When Chancellor Albert Carnesale leaves Westwood this spring, he
will leave behind something to which he never gave much thought: a
legacy.
The rosy-faced 69-year-old chancellor led UCLA through the highs
and lows that came during an almost decade-long tenure marked by
significant changes to the UC admissions policy, severe budget
cuts, record-setting fundraising, a cadaver scandal and ambitious
campus construction projects.
Carnesale arrived in Westwood in 1997, soon after California
voters banned consideration of race or ethnicity in public agencies
with the passage of Proposition 209, a move that outlawed
affirmative action and sharply lowered minority enrollment at
UCLA.
Carnesale was the target of much of the dissent that came with
the 1996 ban, though he often lamented the minority drop, from
which the campus has yet to recover.
“The captain is responsible for what happens on his or her
watch, but those things happened despite good efforts,” said
Bruce Willison, the Carnesale-appointed dean at the UCLA Anderson
School of Management, referring to decreased minority
enrollment.
During his time at UCLA, Carnesale also rode out some of the
worst budget cuts to higher education that the state has ever
endured.
State support at UCLA dropped from 20.7 percent to 15 percent, a
loss that led to considerable fee increases for undergraduate and
graduate students.
After his resignation announcement, several deans said Carnesale
dealt with the funding difficulties well.
Instead of responding with blanket, campuswide funding cuts,
Carnesale trickled down decision-making power to lower-ranking
faculty who were more able to make informed decisions, Willison
said.
“It’s important not to just socialize the
cuts,” Willison said, referring to Carnesale’s decision
to look at programs individually rather than making equal cuts
across the board.
“There was careful thought taken to where we should not
take cuts and where additional cuts needed to take place,” he
added.
Willison praised Carnesale’s choice not to cut all campus
programs evenly, but rather cut what he and other deans within each
department decided was least important to the university.
Though many appreciated his knack for delegating, the Bronx
native knew when to take charge, and when it came to fundraising,
he often did.
The Campaign UCLA program topped even the most optimistic
expectations and will likely round off at $3 billion when it comes
to a close this year.
Many attribute Carnesale’s record-breaking fundraising to
his charm, a quality that struck the committee in charge of
replacing his predecessor, Charles Young, nearly a decade
earlier.
“He devoted the time and effort that was necessary,”
said Cliff Brunk, chairman of the UC Academic Senate. “He has
a winning personality and that’s something that
counts.”
Donors weren’t the only ones charmed by the
chancellor.
Soon after moving into the chancellor’s mansion,
Carnesale, who began his tenure at UCLA as a bachelor, met his
wife, Robin.
The couple tied the knot more than three years ago.The two have
frequented UCLA football games and other campus events and,
together, have watched UCLA evolve.
With a $3 billion construction plan, the campus transitioned in
the time Carnesale was chancellor from a commuter college to a
residential university, as more undergraduate and graduate students
moved into university housing.
Though the achievement was partially overshadowed by some
construction delays, nearly 5,000 more students can be housed on or
near campus today than when Carnesale began his tenure.
One of Carnesale’s most notable accomplishments was
organizing the Fiat Lux program, a series of seminars emphasizing
learning through dialogue.
The chancellor started the program after the attacks of Sept.
11, 2001, and even taught a course on national security
himself.
But it wasn’t all peaches and cream for Carnesale while he
was at UCLA, as some of his aspirations for the university fell
flat.
One of Carnesale’s visions was to bring experts from
various fields within the university together to make UCLA more
interdisciplinary, a notion the chancellor had trouble getting
across, Willison said.
“I suspect that one of the chancellor’s biggest
disappointments is that people didn’t grasp his vision as
succinctly as he would have liked,” he said.
Carnesale’s tenure was also hurt by scandal at the UCLA
willed body program.
Employees at the institution, the nation’s oldest willed
body program, faced allegations that they sold hundreds of cadavers
that had been donated to the program for research.
The scandal, likely the university’s most infamous while
Carnesale was in office, forced university officials to suspend the
program.
Though it will likely take years for Carnesale’s legacy to
take shape, faculty buzz soon after he announced his resignation
indicates that the chancellor’s tenure will likely be
remembered as low-key and principled.
“I may have agreed or disagreed on certain positions but I
always felt like they were coming from a principled position rather
than an opportunistic one,” said Robert Rosen,
Carnesale-appointed dean of the School of Theater, Film and
Television.