OSCAR ALVAREZ/Daily Bruin Wyatt Rory Hume
discusses how he helped shape UCLA as executive vice
chancellor.
By Christian Mignot
Daily Bruin Contributor
[email protected]
Wyatt Rory Hume, executive vice chancellor, is finalizing his
last plans in office before he clears his desk and hands over the
reins of operating the nation’s largest public university to
his successor, current School of Arts and Architecture Dean Daniel
Neuman.
The second-highest ranking administrator, Hume will leave his
post July 1 to return to his home country of Australia, where he
will take over the role of president and vice chancellor at the
University of New South Wales in Sydney.
The end of the year is approaching quickly, but Hume is working
in Clinton-esque fashion to check off the remaining items on his
to-do list.
His most pressing goal in the next month is to close out the
strategic planning for the next academic year, ““ the primary
duty of the EVC ““ mapping out the immediate future of
UCLA.
Hume is also working closely with Neuman to prepare the future
EVC for his role as the university’s chief operating
officer.
Hume said he is briefing Neuman on the small details of the job
and that Neuman is attending planning and decision-making meetings
to experience his future job first-hand.
“I feel very comfortable handing (the position) over to
him,” he said. “I’ve enjoyed working with
him over the years and believe that he will lead well.”
The biggest challenge for Neuman will be dealing with the
financial difficulties the state is going through at the moment,
Hume said.
“He will have to decide what is most important to protect
in the face of cuts,” he said. “It’s hard to
balance the needs of academics with others such as the library or
even the hospital, which is currently struggling not to incur
losses in a very competitive health care market.”
Looking back over his term as EVC, which began July 1, 1998,
Hume hopes to leave behind an important legacy at UCLA.
He was instrumental in revamping the university’s yearly
strategic planning and budgeting process; encouraging greater
faculty input; ensuring greater communication among academic units;
and providing better feedback to the campus on administrative
issues.
Chancellor Albert Carnesale praised the strength of Hume’s
planning process.
“It provides opportunities for all of the relevant
constituencies to provide input to the process and, equally
importantly, informs them not only of the decisions, but also of
the rationale leading to those decisions,” Carnesale said.
“The result has been better use of the resources available to
the university.”
Neuman also cited Hume’s close relationship with the
Academic Senate as one of his greatest achievements.
“He developed a relationship with the Academic Senate that
provides a model for the shared governance system,” he said.
“It has yielded an authentic partnership that, in my
experience, is unparalleled.”
Hume also launched the “UCLA in LA” initiative,
which recognized the overwhelming involvement of faculty and
students in Los Angeles and worked to strengthen community links
with the university.
The initiative culminated with the creation in late April of an
associate vice chancellor of community partnerships position, to
which former director of the Center of Communications and Community
Franklin Gilliam Jr. was appointed.
In his four years, Hume endeavored to make UCLA one of the
leading universities in technology and research.
In 2000, he was the driving force behind the establishment of
the California NanoSystems Institute, a joint effort between UCLA
and UC Santa Barbara to apply the nanometer scale structure to
biomedical research and manufacturing.
Professor James Heath, current acting director of CNSI, worked
closely with Hume to put together the proposal for the
Institute.
“Rory’s support has always been complete, and I and
the other folks at the CNSI really learned to rely on him for
simply making our task easier,” Heath said.
In starting his new position in Australia, Hume expects the
biggest difference between the two jobs to be the amount of funding
provided to the universities for research.
“Here we are very well supported by the federal and state
governments, as well as private companies, but it will not be the
same there,” Hume said.
Carnesale said Hume will be sorely missed both as a colleague
and a friend.
“Rory Hume as been an outstanding executive vice
chancellor at UCLA,” Carnesale said. “He and I have
worked together as partners, and I have always had great confidence
in his integrity, his values, and his judgment.”