Her Message of Departure Reflects Her Stay

It was a sign of the times and of the woman. When faculty and staff at UC Irvine flicked on their computers Wednesday morning, there was an e-mail from Chancellor Laurel L. Wilkening.

It was notice of her resignation.

Never comfortable with glad-handing or giving big speeches during her four years at the helm of the university, Wilkening chose a characteristically detached way to tell the campus she would be leaving.

“With much pride in what we have all accomplished at UCI over the last four years, I plan to step down as chancellor effective June 30, 1998, and leave the field of higher education,” the message began.

In a reaction echoed by faculty, staff members and students across the campus, “I was shocked,” criminology professor Jim Meeker said. “I was totally surprised.”

Meeker credited Wilkening with creating a task force on sexual harassment and following its recommendations. She also helped police and Orange County Sheriff’s Department personnel set up a program to track gang-related crimes across the county, he said.

Though the fall semester does not begin until later this month, a number of people were wrapping up summer classes or preparing for the fall on the sprawling campus this week.

Their reviews of her four-year stint in the top post were mixed. Some students and teachers said the chancellor seems aloof, more concerned about pumping up the reputation of the university than tending to issues like overcrowded classes, labs, housing and parking.

Others who took a class she taught or participated in student government and faculty committees said she was a caring professional who spoke out against Proposition 209, which eliminated affirmative action, and fought to promote diversity on campus.

Still others pointed out that Wilkening has worked to bring in money to build badly needed facilities and led the university through the toughest times in its 32-year history. For many, the enduring image of Wilkening is of her facing difficult media questions about the improper use of human embryos at the UCI School of Medicine.

John King, interim dean of the Graduate School of Management, said, “I would not have not wanted to be chancellor at the time she was. She came during the darkest days.”

King said Wilkening had to wrestle with “enormously deep budget cuts because of the recession in California, and the wrenching and absolutely terrible, scandalous and unique UCI fertility matter. She did it well.” Quiet and reserved, Wilkening stood in marked contrast to her predecessors, and not only because she was a woman heading a largely male faculty at a school specializing in science-related fields.

Longtime professors and alumni recalled founding Chancellor Dan Aldrich literally on his hands and knees in the dirt during ground-breaking ceremonies for new buildings and galloping around campus on horseback. Aldrich’s successor, Jack Peltason, who went on to lead the UC system, was a smooth, politic speaker, popular with the business community and faculty.

Under Wilkening, the university moved rapidly toward the next century with a major building expansion and recruitment of top-flight professors.

Wilkening’s influence was less evident to students, many of whom said Wednesday that they had never met her or even seen her.

Others said her vision was to make the relatively young university into one of the 50 top schools in the nation.

“UCI is not as old as I am, and we had two Nobel Prizes, and we’re in the top 10 public universities in the nation while she was here. That’s pretty good,” said John Clarke, head of the department of computing at the Graduate School of Management.

Some said Wilkening’s leadership was judged more harshly than her predecessors’ because of her gender.

Judy Rosener, a senior lecturer who has written books on female leaders and is a friend of Wilkening, said the chancellor has been scrutinized relentlessly by some male faculty members.

“She is committed to academic excellence, but she came to UCI at a very difficult time, not of her doing. . . . When you are a woman in an environment where the senior faculty are very male, very traditional, it is not at all easy.”

Rosener said the timing of Wilkening’s resignation makes sense because she had grown tired of the enormous pressures of the job and yearned to do something “where she can lead with her heart as well as her head.”

“Basically she felt, ‘Been there, done that,’ and that’s that,” Rosener said. “She’s young yet. She’s got a whole other life ahead of her. It’s exciting.”