At a special meeting on Thursday, the Regents of the University of California approved the appointment of University Provost Gene Block to the position of chancellor of the University of California—Los Angeles. Block will assume his new position July 2007.

Block’s move follows a fall announcement that College Dean Ed Ayers would depart to become president of the University of Richmond this summer, leaving two high-level administrative vacancies at the University just months after the kickoff of the $3 billion Capital Campaign.

“We create strong, ambitious leaders with a great deal of autonomy, and we applaud their desire to move on to new opportunities,” University President John T. Casteen, III said. “While I am pleased that those outside our community are looking for their next leaders from among our ranks, such changes put stress on our system, especially in light of our current campaign.”
Casteen said the search for Block’s successor will begin after winter break.

“Our job now is twofold: to keep the good work that Gene has begun moving forward, and to move quickly and diligently to assure a smooth transition in leadership,” he said.

Block, who has been on the U.Va. faculty since 1978, said there are many things he will miss about the University.

“The faculty and the students are a gracious family,” Block said. “It is a profound experience, leaving Virginia. I will leave with great sadness, however this is the opportunity to lead a great university.”

Block has held his current position as provost and vice president for five years and also holds a chair in the biology department, where he has focused his research on the sleep cycle in nature.
Those who recommended Block for the UCLA position highlighted his accomplishments as a biologist and administrator, said Robert C. Dynes, president of the University of California system. Gerald Parsky, chair of the Board of Regents, also cited Block’s service at the University, as well as his character, as reasons for his appointment.

“A number of us have gotten to know Gene well during the search process,” Parsky said. “He is a distinguished biologist and administrator at one of our nation’s most prestigious public institutions of higher learning -— the University of Virginia.”
Casteen also praised Block and said he will be missed at the University.

“Gene Block has been known in the University of Virginia community for his strong commitment to public service, his excellent judgment, his dedication to core academic values, and his profound mind,” Casteen said in an e-mail. “Gene’s background as a researcher and his years in the classroom gave him an intimate understanding of the challenges faculty face every day. His years as a University administrator added a high level of understanding of University-wide needs and opportunities. His steady guidance will be greatly missed.”
UCLA, along with UC—Berkeley, is one of the most prominent universities within the 10-campus University of California system. It boasts 38,000 students and one of the country’s best medical centers. It is also prominent nationally, and is ranked 26th on the U.S. News and World Report list of “top national universities,” closely behind the University and the University of Michigan, which are tied at 24th.

UCLA students present at Thursday’s meeting called on the new chancellor to improve diversity at the school and increase the administrations support for student services and student-initiated programs.

Block will fill the vacancy left by former UCLA chancellor Albert Carnesale, who left UCLA last summer. Since then UCLA law professor Norman Abrams has served as acting chancellor at the school.
While he would not give specifics about the search for his replacement at the University, Block said he believed the administration would make a good choice.

“I think that President Casteen will make a smart decision for the future of the University,” Block said. “I am confident about that.”

The following student newspapers endorse this collaboratively written editorial and have published it today in either their print or online editions:

The Brown Daily Herald

The Cavalier Daily

The Cornell Daily Sun

The Daily Californian

The Daily Evergreen (Washington State University)

The Daily Illini

The Daily Orange

The Daily Pennsylvanian

The Daily Princetonian

The Daily Reveille (Louisiana State University)

The Daily Sundial (California State University, Northridge)

The Daily Texan

The Daily Trojan

The Harvard Crimson

The Michigan Daily

The Oregon Daily Emerald

The Stanford Daily

The Yale Daily News

Defending the Collegiate Press

One week ago, an administrator at the University of Southern California (USC) blocked the re-election of Zach Fox to the post of editor in chief of the Daily Trojan, the campus’ student daily newspaper. As college journalists, we are deeply troubled by this decision. Practicing journalism with strings attached isn’t really practicing journalism at all, and to that end, we seek to preserve the tradition of a functionally–and whenever possible, formally–independent collegiate press. If campus newspapers are to succeed in informing readers and training reporters, they must be more than public relations arms of universities, and they cannot operate under the yoke of administrators’ censorship.

Fox was re-elected by the staff of the Daily Trojan behind a vision which called for more financial transparency and a reorganization of the paper’s senior editor positions. Yet, his election required the approval of USC’s Media Board, a body of students, faculty members and administrators that oversees the school’s student-run media operations. USC Vice President of Student Affairs Michael L. Jackson, a member of this board, decided not even to present Fox to the board, describing Fox’s vision as irreconcilable with the Media Board’s outline for the role. Fox, who had been serving as the editor this fall, resigned from his post in protest of the decision and threw his support behind the Daily Trojan’s editorial director, Jeremy Beecher, who handily won a subsequent vote on Friday and was approved by the Media Board Monday.

