UCLA Today: Panel outlines competitiveness plan for campus

BY CYNTHIA LEE
UCLA Today Staff

Chancellor Albert Carnesale’s Competitiveness Task Force — a panel of academic leaders brought together to address the challenge of maintaining excellence in an era of shrinking budgets — has recommended eight strategies to increase resources and optimize UCLA’s existing assets.

“There is a significant and growing resource gap between UCLA and the private universities, which have substantially more money available to spend on their students and faculty,” said Chancellor Carnesale. “The magnitude of this differential between the privates and the publics is so large that this resource gap would exist regardless of California’s financial condition.”

The strategies recommended by the task force, which was chaired by Executive Vice Chancellor Daniel Neuman, will help UCLA achieve four goals: develop new sources of support for the academic core; redirect existing resources to optimize competitiveness; enhance UCLA’s competitive posture for attracting top faculty; and improve procedures that affect academic priorities.

The objective was not simply to devise short-term solutions that would carry UCLA through the lean budget years now under way, but to develop long-range strategies that will keep UCLA competitive over the next five to 10 years, Neuman said.

Six action committees representing a broad cross-section of academic and administrative leaders deliberated on critical themes of competitiveness, resulting in eight recommendations.
To increase resources for the academic core, UCLA should:

Establish a bold initiative to raise 200 new endowed professorships and 400 graduate fellowships and teaching apprenticeships. “At the core of a great research university are first-rate faculty and graduate students,” said Neuman. “Fulfilling this goal is critical to UCLA’s ability to compete, to reward existing as well as new faculty for excellence in research and teaching and to develop the professoriate of tomorrow.”
Direct the professional schools and the College of Letters and Science to generate new revenue, especially by focusing on self-supporting degree programs and Summer Sessions.
To redirect resources to optimize competitiveness, UCLA should:
Ask the UCLA Foundation to explore new, creative ways to support the housing loan program since housing costs in Los Angeles are a major obstacle to recruitment and retention.
Establish a new allocation strategy for graduate student support that is aligned with the strategic priorities of the College and the professional schools.

To enhance faculty competitiveness, UCLA should:

Develop a faculty compensation plan to support competitive salaries on the general campus. Establish consistent funding mechanisms for upgrading, merits and promotions of all state-funded faculty positions. And UCLA should encourage the timely retirement of senior faculty.
Streamline the academic personnel process and optimize the utilization of UC’s rank and step system to improve faculty morale and salary competitiveness and to ensure the highest standards of quality.

To improve procedures that affect aca-demic priorities, UCLA should:

Implement a new space-planning process by restructuring the chancellor’s Capital Program Committee. The new Office of Space Management would be created within the Office of Academic Planning and Budget. Establish a committee to review and manage the use of off-campus space.
Restructure the budget and planning process to make it more stable, meaningful and consultative by clearly articulating campuswide priorities, developing strategic plans on a three-to-five-year cycle and establishing an annual budget management review based on performance in relation to the unit’s strategic plan.

Once the chancellor decides which recommendations should be adopted, the process for implementing them may differ.

Some may involve collaboration with the Academic Senate, while others might require consultation with deans and chairs. Task force members are advising Chancellor Carnesale to establish a small team, the Competitiveness Implemen-tation Advisory Group, to oversee the process.

“I am confident that, working together, we can meet this challenge with creativity, commitment and vision,” Neuman said.