Stable funding allows return to strategic plan
BY Cynthia Lee
UCLA Today Staff
After three years of painful budget cuts, it appears that UCLA
won’t be required to take more major reductions in 2005-06,
Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Daniel Neuman told the Legislative
Assembly of the Academic Senate Feb. 8.
Although UCLA’s academic and support units are still coping
with the loss of state support for this and previous years, Neuman
said, “we now believe that our campus’ finances are
sufficiently stable to reestablish the strategic planning process,
and your units will be engaging in this process beginning very soon.”
The strategic planning process, which was last done two years ago,
will be carried out by each academic and administrative unit and
should be aligned with priorities and initiatives identified by
Chancellor Albert Carnesale, Neuman said.
These include:
• Strengthening UCLA’s foundations by investing in units
at the core of the academic enterprise, such as the UCLA College,
the UCLA Library and information technology;
• Building on UCLA’s ability to cross academic boundaries,
where the campus has a comparative advantage, given its comprehensiveness
and the proximity of its general and medical campuses;
• Focusing resources in areas where UCLA has achieved or has
the potential to achieve excellence;
• Increasing the number of and support for graduate students;
• Recruiting and retaining outstanding faculty.
Among the chancellor’s major initiatives is the Ensuring
Academic Excellence Initiative, which sets out goals to raise by
2009 $100 million to fund 100 new endowed chairs, $100 million to
fund fellowships and scholarships in the UCLA College, and $50 million
in professional schools. “So far, we have raised nearly $62
million,” Neuman said.
Another major initiative is enhancing faculty diversity. Recently,
the chancellor committed new faculty FTEs to help the Office of
Faculty Diversity fulfill its mission. He also approved the establishment
of two academic departments, Asian American Studies and Chicana
and Chicano Studies. “The chancellor is committed to seeking
a diverse campus community that reflects the society in which we
live,” Neuman said.
To launch the planning process, the chancellor will lead a series
of campuswide leadership retreats over three days next month to
find ways to achieve greater integration within three areas that
are vital to UCLA’s long-range goals: the biosciences, the
arts and international studies.
In other announcements, Neuman said Vice Chancellor of Research
Roberto Peccei and
Associate Vice Chancellor of Information Technology Jim Davis recently
decided to form a new institute for computational research and education
in the sciences, engineering and the arts. “We believe that
UCLA now has the necessary elements for a nationally recognized
institute of computational research,” Neuman said.
To take advantage of UCLA’s competitive edge in having both
a life sciences division and a medical school on campus, a committee
of leaders from the UCLA College and the Geffen School of Medicine
has been formed to recommend areas where UCLA should invest and
better focus its resources.
Also appearing with Neuman was Vice Chancellor of Finance and Budget
Steve Olsen, who described a new Web-based budgeting system that
will be implemented campuswide to make the process more stable,
meaningful and consultative, as recommended by the Chancellor’s
Implementation Advisory Group.
Olsen said there was insufficient transparency under the old system
and an inability to do the kind of budget analysis units needed
to make informed decisions. The process of collecting information
from units — e-mailing in Excel spreadsheets — was outmoded,
he said.
In a project run by the Office of Academic Planning and Budget,
Hyperion, a leader in business performance management software,
is developing the Web-based system with input from campus CFOs.
Budgetary information will be integrated with financial information,
giving units the management tools needed to help run UCLA, a highly
complex $3.5-billion operation.
It will allow the chancellor to approve each organization’s
annual budget in an orderly and timely basis, Olsen said, and the
new system will provide quarterly reports to managers, showing them
whether they are on, under or over their budgets.
Budget information on the new system will become available beginning
with the new fiscal year, Olsen said.
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