Earlier this semester, Fox repeatedly approached the board requesting information about the budget and finances of the paper. Given that access to financial information is a standard operating procedure for nearly all of our nation’s college papers–independent or not–this move denies USC’s student journalists a holistic view of an industry that is facing major changes. Although the administration has commissioned a task force to investigate Fox’s proposals, its reticence toward financial transparency creates an appearance of impropriety and leaves open questions as to whether Fox was denied his post in retaliation for his probing questions.

Although the Daily Trojan is not totally fiscally independent, its daily production has historically been student-run. Regardless of the formal level of independence of the paper, a meddling administration undermines the educational value of student journalism. Interventions like this assault the core values of student newspapers–objectivity and comprehensive coverage. They compromise journalistic integrity and tarnish the development of the next generation of journalists.

Our society relies on its newspapers to check powerful individuals and institutions. An administration-controlled student paper poses the same threat to an academic community that a state-controlled press would to a nation; oversight limits the press’ ability to act as a watchdog and prevent misuse of authority. The USC administration’s interference with the student press creates a chilling effect, forcing student journalists to weigh the risk of losing their jobs against the duty of writing a story about or questioning the administration. Such considerations hamper a paper’s ability to do its job. If USC intends to imbue any journalistic values in its students, it must allow its students to be journalists without fear of administrative reproach.

USC’s action diminishes the role of student journalists across the nation by demonstrating a lack of trust in students to decide the structure and daily operation of their paper. But more importantly, it violates the fundamental value of the press. The university administration does a disservice to the whole of the USC community, not just the Daily Trojan editors whose decisions they rendered inconsequential. The integrity of the collegiate press is important to the greater integrity of the academy, where students and professors as well as journalists question and investigate and learn from the world around them. Those are values that motivate us as journalists, and we hope they are values that the USC administration also chooses to stand behind.

The M.V. Explorer will have a new scholastic captain at the helm for the fall 2007 voyage of Semester at Sea: Materials Science Prof. William Soffa, who was recently named to the position of academic dean of Semester at Sea. The University took over the program– in which students travel around the globe aboard the ship, making stops at exotic locations in Asia, Africa and Europe– from the University of Pittsburgh last year.

The ship sets sail from Esenada, Mexico Aug. 27 and will not return to the United States until Dec. 7, making this the first full Semester at Sea run by the University.

The upcoming voyage will be Soffa’s second time as the academic dean of the program. Prior to teaching at the University, Soffa was a professor at University of Pittsburgh, the program’s previous home, and served on the ship in the spring of 1995.

“When I came [to the University], I didn’t have any idea [Semester at Sea] was coming,” Soffa said. “But, I’m excited about it.”

Les McCabe, president of the Institute for Shipboard Education, the sponsor of Semester at Sea, said Soffa’s prior experience will make him a great asset to the program.

“In Bill’s case, he knows the University and the program,” McCabe said. “It will be good to have a dean who can see how the program has improved.”

Dudley Doane, director of the Office of Summer and Special Academic Programs, said Soffa had a successful previous tenure aboard the Semester at Sea.

“He was very favorably received by the students and faculty on his last voyage,” McCabe said. “He has experienced what an effective program it can be.”

As an Engineering School professor, Soffa said he hopes to make the program more accessible to students outside the College.

Soffa said Engineering students will definitely be able to take advantage of the global perspective they are able to gain from the program.

“In today’s world, study abroad is becoming more important,” Soffa said. “Nowadays, engineers have to deal with colleagues from all over the world.”

In the past, there have been very few opportunities for Engineering students to go abroad. Semester at Sea will help fill that void, Soffa said.

Soffa added that the program’s courses will be fine-tuned to enable more students to take advantage of the curriculum.

The academic rigor of Semester at Sea was called into question last year, and Soffa said he looks forward to repairing the program’s tarnished reputation.

“I think people have a very distorted and aberrant view of Semester at Sea,” Soffa said.

He added that he would not be associated with a program that was held to a low standard, and his prior experience with the program caused him to hold it in high regard.

“We had a solid academic program and a lot of students had a transformative experience,” Soffa said.

Earlier this semester, several students fell victim to various forms of crime on and off Grounds. By the end of September, nine students reported they had been the victims of crimes including attempted robbery, burglary and vandalism.

With final examinations and the end of the semester just around the corner, University officials reflect on the responses prompted by these various incidents and emphasize the precautions students can take to prevent crime.

