UCI Dean Rolled With the Budget Punches

Robert Hickok, dean of the UC Irvine School of Fine Arts, is one of 77 faculty members taking the latest early-retirement offer by the university, the third such offer since 1991. Appointed dean in late 1988, Hickok oversaw notable developments in the school but also encountered obstacles imposed by a budget-cutting state Legislature and electorate. In an interview Monday in his office on campus, Hickok looked back on his tenure and explained his decision to leave by July 1.

“The whole idea of the early-retirement incentive program is to get as many people off the payroll--where there isn’t any money--and into the pension system, where there is a lot of money,” Hickok said.

“I simply decided that I couldn’t pass up this opportunity, particularly in view of the shape that the university is in financially and the fact that I don’t see any improvement in the immediate future. I decided that there were other ways to spend my life,” he said.

About 10 School of Fine Arts faculty members are taking the buyout, Hickok said. Further cost cuts are being made by furloughing some staff without pay for a month this summer and two months next summer. Some staff members say privately that they’ve been given the option of taking the furlough or losing their jobs. Karen Newell Young, director of public information at UCI, said Tuesday: “It’s a program that does have the goal of reducing payroll costs, but it’s entirely voluntary.”

The School of Fine Arts production budget, which pays for “all our plays and concerts and dance events” will be reduced next year “by a significant amount,” Hickok said. “We’ve had to simply pare back wherever we can.”

“This is not peculiar to the School of Fine Arts,” he added. “This is going on all over the place. . . . Just about everything in the operation of UCI is now under very close scrutiny.”

UCI’s Cultural Events series, for instance, which was not part of Hickok’s responsibilities, also will be shut down as of July 1, making UCI the only institution in the UC system not sponsoring such a series, according to a school official.

The cultural events office has presented American Indian Dance Theatre, Ballet Folklorico Quetzalli de Vera Cruz, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, anthropologist Richard Leakey and author Kurt Vonnegut, among others.

Additionally, the cultural events office has been a co-sponsor with the Irvine Barclay Theatre of the “Feet First Contemporary Dance Series” at the theater. Douglas Rankin, Irvine Barclay president, said Monday that the series would continue under the theater’s sole sponsorship.

“We’re in for a period of years where things are going to remain quite difficult,” Hickok said. “I’m sure they will come through it, and I think the new leadership of the university is going to be very helpful in that regard. . . . But after all, at the age of 67 1/2, I’m more interested in the immediate prospects, and they are not very bright.”

Among the accomplishments during his tenure, Hickok counted:

* Recruitment of a “highly diverse faculty of excellent quality,” including Donald McKayle and Bernard Johnson in dance, James Newton and RaeLinda Brown in music, and “a whole slew of people from diverse backgrounds,” including Catherine Lord, in studio art. All of these appointments are full-time positions.

* Improvement and building of facilities, including a new photography complex, a new arts building that houses the dance department, studio art facilities and administrative offices, and a still-to-be-completed video studio.

* Development of the first Ph.D. program (in art history) in the School of Fine Arts. “The first class of students will arrive next fall,” he said, “and that’s a significant achievement.

“Now, did we accomplish everything I wanted to accomplish?” he asked. “By no means. You never accomplish everything you want. That’s just in the nature of the game, and, of course, 5 1/2 years ago who could have predicted that the state of California was going to suffer the financial blows that it’s still suffering?”

Major setbacks began when a statewide bond measure to help develop new facilities failed in 1990. “We had developed a master plan for the development of the entire (Fine Arts) Village,” he said, “but unfortunately Proposition 143, upon which that development depended, did not pass.”

As a result, he had to begin what he called a “dismantling” process.

“That means not accomplishing things that you were on the path to accomplish, a calling a halt to that, and it means cutting back on some things that were in place,” he said.

“I was reaching a point where it was a rare day that I did not go home in a state of depression. It’s not my idea of fun to be in the process of, in a way, dismantling things. I was brought here to supervise growth.

“Still, I want to make two things clear. One, my decision to retire is in no way an expression of any dissatisfaction with the new leadership of UCI. And the second thing is, while I am quote retiring unquote, as dean of the school, I have no intentions of going home and sitting in my rocking chair.”

Hickok hopes to salvage the Irvine Camerata, a chamber vocal ensemble dedicated to early music that he founded upon his arrival in Orange County. But he admits the prospects are grim.

“The future of that organization now is quite obscure because, as I leave the office of the dean, I have more or less destroyed the economic base of that organization and its logistic base,” he said. The entire season last year was canceled because “we simply didn’t have the money.”

“We always knew it was going to be difficult,” he said. “If you want to make it in the choral scheme, you make sure you do ‘Messiah’ every year and other things that are immediately appealing. But that wasn’t what we set out to do.”

Hickok and his wife, Roanne, plan to remain in the county. “We love it here,” he said. “I’m going to maintain a small office at the university, although I won’t have any official function, at least not immediately.”

He plans to “refashion” his career as “a teacher and a conductor and as an arts consultant,” he said. “So I’ll be looking for opportunities to do that kind of thing.”

He also has some research projects he wants to work on, including a study of 16th-Century Marian chants. Oxford University Press has expressed interest in his work, “although no contract has been signed yet,” he said.

“I am, of course, a workaholic,” he said. “That’s the way it is. And I have always thought of retirement as one step before death. But I’ve been able to rearrange my psychology, with some help, mainly from my wife and others, to think of retirement as one step before freedom, and so I’m out of the mode of thinking of retirement and into the mode of simply another life change, which I view positively.”