College deans to share governance

By Wendy Soderburg

With the resignation of Executive Dean Patricia O'Brien last month, the College of Letters and Science has embarked upon an interim governance plan in which the duties of the executive dean will be divided among the five current College deans.

Approved by Chancellor Gene Block and Acting Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Scott Waugh, the interim plan was developed by the College deans and modeled after similar systems at UC Berkeley, Davis and Santa Barbara. It calls for the deans — Judith L. Smith, dean/vice provost for undergraduate education; Tim Stowell, dean of humanities; Emil Reisler, dean of life sciences; Joseph Rudnick, acting dean of physical sciences; and Reynaldo Macías, acting dean of social sciences — to serve as members of a brand-new College Cabinet that will meet weekly to manage the business of the College.

The deans are continuing to fulfill their divisional duties while sharing responsibilities previously held by the executive dean, including representing the College on campuswide committees and overseeing the College's central development and budget. Most significant, however, is the fact that each dean now reports directly to Waugh. "I want to emphasize that there are no plans to split up the College," Waugh said. "Instead, our goal is to strengthen the College, to assure its continued academic excellence, and to support faculty involvement in interdisciplinary, collaborative work across the College divisions and between the College and the professional schools."

The chancellor and Waugh are working with the Academic Senate to appoint faculty members to a College Governance Advisory Committee, which will make recommendations on a long-term governance plan. Waugh said that he will consider the input of the deans and that of the Governance Advisory Committee, as well as his own consultations with provosts and deans across the country, to inform his decision-making.

College governance has evolved over time at UCLA and elsewhere. "Many years ago, the College had a single dean with divisional deans who were really more like associate deans," Smith said. "Then under Ray Orbach, the first College provost, the divisional deans became full-time deans working under the central direction of a provost (and then later an executive dean), who was expected to 'speak for' and manage the College. The 'executive dean' model was also used at Berkeley, Santa Barbara and Davis.

"But a few years ago, these campuses changed, and their colleges are now governed by a set of deans who work collaboratively. In the past few years, the College senior deans have been interested in forming a similar governance system at UCLA, and Pat's retirement permits us to experiment with a new governance model," Smith explained.