Katehi: year one

9.3.10

By Cory Golden, Enterprise Staff Writer

Last year was no easy time to become the new chancellor of UC Davis.

By Aug. 17, when Linda Katehi took office, massive state budget cuts were already taking place, layoffs were a regular event and faculty and staff furloughs were ready to begin.

Her own salary became a talking point for critics before she'd unpacked a box.

The Board of Regents later approved record fee increases, touching off student protests that saw 53 total arrests on the Davis campus.

A series of hate incidents, including defacing the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Transgender Resource Center and the appearance of swastikas on campus, alarmed the community.

Cutting four athletic teams led to more protests and a state hearing. Now a lawsuit seems likely.

And even Picnic Day weekend - that most bucolic of Aggie traditions - turned into an embarrassing, drunken mess downtown.

At the same time, away from the television cameras, Katehi began making changes to campus leadership. She set the stage for still greater change with the recent release of a vision statement meant to focus the campus for the next decade.

Internal and external evaluations of the campus' efforts in research and tech transfer also have taken place. Soon the campus will embark on a further overhaul - cutting and reorganizing the administration - and launch a massive fundraising campaign.

Here in her own words is Katehi's look back at her first year and her take on what's to come, taken from an interview in her office on Monday. Her comments have been edited for brevity.

'Vision of Excellence'

We were able to produce what we call a framework, which is a 'Vision of Excellence' for UC Davis. I feel really very comfortable with what we have in front of us because it incorporates all of the aspirations of our communities, both internal and external, and really speaks in wonderful ways about the UC Davis we want to have in place, the future we want to have for ourselves.

I thought it was important that we achieved that because it was a very difficult year. During such a major financial crisis, it's very difficult to focus people on the next five to 10 years, but we were able to do it very effectively, very successfully.

Not that we're not done, however. We are sending out a communication to the deans and the department heads asking them to take this framework and use it to align their own strategic plans with the framework of the institution.

The framework by design was made a little more general. We are so broad intellectually that you cannot expect arts and humanities and engineering to have the same definitions to the direction we're going to take.

Each will take a direction that will lead it to excellence but it may be articulated in slightly different ways. The metrics that assess their success will be different. We wanted to do this so that the colleges feel they are true partners in this activity.

We expect all of the different units to come to us, say around March sometime, with their own strategies revised, if needed, to show alignment with the framework.

In parallel with that, as they bring this information to us, we will see what their priorities are. And then on the basis of those, we will create priorities for the campus.

Then we will put money around those priorities. So we'll have to develop what we call a business plan that says that for us to get where we want to be, this is the kind of investment we need to make in people, in tools, in programs and facilities.

Improving research

We did a very extensive review of our research enterprise over the past year. It was done through three separate but coordinated events. One was a blue ribbon committee that looked at the research enterprise. We had a blue ribbon internal committee on IT and tech transfer.

Then we had an external review panel that came, led by (former director of the National Science Foundation) Eric Bloch, from Washington, D.C., that helped us do benchmarking. They looked at us from the outside and they said, 'What is it that we know about you? And what is that we've learned after we've looked at you internally?'

We're in the top 15 universities in the U.S. in terms of research funding but we want to go to $1 billion, which would put us in the top five. What is going to make us get there? What are the gaps that we have that we have to fill to get there?

This coming year will be the year where a lot of these actions will be accepted or will be initiated. That's exciting because we're going to set a new tone, and we'll create a very vibrant environment moving forward.

Organizational change

We have created what we call the organizational excellence initiative to help us understand what our gaps are and what our opportunities are in terms of becoming more service-oriented, of higher quality of service and of lower cost.

Because if we can manage that, we can put more money into the academics. We need to make investments into our students, our programs, our curriculum, our faculty, our staff that really support the academic enterprise.

Without expecting to get a lot more money from the state, it is critical to make this substantive reallocation of resources from administrative and service to academic programs and people who support the programs. That commitment has been made in a very serious way.

