Chancellor Linda Katehi sent the following letter to the Council of Deans and Vice Chancellors on May 21, regarding the establishment of a new vice chancellor's position in charge of development. See separate story.

Dear CODVC Colleagues:

As you may recall from my letter of April 6, 2010, I recently accepted the advice of the development executive search committee and requested permission from UC Board of Regents to recruit for our new position using the title vice chancellor-development. The campus received word late last week that The regents have given their permission to use this title. I intend to announce the regents' action to the campus at the end of this week in the May 21 editions of Dateline online and Friday Update.

The creation of a new vice chancellor position is always a sensitive matter, particularly given our campus's stated goal of streamlining administration. Therefore, I would appreciate it if you would provide the following context for my decision when you discuss it with faculty, staff and students. I have not taken this decision lightly, or without careful analysis.

• We have taken and will continue to take steps to reduce the number of senior administrator positions on campus. We have reduced the number of vice chancellors by consolidating the Office of Administration and the Office of Resource Management and Planning under a single vice chancellor of Administrative and Resource Management. In addition, I have launched an initiative for organizational excellence that will, over the next two years, reduce administrative expenditures and staffing while we enhance staffing and support for academic units.

• We must act aggressively to attract additional revenues. Simply redirecting existing resources will not be sufficient to maintain academic excellence or increase UC Davis' ranking among major research universities. Development will be a key element of our resource strategy, particularly as we look to the successful completion of an aggressive target of $1 billion for our first comprehensive fundraising campaign. And our first comprehensive campaign will be followed by increasingly ambitious fundraising initiatives.

• I have committed to the campus that this development position will pay for itself from the revenue our central development office receives from gift fees. I am confident that this critical investment in the second century for UC Davis will more than pay for itself by enhancing the campus's return on its fundraising efforts.

* We cannot hope to recruit the kind of development leader we need, with the experience and capabilities to lead a $1 billion campaign, without according the title of vice chancellor. This has been made clear to me by our own search committee for the development leadership position, and by the national search firm we have retained to assist with this critical effort. The search committee, in which the Davis Division of the Academic Senate is well represented, and the search firm have pointed out that the chief development executives at our peer and aspirant institutions within and outside the UC system all have the title of vice president or vice chancellor.

The search advisory committee has convened a few times over the past several months to hear from constituency groups on their expectations for the position and to provide guidance on the development of the candidate pool. Now that the title issue has been addressed, the committee will accelerate its search for a new vice chancellor-development.

Best,

Linda P.B. Katehi
Chancellor, UC Davis