UCLA Chancellor Will Leave Post on June 30

UCLA Chancellor Albert Carnesale, who presided over successful fundraising efforts and extensive campus construction over the last eight years but struggled with state budget squeezes and a medical school scandal involving donated cadavers, announced Wednesday that he would give up his job at the end of this academic year.

Carnesale, who will turn 70 two days after leaving his post on June 30, said it would be the “right time” largely because UCLA this year would conclude one of the biggest fundraising drives in American academia, with about $3 billion in expected contributions and pledges.

He said that he was looking forward to resuming teaching and conducting research in his fields of nuclear proliferation and international security. After a sabbatical of up to one year at another, still undetermined campus, Carnesale plans to return to UCLA as a professor in the public affairs and engineering schools. Before coming to UCLA as chancellor in 1997, he was second-in-command at Harvard University and a longtime professor and dean there. “It seemed like it was a good time to pass the baton, from a university point of view and from a personal point of view,” Carnesale told The Times.

Wednesday’s midday announcement surprised many at the nearly 38,000-student campus, which opens for the fall quarter later this month.

Adrienne Lavine, chair of UCLA’s Academic Senate, praised Carnesale for spotlighting the financial difficulties faced by University of California campuses in their competition with leading private universities.

“By placing this issue center stage, in a measured and meaningful way, Carnesale has begun a discourse that is critical to the health of the university,” she said via e-mail.

But Carnesale has been criticized for not being a visible enough leader, especially compared with his predecessor, Charles E. Young, who was considered Mr. UCLA in his nearly 30 years as chancellor. Several senior professors declined Wednesday to comment publicly about Carnesale’s departure.

Off campus, William G. Tierney, director of USC’s Center for Higher Education Policy Analysis, said UCLA had been hobbled by tight state budgets. Still, he said, Carnesale’s “footprint upon the academic stage has been light. There’s not a hint of scandal or dishonor or anything like that I’ve seen. But one critical role of the chancellor of the university is to be the front man or woman for the institution, and I think that the role of UCLA at this time is not clear in the public’s mind.

“If anyone asks if UCLA is significantly better today than when he came into office, I think the answer has to be ‘no,’ ” Tierney said. “He’s been a maintainer who stayed the course, rather than a revolutionary leader,” Tierney said.

Carnesale, countering criticism of his perceived lack of visibility, said: “It never occurred to me to measure leadership by how visible a person is, except in times when that’s needed. Most of the important work I do is not particularly visible. That’s true for most leaders.”

UCLA remains a highly regarded university and is tied for 25th in the nation with the University of Michigan among major research universities in the latest assessment by U.S. News & World Report magazine. Among public universities, it tied with Michigan for third.

An advisory committee, including UC regents, faculty, staff and others, will be formed soon to help UC President Robert Dynes choose Carnesale’s successor. In a prepared statement Wednesday, Dynes said: “Al Carnesale has provided superb leadership during a challenging time, when California faced tough budget challenges that threatened the entire university. Throughout this period, UCLA has built upon its foundation of excellence and enhanced its service to the people of Los Angeles and California immeasurably.”

Carnesale will retire six months after the closing of Campaign UCLA, the fundraising drive that was launched in May 1997, two months before he became chancellor. Its initial $1.2-billion goal was doubled in March 2002. The new target has been exceeded.

In June 2004, Carnesale launched a separate $250-million, five-year fundraising initiative to add about 100 endowed chairs for professors and provide fellowships and scholarships for as many as 3,000 graduate students a year.

Carnesale raised a few eyebrows last year with a proposal to significantly raise, perhaps more than double, UC’s undergraduate fees, which now average nearly $6,800 per year, not including room, board and books. Although he conceded that such a fee hike might be years away from gaining support among UC regents and the Legislature, he said his plan would help UC campuses recruit and keep top faculty and graduate students.

Carnesale’s administration was stung by allegations of cadaver trafficking at the UCLA medical school.

The scandal became public in March 2004 when The Times reported that Henry Reid, then director of the willed-body program, and an associate, Keith Lewis, had been placed on leave amid suspicions that they sold for personal gain several hundred bodies that had been donated for research. Reid was arrested on suspicion of grand theft, but denied wrongdoing and has never been charged. Neither was Lewis, who died last summer. A Los Angeles County district attorney’s office spokeswoman said the investigation by UCLA police is continuing

Another figure in the case, Ernest V. Nelson, an alleged middleman suspected of reselling the cadavers to major research corporations, was arrested on suspicion of receiving stolen property. But he also denied wrongdoing and has not been charged.

UCLA suspended the willed-body program, the nation’s oldest, in 2004 and was overhauling it with the use of radio frequency transmitters to track cadavers.

Carnesale said a major frustration during his years at UCLA has been the relatively low number of Latino and black students there. He said that he and other UCLA officials were committed to improving diversity, but that their options had been limited by a state affirmative action ban.

Carnesale also presided over the transformation of UCLA from largely a commuter campus to a residential one.

Since 1997, UCLA has completed or has under construction new housing for more than 4,600 undergraduate and graduate students.

More than 90% of each year’s about 4,200 freshmen now live on campus, officials said.

Carnesale, the son of a Bronx, N.Y., cabdriver, earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from Cooper Union and Drexel University and a doctorate in nuclear engineering from North Carolina State University.

He has spent much of his career teaching and helping create public policy as an international security expert and has been an advisor to several presidents.