For one UC Davis professor, the "Power of 10" is not enough.

For another, his program funding is not enough.

Comments such as these came during a faculty forum with outgoing UC President Bob Dynes on Jan. 31, the same day that he participated in Focus the Nation activities at UC Davis.

Dynes met with Academic Senate leadership early in the day, and that afternoon held a public forum for all faculty. A handful showed up to the meeting in MU II at the Memorial Union.

Dynes announced last August that he would step down as president by June of this year, after holding the job since October 2003. He was chancellor of UC San Diego before assuming the presidency, and he plans to return to the San Diego campus as a physics professor.

The Board of Regents has mounted a search for Dynes' replacement, and Provost Wyatt "Rory" Hume is running the university. Meanwhile, Dynes went on a farewell tour of sorts to all the UC campuses, and Davis was his last stop.

Dynes opened the faculty forum with remarks about UC's "Promise and Power of 10" — one university, 10 campuses — a concept that he has described previously as drawing on the strengths of the individual campuses, with the added element of interconnectedness to bring the total strength of the UC system to bear on the public's needs.

Dynes said the framework allows for individuality. "I wouldn't for one minute suggest that the culture of Berkeley is the same as the culture of Davis."

He gave as examples the powerful work of UC in agriculture, notably at the Davis, Berkeley and Riverside campuses, and in systemwide endeavors such as Cooperative Extension and applied research programs.

"We are a victim of our own success, because people believe food comes from Ralph's," he said, referring to the Southern California grocery store chain. In reality, he said, California's plentiful food production is the result of hard work and collaboration between growers and UC.

Similarly, the university has launched new research in energy and energy conservation and alternative energy sources, Dynes said. "The way to do that is not by individual efforts but to bring the intellectual efforts of the campuses together."

The end result, he said, is a stronger "cloth," one that "can protect us" as UC shows its value to the state, nation and world.

During a question-and-answer session, entomology professor James Carey endorsed efforts that bring efficiency, but he wondered: "Where is the synergy among the campuses?"

Carey, vice chairman of the UC Systemwide University Committee on Research Policy, said synergy brings "value added" to research projects.

"The Power of 10 should be the Power of 12 or so," Carey said. To achieve this "multiplier effect," he said campuses must work for the collective good, rather than focus on individual projects.

Dynes gave an example of synergy, or "value added," at the university's QB3, officially the California Institute for Quantitative Biological Research, a joint project of the San Francisco, Berkeley and Santa Cruz campuses. QB3 is one of four UC-run California Institutes for Science and Innovation, with each of them hosted by at least two campuses.

Dynes said funding from the National Institutes of Health is given in the form of block grants to students, "and they act as the glue to bring Santa Cruz, San Francisco and Berkeley together."

In effect, Dynes said later, the students "are shopping for faculty" on the students' home campuses or on the two other campuses.

Dynes also addressed his initiative to train more science and math teachers for California's elementary schools, middle schools and high schools. He launched the project after discovering, in some schools and school districts, urban and rural, the faculties did not include any teachers with math or science credentials.

He has pledged to turn out 1,000 such teachers a year by 2010, and the California State University system has pledged to turn out 1,500 a year.

"We are on track to deliver," Dynes said.

Geology professor Howard Day, director of MAST, shorthand for the Mathematics and Science Teaching Program, the UC Davis component of the systemwide Science and Mathematics Initiative, said UC may have difficulty staying on track in light of the budget crunch anticipated for 2008-09.

UC officials say Gov. Schwarzenegger's budget proposal leaves the system $417 million short of what it needs for the coming year.

"In fact," Day said, "we are at capacity now with the 'hard money' that we have" in the Mathematics and Science Teaching Program. The undergraduate training program began last winter quarter, and about 170 students have gone through the program.

"We need to expand," Day said. He noted later that "we are well short of our goal."

Dynes acknowledged that he cobbled together the initiative's funding with "smoke and mirrors," and he agreed with Day that the initiative needs a permanent funding commitment.

"The best way to achieve that is to have a program that's working … and it is people like you who are making it happen," Dynes said to Day.

The UC president cautioned, however: "I've discovered one thing on this job, that there's no such thing as permanent funding."

Indeed, Schwarzenegger is asking the UC system to cut 10 percent of its spending for 2008-09, posing an immediate threat to planned enrollment growth of 5,000.

UC Davis law professor John Oakley, former chair of the systemwide Academic Senate, said applications are up 9 percent, and with most of the applicants eligible for UC admission, the university in effect should be taking on 20,000 additional students.

"The regents are going to find that with the crown of authority comes the crown of thorns," said Oakley, in reference to a tough decision about how many new students to admit.

Dynes admitted "great angst" over admissions, and said the university must "better manage" its enrollment, even if that means directing students to traditionally under-enrolled campuses such as Merced and Riverside, regardless of whether they applied to those campuses.