Buying and selling land and properties may be foreign to many
UCLA students, whose main concern might be simply making housing or
apartment payments on time.
But, with collaboration between the School of Law and the
Anderson School of Management, the Richard S. Ziman Center for Real
Estate will give students from several disciplines an opportunity
to learn about these issues.
The partnership to develop the center at UCLA was announced by
Chancellor Albert Carnesale last Wednesday.
A statement from Carnesale said the cooperation between the two
professional schools would help the center contribute to the
Southern California economy and increase the opportunities for
community outreach.
“Interdisciplinary collaboration is essential and is a top
priority at UCLA,” Carnesale said in the statement.
Michael Schill, dean of the School of Law, said law schools
across the nation are increasingly becoming involved with
interdisciplinary studies.
“The day when people thought all the answers were in law
books are over,” he said.
Schill said Chancellor Carnesale and Executive Vice Chancellor
Daniel Neuman were proponents of the partnership between the two
schools.
The center, which was formerly only part of the Anderson School,
will be devoted to the study of real estate research and education,
with the goal of forming relationships between students and faculty
of various departments.
Much of the center’s operation will be the same as before,
though studies and programs will be expanded to include more
research from other fields of study, Schill said.
As of now, the two schools are looking ahead and plan on meeting
to discuss specific opportunities to be offered to students and
faculty, Schill said.
Tim Kawahara, the managing director of the Ziman Center, said
the new partnership is also part of a campus-wide movement to
create more interdisciplinary forms of study.
Though the center will be run by the Anderson School and the
School of Law, there has been a push to include other areas that
have an impact on real estate, including civil engineering, urban
planning and arts and architecture, Kawahara said.
“(The center will) support academic research in the field
of real estate in all disciplines,” Kawahara said.
The Anderson Forecast, a part of the Anderson School which
releases economic predictions throughout the year, may also be
involved in studies regarding the housing markets and economy,
Kawahara said.
The law school has offered a variety of courses dealing with
real estate, including classes on property laws, local and state
government regulations and environmental law, all of which can be
integrated into the Ziman Center’s research, Schill said.
Outside of the Law School and the Anderson School, Schill said
there are several opportunities within UCLA to develop more
interdisciplinary studies for students and faculty.
One such example is the Entertainment and Media Law and Policy
Program, developed to address issues regarding legal matters
involving business, economics and forms of media, Schill said.
Schill added that there is interest in collaborating with the
School of Public Health and the Medical Center to develop a form of
interdisciplinary study involving medicine and legal matters.