The University has taken several measures in response to the breakout of crime earlier in the semester, explained Leonard Sandridge, executive vice president and chief operating officer. After the Lambeth Field Apartments break-ins, an investigation was conducted to find the perpetrators. Police forces were also adjusted to provide better security in the area.

Third-year Education graduate student Tyler Davis, who had her laptop stolen from her West Range room in September, said she has not noticed a much larger police presence near her room, but said she does not feel unsafe on Grounds.

“I don’t feel any less safe, but I don’t feel more safe,” Davis said. “I just feel the same.”

Measures were also taken by University officials to secure off-Grounds areas in response to the shooting of a student on Wertland Street in September. Sandridge said he, along with University Police Chief Michael Gibson and City Manager Gary O’Connell, met with managers of apartments on and around Wertland and 14th Street to secure the areas with a high density student population.

Sandridge said he believes these measures helped contribute to the drastic decline in crime over the semester.

“I think that the increased police presence and investigation of crimes did contribute to curtailment of criminal activity in those areas,” he said.

It is not unusual to have flare-ups of crime like those witnessed earlier in the semester, he added.

“I don’t like to say that crime is ever normal, but it is not unusual for us to have periods of crime, particularly if you have a group or a single person perpetrating, because [they] tend to do [so] until driven away by law enforcement,” he said.

Mark Fletcher, chair of the University’s Security and General Safety Committee, said after the Lambeth break-ins, committee members and University police met with residents and student leaders to address their concerns.

The committee also conducted its annual fall night tour of Grounds and paid particular attention to Lambeth, making sure paths were properly lit and cleared for students, Fletcher said.

“The whole stretch of road from University Way down to the north side of Lambeth and all the lighting there is because of recommendations [made] by the committee” in the past, he said.

Sandridge added that while students are gone over the break, the University will be evaluating a variety of things to make sure next semester remains relatively crime-free, such as checking for property exposure and using joint patrols between University and City Police.

Sandridge said he urges students to remain safe over break by driving carefully, especially if traveling long distances, and properly securing their property and valuables before leaving.

Fletcher added that during exams it is important to remember to be aware of surroundings when walking home late at night. This includes not listening to iPods or talking on cell phones, Sandridge said.

“The bottom line is that we are a very open community,” Sandridge said. “We like our freedom to move around, and yet we have to recognize that we are not immune to criminal activity.”

A newly released study on employment trends shows the job market continuing to expand for 2007 graduates.

The report, released by the Collegiate Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University, includes data compiled from 864 companies.

The data indicate a definite increase in hiring by employers, CERI Research Director Philip Gardner explained.

“We’re expecting about five percent on top of last year’s market,” Gardner said. “It’s a continued expansion but at a slower rate.”

Gardner said he attributes the increase in hiring to a rise in retirement of people in managerial roles.

“The positive thing that’s going on is that a number of primarily large companies are aggressively hiring people to fill training positions to replace middle and upper managers that are going to be retiring in the next five years,” he said. “Some [companies] have 40 to 60 percent eligible to retire and they’ve got to find people to fill those positions.”

According to Gardner, there is still high demand for more general liberal arts majors, but “professional majors” are currently desired.

“In preparation for retirement, [companies] are looking at business and engineering for these management training positions,” he said.

Gardner noted, however, that there are some cuts in hiring in some industries related to the slowing economy.

“These [cuts] are primarily around housing related activities which would include housing for construction … real estate and mortgage banking,” he said. “They’re not hiring as many as last year, but they’re still hiring.”

The retail sector will also be affected by the economy, but is expected to maintain a positive growth rate, Gardner said.

University Career Services has seen an increase in the number of employers conducting on-Grounds interviewing and participating in the Diversity Career Fair, UCS Executive Director James McBride said.

“We had 301 unique employer organizations participating in the on-Grounds interviewing program as compared to 278 at the same time period last year … that’s an eight percent increase,” McBride said.

University students are sought in all three of the major hiring fields — manufacturing, government, non-profit and service, McBride said.

“We have a nice across-the-board appeal when it comes to employers,” he said. “There’s a nice balance between [students'] academic work and their extracurricular and service activities … and you add on other qualities like study abroad and academic research and you get this nice well-rounded student.”

Though many students continue to be concerned as graduation nears, news of the report is promising, said Emily Archambeault, careers and transitions chair for the Fourth-Year Trustees.

“A lot of students get worried when they don’t have jobs in January and all of the [Commerce] School kids do — I feel that because I don’t have a specific field that my major directs me in,” Archambeault said. “It is good to hear that the job market is increasing.”

This year’s January Term will begin Jan. 2 with eight new courses, four new study abroad programs and high enrollment.

