Next UCLA chancellor OKd

University of California regents on Thursday unanimously approved the appointment of University of Virginia Provost Gene D. Block as UCLA’s next chancellor, bringing to an end a search process that began more than a year ago.

Block, a 58-year-old biologist, will take over from interim Chancellor Norman Abrams by Aug. 1.

The UC board, which has spent months dealing with fallout from a debilitating controversy over previously undisclosed -- and what some critics termed excessive -- compensation for top UC administrators, approved a base salary for Block of $416,000 a year.

The pay will be nearly $100,000 more than that of his predecessor, Albert Carnesale, who stepped down in June. The salary puts Block on a par with UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau.

Block and Birgeneau also will make more than their boss, UC President Robert C. Dynes, who recently volunteered to forgo his annual raise in light of the executive pay scandal. Dynes earns $405,000 in base salary.

In making the announcement, Dynes praised Block as an accomplished scholar and administrator who understands the special role and mission of top public universities. Virginia, like UCLA, is considered among the nation’s most elite public higher education institutions.

“We’re delighted to have him,” Dynes said as he introduced Block to a handful of regents present at UCLA’s West Alumni Center for Thursday’s special meeting. Other board members participated by teleconference.

In his own remarks, Block, a white-haired man with a youthful face, praised his new university as “a remarkable institution” and said his goal was “to make a great place even better.”

His appointment comes as UCLA’s leaders are dealing with a number of complex, high-profile challenges, including concerns over the dwindling number of African American students at the school and recent harassment and threats by animal rights extremists against university researchers.

Block quickly addressed several such issues. He said his top priorities included finding ways to increase student and faculty diversity within the limitations set by the state’s Proposition 209, which bars affirmative action in public university admissions.

He said he would focus on improving what admissions officials call “the yield,” the number of students accepted to UCLA who actually enroll, and on making sure that low-income students get enough financial aid. “It’s going to be hard, slow work,” he said while noting that UCLA had recently made a shift toward an admissions process that many hope will boost the numbers of underrepresented minorities on campus.

Block, whose research focuses on biological rhythms, aging and sleep, also spoke forcefully about efforts to protect UCLA faculty members and staff from animal rights extremists, saying researchers needed a safe atmosphere in which to work.

In his comments to the regents and a subsequent interview, Block also said he hoped to find ways to expand UCLA’s links with the city of Los Angeles. He said he had spoken by telephone this week with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a UCLA alumnus, and the two men agreed to work together on such efforts.

And he said he would encourage more interdisciplinary scholarship, which reaches across traditional academic boundaries. UCLA’s relatively compact campus, he said, should allow for more interaction among departments and schools.

“This is the perfect environment -- and the perfect weather -- for people to walk between buildings,” Block said, adding jokingly that the area’s temperate climate constituted an “unfair advantage” for the school.

Though his start date isn’t until next summer, Block said he will return to UCLA next month to meet faculty and students. He also plans to visit the campus periodically to consult with Abrams and others, but said he did not want to interfere with the acting chancellor’s authority during the transition.

His appointment followed a longer-than-typical search process for a UC campus leader and one marked by the withdrawal of an earlier candidate, Syracuse University Provost Deborah A. Freund, after word leaked that Dynes was close to recommending her hiring.

Freund withdrew from consideration in May, apparently because her husband, a Syracuse economist, was not offered a professorship at UCLA.

Dynes said Thursday that the second search produced a pool of more than 100 candidates.

For his part, Block said in the interview that when he was approached about the UCLA job by a search firm, his initial response was that the university was so big and well established that it would be difficult for him -- or any chancellor -- to make much of a difference. But he said he changed his mind as he thought about the possibilities the job presented.

He said he realized that “what you can do at UCLA, if you work hard and are lucky, is you can improve a lot of things a little bit and, collectively, you’ve made a big difference.”

Block has research ties to Japan and has visited Asia many times. He said he was drawn to the Pacific Rim location of Los Angeles and its many links to Asia. “California is an exciting place to be,” he said.

The job will mark a West Coast homecoming of sorts for Block and his wife, Carol. Although the new UCLA leader grew up in Monticello, N.Y., he earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology from Stanford University and his master’s and doctorate, both in psychology, from the University of Oregon.

After postdoctoral training at Stanford, he accepted an assistant professorship at the University of Virginia in 1978 and has spent his career there, until now.

Block said Thursday that his wife seemed to have an inkling that the couple might one day move west, and kept renewing her California license as a medical technologist. “She keeps telling me you never can tell when you might go back,” he said. “I keep telling her, ‘There’s no chance we are going back’ and ‘Why are you doing this?’ ”

The couple have two grown children.

In the interview, Block talked about his research on biological clocks and the effect of sleep deprivation on aging. He laughed as he spoke of how he tries to warn undergraduates that they will pay a physiological price for pulling all-night study sessions and then partying afterward.

And he acknowledged, cheerfully, that the demands of his new job may put a crimp in his own sleep time -- and in his hope to continue his own research at the UCLA campus. “I realize it’s going to be hard,” he said.

*

rebecca.trounson@latimes.com larry.gordon@latimes.com