UC President Convenes Panel to Select a New Chancellor

A 17-member committee of University of California faculty, students, staff and administrators has been appointed to search for a new Irvine campus chancellor to succeed Laurel Wilkening, who announced last month that she will leave in June to pursue personal interests.

UC President Richard C. Atkinson will chair the committee, which will begin its work with a series of closed meetings on campus to gather opinions from the community on what qualities the fifth chancellor at the system’s fastest-growing campus should have.

Atkinson will submit a list of candidates to the committee and then recommend a successor to the Board of Regents, a move he has said he would like to make by spring.

Atkinson was not taking calls from reporters Monday, spokesman Terry Lightfoot said. Lightfoot said he did not know what guided Atkinson’s thinking in picking individual members, but the goal was “to have a cross-section of representatives of faculty, students, the board and staff that provide a microcosm of the university.”

He said Atkinson has not yet submitted a list of candidates for the committee to consider, and the panel’s first meeting has yet to be scheduled. Several names have passed through rumor mills on campus, but the selection is generated by Atkinson, not UCI.

Atkinson appointed the committee after receiving nominations from various campus and system-wide groups.

Members representing UCI said they would urge the selection of a chancellor adept at balancing the needs of various, and sometimes competing, constituencies among the 18,000 students and 2,300 faculty and staff members. At the same time, members said, the new leader should boost the campus’ ties to the private sector, on which the university is relying increasingly for financial support because of erratic state funding.

Committee member Eric Stanbridge, UCI professor of microbiology and molecular genetics, recalled drastic, recession-related cuts in the early 1990s that precipitated elimination of programs and loss of staff.

“The University of California has suffered a tremendous financial hit in the past few years with the recession in California,” he said. “Not just UCI but the University of California has suffered enormous damage that is beginning to be corrected but will take a strong chancellor to make the case for UCI to be appropriately supported.”

Committee member R. Duncan Luce, who served on the panel that ultimately led to Wilkening’s selection and recently helped with the search for UCLA’s chancellor, said, “Clearly, we will look at someone with a track record of success in dealing with the community and in the business community in particular, given the changes in the University of California. Raising external funds certainly is important.”

Aram Chaparyan, president of the student government--the Associated Students of UCI--caused a stir in some quarters by nominating himself as the undergraduate representative to the committee without considering other candidates. The campus newspaper, New University, last week editorialized against Chaparyan’s decision without “asking anyone or opening it up to students at large.”

But Chaparyan, a senior majoring in political science, said in an interview that as president of the student body “it is my job” to represent constituents in key decisions. He promised to solicit students’ concerns before addressing the committee.

In general, he said, the new chancellor should make a greater effort than the sometimes shy Wilkening to meet with students and “be pro-education.”

The committee members are:

Board of Regents Chairman Tirso del Junco and members Howard H. Leach, John G. Davies, S. Sue Johnson, Tom Sayles and Meredith J. Kachigian, a San Clemente resident who is the only person from Orange County on the board.

Also, faculty representatives Susan V. Bryant, chairwoman of the developmental and cell biology department; Luce; Stanbridge; Patricia W. Kitcher, chairwoman of UC San Diego’s philosophy department; and Calvin C. Moore, chairman of UC Berkeley’s mathematics department.

And academic administration representative Frederic Y. M. Wan, UCI vice chancellor for research; staff representative Fawzi Hermes, assistant dean of undergraduate education; student representatives Chaparyan and graduate student David L. Valentine; alumni representative Steven A. McHolm, a partner in the Irvine law firm of Paone, Callahan, McHolm and Winton; and UCI Foundation Chairman Thomas H. Nielsen.