Newly appointed College Executive Dean Patricia O’Brien
will take the helm of UCLA’s largest academic unit ““
and she will find herself with countless opportunities to
strengthen UCLA ““ if she remembers that students are at the
core of the university’s mission.
To be sure, she will join the administration during unsure
times. Serious budget cuts threaten the University of California,
student fees continue to rise, and faculty salaries are lagging.
Still, O’Brien is set to lead one of the most significant and
vibrant universities in the country.
As a new member of the UCLA community ““ but with knowledge
of the UC system from her time at UC Riverside ““
O’Brien has the potential to help redefine and settle several
questions in need of resolution at UCLA.
Early in her tenure, she will need to make decisions about the
minimum progress requirement, an academic diversity requirement,
and departmental statuses. And many of the questions she will face
will be tied to the state budget process: Students, classes and
departments all cost money.
There will be a thousand requests and recommendations put forth
as she begins work here, and depending on how the budget shapes up,
she might be forced to make some particularly tough choices. But
O’Brien should remember that a university’s mission is
not about money, and not all useful endeavors cost a lot.
Students should feel that the university cares about them, and
ideally they should feel invested in the university’s
community. O’Brien should work toward this end by trying to
shake things up a bit while getting to know the campus ““
there’s nothing like new blood to do that.
And as she does all this, O’Brien should know students
have a right to hold administrators accountable when they are
inaccessible or callous toward students’ needs.
Hopefully, O’Brien will remain open to direct input from
students because they are the people who must deal most directly
with the realities of college life. Huge classes, unreasonable
progress requirements and rising costs really hurt the people the
university is supposed to serve ““ creative solutions will be
necessary.
The experiences of individual students can be hard to gauge
““ especially for someone viewing the scene from above. It can
be hard to empathize with people who come from countless
backgrounds and who usually appear as nine-digit numbers in huge
databases.
O’Brien should do whatever it takes to make sure students
and their basic needs are always on her mind.
Speaking about the 1960s, she said she felt “education and
ideas could change the world.”
That sentiment is exactly what UCLA can use more of today.
Sometimes, it seems too many people ““ students and
administrators alike ““ see a university education as a
necessary but spiritless endeavor.