After O’Brien, college renovates administration, divides up power

When the former executive dean of the UCLA College of Letters and Science resigned at the end of last month, the college staff decided they would use her resignation as an opportunity to change and improve the structure of the college ““ something they have been discussing for the past six years.

From the beginning of this month to July 1, the college will be under an interim governance plan, with no executive dean. During these six months, college officials and advisory groups will decide how the college will operate in the long run, said Judith Smith, vice provost and dean of education.

The college is structured so that it has five divisions, which include physical sciences, life sciences, humanities, social sciences and education. Each division has its own dean, who under the old system, would report to the former Executive Dean Patricia O’Brien. O’Brien would then report to the acting Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Scott Waugh.

“Divisional deans don’t have the same feeling of authority because they are one level down,” Chancellor Gene Block has said. With O’Brien no longer working, the college deans came up with an interim governance plan that distributed her work among them, giving them direct access to the executive vice chancellor, Smith said.

“By reporting not directly to the provost, but to the executive dean, it made each of the college deans more like associate deans because they had less access and association to the chancellor’s office,” Smith said.

Under the new plan, the college deans will continue working for their division and additionally take a portion of the executive dean’s responsibilities, which range from budgetary decisions to strategic planning. The five will form a “College Cabinet” and will meet weekly to discuss college-wide issues. For Smith, this means putting in 20 percent more time on college-related duties, but she said as she gets more familiar with the system, the amount of time she spends should lessen.

“We are in a transition stage where we really have to work hard to decentralize and build a different culture,” she said. “But we are committed to it.”

Thus far, Smith said she is happy with the new plan because it allows her to interact to a higher degree with her fellow college deans through the meetings and through “hallway interaction,” which she said has greatly increased.

“Having the opportunity to meet every week for long meetings, to get to not only discuss the college as a whole, but each division, is stimulating,” Smith said. For Waugh, the new plans will ensure that the college will continue to run properly.

“We are confident that the arrangements now will sustain the college over the short term and the essential functions and outlook of the college will not be harmed in any way,” Waugh said. “We expect the college to continue on its growth.”

The new plan was modeled after similar plans in schools such as UC Berkeley and Davis, Waugh said. Though the plans are not identical, he said they were successful, and believes the one at UCLA will be successful as well.

Waugh will soon put together a College Governance Advisory Committee, which along with the Academic Senate, will make recommendations on the long-term governance of the college after the interim period.

“They will come up with a plan that they think will serve the college well after July 1 and indefinitely,” he said. “We don’t know what will happen after July 1.” But he said these changes will not lead to the college being segmented into different ones. “One thing we want to make clear is that we are not going to break up the college,” he said.

Smith said she believes a system similar to this will be put into effect after the interim period, and said she does not think the college will adopt a system with an executive dean. Waugh said there are no plans on hiring a new executive dean until they decide how they want to govern the college. Currently, two of the five college deans are temporary ones, and Smith said they do not plan on hiring permanent positions for them until plans have been finalized.

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