The report (by an outside consultant, which is being made public this month) has really helped us report what the gaps have been, what the issues that we need to address are and what the opportunities for change are. It's going to happen. It's going to be substantive.

Change is very difficult, but I think if we manage to go through that we are going to be a better university.

Campus unrest

Students come here and they bring with them everything that happens in their family. Their parents lose their jobs. They lose their homes. Many parents get divorced. Kids lose their way to come to school. It's not just about the 32 percent (fee increase). That was substantive, don't take me wrong, but it was far more than that.

Being students they are very young. They believe in an idealistic world. And then they face some very harsh realities. Trying to reconcile the two is very hard. Because they are young and because they go through this reconciliation with a lot of emotion, I was not surprised by that. What I was surprised by was the intensity of this lack of civility.

I believe at the end we managed to go through last year without major crisis. We still had issues with the students, with the arrests, we had the other issues with the hate incidents and so forth, and while that was happening it was horrible for the people involved, but at the end I believe our campus was able to manage well.

Lessons learned

This past year reaffirmed the importance of having open channels with the students. It is critical to stay connected, to have people listen to them.

Of course in the end, as happened with athletics, we have to make decisions and these decisions will not be liked. Some people will vigorously dislike them. But it's critical to stay connected and that these processes stay transparent. We have worked at that.

I don't want to say that we are a transparent organization. We are a huge organization. And we are very non-transparent in many places. The commitment we have made is to reduce the administration and in the process make us more transparent.

The other thing we've learned is that our campus needs to be engaged in a very public discussion about civility. I think we need to find ways to help us practice how to do this. One way of helping (students) practice is by orchestrating debates around tough issues but doing it in a way that students can come, can argue, can disagree, but do it in a civil way that makes this place feel safe and protected.

I have asked (Associate Executive Vice Chancellor for Campus Community Relations) Rahim Reed and the committee that I'm going to be chairing next year, on community and diversity, to develop a plan for what we call a hate-free campus. We will pursue this plan aggressively this year, and the next, and in following years - this has to be a standing activity on our campus.

Looking ahead

This going to be another difficult year for many reasons - not because we're going to have another raise in fees but because the economy has not improved. People are very upset about the jobs they've lost and that they have not been able to replace.

In addition to the cuts we had from the state, we're going to have another financial threat - the issues around retirement benefits. The institution and the state 18, 20 years ago were able to put a lot of money aside for the retirement of our employees because there was a surplus in that fund. There was a decision about 17, 18 years ago to stop the contributions.

Now we have a huge problem and we need to find a solution. It's not one we can push out (into the future). The solutions are not very good. They require contributions from everybody. I don't know exactly what that will mean, but I believe next year will be an intense year because of those types of decisions that need to be made.

A changing role

As a chancellor, I think my goal is to create a leadership team for the institution, help the campus develop a vision and strategic goals, help the campus develop a plan for how to achieve those, then let the campus do it.

We have three major searches under way, for the provost-executive vice chancellor of academic affairs, for the vice chancellor for research and vice chancellor for development. These are very critical positions. I am involved in trying to get the right people.

From the moment we have these people in place, hopefully by January of 2011, and after they have transitioned, my hope is that I will have more time outside trying to do things (away from campus). As chancellor, what I have to do is bring financial stability to the institution and then the kind of visibility that allows us to play at the level we want to play in the state and nationally.

Coming in, I had to spend a lot more time getting to know the institution. I can't sell it to the outside without knowing it, so it was critical for me to do that. It was also important to be here because of all of these other conditions.

I will still stay connected and visible on the campus - you need to have your feet connected to the ground, and the ground is here - but I need to be more involved with alumni. We need to accelerate that process.

Of course, I need to stay visible with the state and legislators, the power base of the state, and to make sure that we participate as partners in major activities, then the national piece and so forth. The fundraising is probably going to be the one thing that's going to keep me busy.

You can always spend more time here and more time there. It's how you strike the balance. I personally felt the balance was right for this year.

This story was originally printed in the Davis Enterprise on Aug. 12, 2010.