should have said the obvious more often,” she mused, seated near an open window in her sunny, fifth-floor office.

For example, Wilkening said she has no intention of veering the university from its traditional mission as a major research institution.

“I think people want to hear me say that. People want to know that we’re not going to become a liberal arts college or something,” she said. “It would never occur to me that we would do anything but that.”

The chancellor also said she is aware that morale at the university is very low, a feeling echoed in interviews across the campus.

“Why would their morale not be bad?” she asked. She pointed to last year’s across-the-board salary cut, three years without raises, and the layoffs of 140 staff members since 1992, including 10 announced last month in the closure of the UCI printing department.

In addition, about 200 senior faculty members are now eligible to retire under the University of California’s third voluntary retirement program, prompting anxiety among those who remain about even greater workloads, she said. The deadline for the current buyout is Friday.

“The future is uncertain,” Wilkening said. “If people didn’t have low morale, I would think they were not tuned in to what was going on.

“But I think our opportunities are wonderful here,” she argued, praising UCI’s employees, students and the Orange County community as a whole for being supportive during the recent travails.

“We’re in Orange County and what could be better in terms of our future? It’s a very supportive place, a place that’s going to grow and a very livable and exciting place to be. I think that if people can just take a little bit longer view than the last few years, our future is extremely bright.”

But in the coming months, Wilkening also must cope with another challenge: how to fill a growing number of critical administrative openings. Among the open positions is the post of executive vice chancellor, the university’s No. 2 job.

L. Dennis Smith, who had also served as acting chancellor before Wilkening’s appointment, resigned the post this spring to become president of the University of Nebraska.

Lately, the list of vacancies has grown, with the resignations just last week of UCI’s only two female vice chancellors. M. Anne Spence, whose position in charge of academic programs was recently proposed for elimination, quit April 15 to return to teaching and research. On Wednesday, Kathleen T. Jones, vice chancellor for university advancement, announced she was resigning to take a similar post at Georgetown University in Washington.

Other key openings include vice chancellor for research and graduate studies, open since last year, and the deans of the medical and engineering schools.

Dr. Walter L. Henry, the powerful head of the medical school who was also vice chancellor of health sciences, resigned abruptly in December after Wilkening rejected his proposal for dividing his two-tiered position into separate jobs. In March, acting on the recommendation of a UCI faculty committee after a review, Wilkening ousted engineering dean William A. Sirignano.

The two departures have come under intense scrutiny as many on campus try to glean signs of the chancellor’s management style and leadership abilities.

The two men had held high-profile jobs for many years and had formed strong alliances among the faculty and in the community. In both cases, colleagues have expressed some concern about the long-term impact of the administrators’ departures on the two schools.

But to some, the changes also indicated that Wilkening is not afraid to show leadership and is unlikely to shrink from making the difficult choices that await her.

“A chancellor has to make very tough personnel calls,” said King, the information and computer science professor. “I’m glad to see that she isn’t afraid to make these calls and stand by them.”

Ron Wilson, the university’s ombudsman since 1977, said Henry and Sirignano were remarkably alike--strong, forceful, demanding leaders whose views of governance may not have jibed with what he called Wilkening’s more collaborative approach.

Wilkening declined comment on the reasons for Sirignano’s removal, saying she was prohibited from discussing personnel matters. She said she still did not entirely understand why Henry chose to step down.

Henry could not be reached for comment.

Sirignano, who is scheduled to leave his post Sept. 1, expressed bewilderment at the time of his removal in March, and declined further comment last week.

Some on campus said they were reluctant even to attempt to assess Wilkening’s tenure so early on. “She’s only been here a little while. She hasn’t earned a grade yet,” said Dr. Stanley van den Noort, chairman of the department of neurology.

But many said they had been impressed even during their initial contacts with Wilkening, praising her openness, accessibility, intelligence and an obvious desire to listen to the concerns of those at all levels of the university.

“She is a very open and available person who listens to whoever wants to talk to her,” said Dr. Frank Meyskens, director of the clinical cancer center. “She’s a very good communicator and is quite open about wanting to know what’s going on.”

But in meetings on difficult issues, said Fallon, who chairs the faculty of the medical school, she can also be tough. At such times, Wilkening is “a give-me-the-numbers, cut the B.S. kind of person, who has no trouble getting to the essentials,” Fallon said. “And that creates a very positive impression of her as a leader.”

Student leaders, too, were positive. David Kesselman, president of undergraduate student government at UCI, said that while the real tests are clearly to come, Wilkening so far appears to be taking student concerns seriously.

John F. Ronan, editor of the New University, the campus newspaper, described the change in management style with Wilkening’s arrival as “both drastic and for the better. She’s just a really firm believer in an open, deliberative process,” he said.

In the year before Wilkening’s arrival, Ronan said, he had filed about 30 requests under the federal Freedom of Information Act in order to obtain documents from the university administration. Since then, he has needed to file only about seven such requests.

“We have more access to documents now, more access to how decisions are being made,” Ronan said. “There’s a real wind of change blowing through that administration building.”