Provost Brian Copenhaver, Dean of Life Sciences Fred Eiserling
and Dean of Humanities Pauline Yu will soon leave three vacancies
in the six high-ranking positions of the College of Letters and
Science.
The average student may find it difficult assessing the impact
these administrative positions will have on their academics because
the inner workings of the administration are, for the most part,
opaque to the student body. But the most obvious impact these
administrators have on students is in their overseeing much of the
college’s teaching and research priorities.
Though UCLA describes itself as having three missions ““
research, academics and service ““ they are not really given
equal weight. The university’s prestigious reputation lies
almost entirely on the campus’ extensive, diverse and
profitable research programs. The immense amount of quality
research the university does offsets the relatively mediocre
undergraduate education it provides.
A number of new fields are being pioneered at UCLA. Just
recently, for example, the campus was approved to serve as home to
one of the California Nanosystems Institutes. On Friday, Gov. Gray
Davis will be on campus for the groundbreaking ceremony.
Nanotechnology is viewed by many as the most promising dimension
for technological expansion and exploration ““ and UCLA will
be at the head of it just like it was during the development of the
Internet.
Along with the Nanosystems Institute is UCLA’s recently
developed Institute for Cell Mimetic Space Exploration, which is
conducting research in conjunction with NASA in hopes of creating
chip-sized “laboratories” that function in much the
same sensory way as human cell systems. Among other things, these
systems can be used to mechanically protect astronauts’
bodies while in space. UCLA is also at the forefront in medical
research dealing with mortal diseases such as AIDS and cancer.
Besides scientific research, UCLA also has a myriad of programs
and research institutes in the humanities, arts and social
sciences.
With the amount of research UCLA has going for it, teaching
often becomes subsidiary, as witnessed by apathetic professors who
pass on most of the teaching work for overcrowded classes to
graduate students. These graduate students who teach undergraduates
are being rushed through the diploma mill with a Minimum Progress
Requirement. The university has big-name researchers, but
they’re the most likely to teach less often and be less
available to students when they do teach. Popular professors such
as Joshua Muldavin and Rob Hennig have left or will leave UCLA
because of their low research levels, in the case of the former,
and budget cuts, in the case of the latter.
The college has introduced commendable programs in the last few
years. It introduce General Education clusters, which give freshmen
a more unique, interdisciplinary approach to learning at an honors
level. It also introduced the Fiat Lux seminars which give students
an opportunity to mingle with faculty while learning more
specialized subjects.
These programs signal a positive trend, but the trend needs to
continue. When interviewing prospective dean and provost
candidates, the current administration needs to ask them how they
plan to make teaching more of a priority.