The initial registration period lasted from Nov. 13 to 17, but students can continue to register until the add/drop period ends Jan. 2.

“Enrollment is strong — we have eight classes filled and 18 or 19 still with open spaces,” Director of Summer Session Dudley Doane said. “We didn’t have to cancel any classes due to low enrollment this year, which is a first.”

Since its start in 2005, the program has doubled in size, according to Doane.

As the program has grown, students have been provided with more opportunities each year.

“It was the goal of [College Dean] Ed Ayers to provide students with more opportunities to work with faculty not in their major or not very accessible — Larry Sabato is the prime example,” Doane said.

Politics Prof. Larry J. Sabato, who has taught during all three J-Terms, cited more interaction with students as an incentive to participate in the program.

“I’ve enjoyed J-Term thoroughly,” Sabato said. “It’s a good opportunity to get to know students.”

Another benefit to J-Term is the extra time available for day trips and longer excursions. Sabato said his class takes a trip to Richmond to have the opportunity to speak to legislators.

For his course on Virginia government and politics at the local and state levels, many local legislators and politicians will also come to speak in the class.

The many study abroad trips available over J-Term allow students to get a hands-on learning experience, according to Commerce Prof. Brad Brown.

Brown said he is leading a trip to Bluefields, Nicaragua where students will observe the country’s slowly developing economy.

“Being there day-to-day, we learn a lot about how hard development is and how hard it is to make ends meet,” Brown said. “We could talk about these things, but it wouldn’t be the same.”

Sabato also said the unique environment of J-Term proves valuable.

“It’s a different kind of learning — closer to the idea as students immerse themselves in a subject,” he said.

Sabato said J-Term allows students to become more involved in a specific subject instead of “just doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that.”

As the semester comes to a close, the search for a new dean of the University’s College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences is just beginning. Many in the administration say filling the position will require a candidate equipped not only to oversee the academic program, but to spearhead fundraising efforts as well.

Current Dean Ed Ayers announced Nov. 17 that he will be leaving his post to assume the presidency of the University of Richmond effective July 1.

Ayers’s departure comes just months after the public kickoff of the University’s ambitious $3 billion Capital Campaign. The dean is especially involved in securing fundraising commitments for the South Lawn Project, a $125 million expansion effort which will eventually result in new facilities housing the politics, history and religious studies departments, among others.

In his report to the Faculty Senate earlier this week, University President John T. Casteen, III, stated that he and Provost Gene Block are currently co-chairing the search committee for a new dean.

“Gene and I have considerable travel obligations,” Casteen said at the meeting, adding that a member of the search committee will need to be someone who can spend the majority of his or her time on Grounds. The president said he and Block hope to have a search committee formed by mid-January.

Casteen’s busy travel schedule underscores the growing significance of fundraising efforts to administering a University in today’s environment. In a 1999 New York Times Magazine article, Casteen recalled how his own presidency evolved to include more development responsibilities. When he assumed the University presidency in 1990 he spent three days a week on Grounds and taught. By 1993, however, the Board of Visitors instructed him to devote nearly all of his time to fundraising.

Increasingly, the same pressures that forced administrators like Casteen out of the classroom are also affecting administrators whose jobs have traditionally been internal and academically oriented. This will play a role in the search for a new dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Casteen said in his remarks Wednesday that in recent years the work of the College dean has become heavily committed to fundraising in addition to academic planning and leadership.

“In the past the job was intellectual leadership, in the past the dean had budgetary responsibility but it wasn’t so complicated, and in addition there’s this whole fundraising thing that didn’t used to be,” Assoc. College Dean Richard Handler said.

As both a dean and history professor, Ayers managed to carry on significant academic responsibilities including a large undergraduate lecture course, advising graduate students and writing.

Handler added that the dual roles of the job may make it more difficult to find a successor.

According to Casteen, he and Block have been meeting with various groups “that have some perspective on the job itself,” such as the College Foundation — a group founded in 2001 to support the College — in order to understand the role of the dean and add additional members to the committee.

Casteen added that on their agenda is the formation of a list of various issues that need to be addressed in the form of both opportunities and challenges during the first five-year term of the new dean’s appointment.

Casteen noted that while “this deanship is arguably the most prominent deanship in the country,” the role of dean has become more complex in that “the job at this point resembles that of a small college president [rather] than a dean.”

Ayers noted that the state’s budget crisis at the beginning of his term forced him to address fundraising from the outset. The South Lawn project has also always been a main focus.

“I’ve been in campaign mode the whole time I’ve been in the deanship,” he said.

Ayers noted that funding for the College has always been a necessity in order to maintain “the degree of excellence” the University hopes to uphold.

