$250M goal to recruit, retain the very best
BY PHIL HAMPTON
UCLA Today
Building on UCLA’s long-term efforts to maintain its momentum
as a leading research university that powers the economy and provides
direct societal benefits, UCLA’s leaders have launched an
ambitious plan to raise $250 million over the next five years to
help recruit and retain the very best faculty and students.
The goals of the Ensuring Academic Excellence initiative are to
raise $100 million to fund 100 new endowed chairs for the recruitment
and retention of professors across campus, $100 million to fund
fellowships and scholarships in the UCLA College and $50 million
for fellowships and scholarships in the professional schools.
“This new $250-million initiative continues our work to
attract topflight scholars and students in the face of widening
funding disparities between elite public research universities and
private institutions,” said Chancellor Albert Carnesale. “While
the budget compact with the governor improves the predictability
of state funding, the long-term trend of restricted state support
for public universities compounds our challenge, demanding a focused
fund-raising effort and a rededication to our academic core of faculty
and students.”
Two years ago, the chancellor convened the campuswide Competitiveness
Task Force to recommend programmatic changes to keep UCLA strong
amid changing state budget priorities and increasing competition
for the best faculty and graduate students. Developing a focused
fund-raising initiative in support of UCLA’s community of
scholars was one of the task force’s recommendations.
To help in this task, Broadcom Corp. co-founder Henry Samueli,
a philanthropist and professor of electrical engineering in the
engineering school that bears his name, will co-chair the chancellor’s
newly formed Competitiveness Council, an advisory and advocacy group
of community and industry leaders. “Preserving UCLA’s
strength and enhancing its ability to compete is imperative to the
economic future of California,” said Samueli, who holds three
UCLA degrees and founded his company based in part on core technologies
he developed with graduate students.
That achievement underscores an essential fact: that graduate
students are the lifeblood of a research university. “They
help attract faculty, they collaborate as research partners and
in the teaching of undergraduates,” said Claudia Mitchell-Kernan,
vice chancellor of graduate studies and dean of the Graduate Division.
“This initiative highlights UCLA’s ongoing commitment
to the best and the brightest and builds on the university’s
reputation as a vibrant locus for scholarship and research. It continues
a multiyear, campuswide effort to enhance support for graduate programs
with a renewed emphasis on philanthropic resources and a greater
focus by faculty in applying for training grants to support graduate
students.”
The initiative is also an important expression of the university’s
commitment to the academic research of faculty and students, said
Heather D. Maynard, an assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry
who holds the Howard Reiss Career Development Chair.
The $250-million initiative builds on the momentum of Campaign
UCLA, among the more ambitious fund-raising efforts ever undertaken
by a major public research university. Launched in 1997, Campaign
UCLA has raised more than $2.5 billion, surpassing its $2.4-billion
goal well before the campaign’s scheduled conclusion in December
2005. The current total includes approximately $287 million in commitments
specifically earmarked for the support of students and faculty.
Money raised by the new initiative, which runs through 2009, will
be tracked separately from gifts generated by Campaign UCLA.
Another critical effort to help UCLA compete for leading graduate
students is the construction of Weyburn Terrace, an 840-unit graduate
student apartment complex offering affordable housing this fall
to roughly 1,400 renters.
As the state’s largest university, UCLA enrolls roughly
38,000 students annually. Home to five Nobel Prize recipients, UCLA
receives more than $750 million a year in research contracts and
grants.
For every $1 state taxpayers invest in UCLA, the university generates
almost $9 in economic activity, resulting in an annual $6-billion
economic impact on the Greater Los Angeles region.
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