BY CYNTHIA LEE
UCLA Today Staff
When Executive Officer Annie Alpers got a call
recently from Staff Assembly’s Gloria Jurisic about the
group’s Excellence in Service Award, which goes annually
to an outstanding staff member, Alpers knew it could mean only
one thing: The person she had nominated had captured this top
staff prize.
But she was wrong. Unbeknownst to Alpers, a
spontaneous outpouring of undiluted praise from staff and faculty
in the College’s Division of Life Sciences put her at
the top of the list.
“I was stunned and just completely gratified. It was something
I had never even thought of,” said Alpers, who holds a
position unique at UCLA.
She is the executive officer for academic affairs
for three departments: Organismic Biology, Ecology and Evolution;
Physio-logical Science; and Molecular, Cell and Developmental
Biology. She reports to four chairs, including the chair of
the Life Sciences Core Curriculum, basic courses that every
student in the division must take.
After the biology department was reorganized
in the early ’90s, a new umbrella administrative unit,
called the Life Sciences South Administration, was created three
years ago to coordinate services for all three departments.
Three executive officers were put in charge of financial affairs,
facilities and construction, and academic affairs. With an outstanding
staff, Alpers oversees all student affairs offices, the scheduling
of classes and exams and all student academic counseling, among
many other duties.
When it was first proposed, Alpers recalled,
“The question on everybody’s mind was, how is everyone
going to report to three, or, in my case, four different chairs?”
“I thought it to be a risky idea,”
said Dean Fred Eiserling in his nominating letter, “but
it has worked brilliantly, thanks largely to Annie’s visionary
leadership. In her quiet and reasoned way, she reorganized the
staff and especially the student support area into an efficient
unit that serves the needs of six different majors in three
separate departments.”
To Alpers, the key is the trust and support
she shares with her two counterparts, Patty Johnson and Ken
Sais. “They are wonderful to work with,” Alpers
said. “Anyone can come right to any one of us with a problem.
It will be resolved.”
Alpers is also credited with helping to build
the core curriculum into one of the largest academic units at
UCLA, serving 6,000 to 8,000 students annually, taught by more
than 30 different faculty and some 150 teaching assistants.
“Annie has never lost sight of her main
mission, the training of students. All decisions, large and
small, are made with this in mind,” said Bob Simons, core
chair.
Alpers, who plans to retire sometime in the
next academic year, has also experienced UCLA as a faculty wife
(she is married to History Professor Edward Alpers), the mother
of children who attended elementary school here, the parent
of a UCLA student and a UCLA Extension student herself.
But being a staff member has its rewards. “I
just wish there were many, many more staff awards that could
be given out,” she said.
