UC officials and those involved in the search for the next
chancellor have not confirmed or denied a report in the Los Angeles
Times that named Deborah Freund, provost at Syracuse University,
the sole remaining candidate to replace Chancellor Albert
Carnesale.
According to the Times, Freund is in final negotiations with
university officials about taking the chancellorship, and she and
UC President Robert Dynes are in negotiations over her compensation
package.
The Times cited anonymous sources who are “close to the
search.”
According to UC spokesman Noel Van Nyhuis, “the search has
not been completed and the chancellorship has yet to be offered to
anyone.”
In addition to her current position as provost, Freund is the
vice chancellor for academic affairs and a professor of public
administration at Syracuse. She is also a renowned health
economist, especially in the areas of PharmacoEconomics, a field
whose founding with which she is credited, as well as Medicaid,
according to Syracuse’s Web site.
Because of the confidential nature of the search process, search
committee members are expected to keep from disclosing specifics of
the committee’s progress.
UCLA Graduate Students Association President Jared Fox, who sits
on the search committee, said the search began with close to 1,000
candidates, but the pool of applicants has narrowed since.
Undergraduate Students Association Council President Jenny Wood,
who also sits on the search committee, said the committee forwarded
the names of “under 10″ candidates to Dynes, but she
refused to confirm or deny that Freund was one of them.
Fox, Wood and Student Regent Adam Rosenthal all said the
decision is not yet finalized.
The three committee members also said they were disappointed in
seeing the story leaked to the Times because it indicates that
someone from the internal committee discussed information that
should not have been shared.
“Whoever said anything about the process, whether it was
true or not, violated the confidences of the regents. It was
totally uncalled for, and I was personally offended,”
Rosenthal said.
Van Nyhuis said Dynes hopes to makes his recommendation for
UCLA’s ninth chief executive to the UC Board of Regents soon.
But the spokesman did not specify whether Dynes’
recommendation would be announced in time to be approved at the
regents meeting scheduled for May 16-18 at UC San Francisco.
Carnesale announced in September that he would be stepping down
in late June after serving as the chancellor of UCLA since
1997.
A search committee was formed in early December with the job of
reviewing candidates for the position and forwarding a
recommendation to Dynes.