Ayers predicted the next dean will need to continue this union of academia and financial responsibility.

They will need “to really take the College to the next level of excellence, and that means hiring a lot of great faculty, which we will be doing, taking care of [the] great faculty we have now and succeeding for the college in the campaign.”

Marlene Ross, director of the American Council on Education Fellows Program, also noted the additional financial responsibilities, citing declining state support as a factor in the evolving role of deans.

While deans in private institutions have long been responsible for leading fundraising efforts, this duty emerges as a recent trend among deans of public universities, according to Ross.

“With the recent declining state support for our public universities, more of the public university deans are involved,” Ross said.

Ross added that for large institutions, deans are responsible for maintaining contacts in the national and global communities who may aid in fundraising efforts.

“For a place like U.Va., which is a national institution, the community is large, so [the job involves] reaching out beyond Charlottesville and beyond Virginia,” Ross said. A dean must “make contacts, and maintain contacts to groom donors to maintain relationships with potential donors and with donors. They could be anywhere because U.Va. has alumni all over the world and you recruit from a national level.”

According to Handler, the search committee will need to take into account the dean’s development role as they consider candidates.

“I think they’re going to be looking for somebody that has experience with that,” he said. “If you don’t bring in an outside administrator, if you elevate one of your administrators, they might not have that [financial] experience. [They'll] look for someone that has the personality and energy to do it.”

Ayers agreed that the new dean will need to have this certain level of stamina.

“The person needs a lot of energy and durability and patience and a sense of humor, not necessarily in that order,” he said.

For the past semester, I’ve had the privilege of being a Cavalier Daily Life columnist. I call it a privilege because not everyone has the chance to write about pretty much whatever they want in the space of 120 lines in one of the most reputable college newspapers in the country with a print circulation of 10,000 and an extensive online readership.

The title in my byline is broad indeed, as it implies that I am free to write about … life. With hardly any parameters and very little editorial intervention, the possibilities for column topics are endless. We all have our own styles when it comes to writing about “life,” and some of us approach our columns from a certain angle or with some sort of recurring theme. My objective in writing this column has been to cast some sort of light on the college experience by sharing some of my observations about our situation as students here at the University. I’ve written about the paradox of routine, the joy of learning outside the classroom, the unreasonable expectations we sometimes have for ourselves, the Family Weekend tradition, the need to regain our souls after midterms and, most recently, the issue of the post-college “life plan.” Essentially, what I’ve endeavored to do is offer you a bi-weekly reality check, or at least give you something to consider as you make your way to the Sudoku on the back page.

If you think about it (and I have, extensively), college is a crazy time — both good crazy and bad crazy. It’s like a suspended reality, a nebulous realm between adolescence and adulthood, a kind of “real world” simulation with training wheels. We’re on the cusp of adulthood, yet we can’t deny our lingering immaturity. Once we leave home and high school, the stakes suddenly become a little higher, the decisions a little more important, the consequences a little more enduring. Yes, college marks our last hurrah as carefree kids before we join the ranks of college-educated, self-sufficient, responsible adults. And as we make our way through this singular time in our lives, it’s imperative that we not lose touch with the world that exists outside the college bubble.

As an undergraduate who got a taste of the “real world” by interning in New York last semester, I’ve reached the conclusion that, in college, the need to keep things real is vital. It’s so easy to get caught up in the drama of college — i.e. intolerable roommates, unduly harsh TAs, fraternity party mishaps, the “It’s complicated” relationship status, etc. — that we can lose sight of what really matters. Now, I’m certainly not about to elucidate that notion, because no one can tell you what’s important in life and what’s not; that’s something we all have to decide for ourselves. But college can be a tumultuous time, and it’s essential that we keep it all in perspective — keep it real, if you will.

They say distance makes the heart grow fonder, and my time away from the University certainly made me appreciate this place even more. I would also say that distance makes the mind grow more reflexive. My hiatus in New York was the best reality check for me, because it enabled me to reflect on the college experience without the benefit of hindsight and helped me figure out what’s important to me. But in the interest of space and, well, your interest, I’ll spare you the details.

While spending time away from the University by interning or studying abroad is a good reality check, it’s certainly not the only way to do it. Just taking a few minutes to really think about things, especially when the bad craziness of college starts to trump the good, can help maintain a sense of perspective.

I don’t like endings, or goodbyes for that matter. There’s too much pressure to say just the right thing. How am I supposed to sign off here? Clichés are starting to creep into my head, so I’ll just end by saying, good luck and be good — and don’t forget to check in with reality every now and then.

Lauren’s column ran bi-weekly on Thursdays. She can be reached at pappa@cavalierdaily.com.