The job ad for the new chancellor of University of California-Irvine calls for a laundry list of qualifications:
• Demonstrated leadership skills in a rigorous and complex academic and research environment.
• Strong commitment to teaching, research, service and scholarship.
• Proven record of generating financial resources.
• Recognized ability to establish and maintain constructive linkages with external constituents and alumni.
Sounds like a briefcase-toting, academic superhero in short.
The top position at a major research university is one of the “more complex jobs,” according to Chuck Martin, a trustee of the UCI Foundation and chairman of current Chancellor Michael Drake’s advisory council.
Drake, who became UC Irvine’s fifth chancellor in 2005, plans to leave at the end of June to become president of Ohio State University.
Martin hosted a dinner last week for UC President Janet Napolitano, Drake and seven Orange County business leaders at his home in Laguna Beach. Napolitano, who oversees the search process, will recommend a finalist for approval by the UC Board of Regents. She was in town to deliver the annual Peltason Lecture at the school.
Napolitano asked Drake to set up a meeting with representatives of the OC business community, according to Martin.
The dinner conversation, over pan-seared swordfish, touched on “strategic issues related to the future of the University of California” but also focused on the chancellor search.
Martin and his colleagues from the business community took the opportunity to reiterate that the “leadership of OC cares deeply about the outcome,” he said. “We were encouraged by the fact that she is approaching the … search as a top priority.”
Martin has gotten to know Napolitano over the course of several meetings in the past two years.
Unconventional
She took a relatively unconventional route to her current job—she won two terms as governor of Arizona and served as secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, but brought no academic experience to the University of California.
“I was skeptical at first,” Martin said. “Now … I am very impressed.”
Martin declined to name the other executives at the meeting, but said follow-up conversations indicated they shared his sentiment.
The view on campus remains unsettled among some.
William Schonfeld, professor of political science at UCI since 1982, said faculty members worry Napolitano will make a similarly unorthodox choice for the new chancellor.
“We don’t know what she’s going to do,” he said. “It would be very unfortunate if [the] appointment mirrored her own resume and background. We wouldn’t want the assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security or the lieutenant governor of Arizona, as competent as those people might be. In the U.S. we have turned to the belief that an organization is best run by someone who knows very little about it. The business community will frequently take someone who has experience in aerospace and appoint them to be a head of a credit card company, but that’s not how serious universities are run. So this is an enormous experiment, and we’ll see how well she works out.”
Martin takes another view: Napolitano’s background could motivate her to recommend a chancellor who will foster strong ties with the local business community, he said.
“It’s a very big management job,” he said, noting that UCI is not just an educational institution, but also the county’s second largest employer, with about 22,000 working here and an operating budget of more than $2.2 billion. “You need someone who is a great leader and a manager, who can relate to a wide range of different constituencies.”
Schonfeld said he would like the new chancellor to look at UCI not as a springboard to other jobs but as a career destination in order to accomplish several critical goals, such as recruiting “truly distinguished faculty,” garnering wider alumni support, and revitalizing ties with Donald Bren, chairman of Newport Beach-based Irvine Company.
“For a long period of time, Mr. Bren was one of the strongest supporters of … UCI, recently that has not particularly been the case,” Schonfeld said. “He played the critical role beginning with the chancellorship of Jack Peltason, toward helping to build campus distinction, and his return to that role should be a central priority for the new chancellor.”
An executive search firm, Isaacson, Miller of San Francisco, the same company that helped place Napolitano, is leading the national search.
Internal candidates will be considered as well, Martin said, adding that Provost Howard Gillman’s name was mentioned favorably during the dinner with Napolitano.
Gillman declined to comment, citing the confidential nature of the search process.
“We’ll see what happens,” Schonfeld said. “Frequently in these cases, at the time when someone is appointed, people say, ‘Gee, what a fantastic choice!’ and it doesn’t work out, or vice versa. The proof is in the pudding.”
