The "State of the Campus" Address was delivered to the Academic Senate by Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef on Feb. 28.

"Today's charge is to give you a sense of how I view the current state of the campus. If you'll grant me a bit of latitude, I'll try to describe what I see today, but within the context of where we've been and what I see ahead.

And I'd like to address, as well, what I know is of mutual interest -- and that is the healthy exercise of our respective responsibilities of shared governance.

To begin, there's no doubt that when you lay side by side the challenges and opportunities facing the university today, we have some things to worry about. Most notably, we have to be concerned about flat or declining federal budgets and a not-yet-healthy state economy.

State budget considerations

But we also have reason to be optimistic.

Gov. Schwarzenegger's proposed budget -- if approved by the Legislature -- would provide a 3 percent increase in the university's base budget, ending, finally, four years of substantial cuts. It wouldn't restore lost funds or cover deferred maintenance costs, but it would help us turn the corner to greater financial stability.

The governor's budget would support a 1.5 percent general salary increase for all eligible employees, funding for faculty and other academic merit programs, and a 1.5 percent merit-based increase for eligible staff. It would also provide additional funds to help cover the increasing cost of employee health benefits. And it would address market-based and equity issues where newly hired faculty and staff are paid significantly more than current employees with similar experience and skills. As you're likely aware, UC faculty salaries are now estimated to be 8-10 percent below those at comparable institutions. If the governor's budget holds, we will be able to begin addressing that shortfall.

Unfortunately, student fees will rise yet again but, as has been true since the early 1990s, those increases will be offset by increased financial aid for those in greatest need.

The governor's budget does not include funding for K-12 outreach. Academic preparation is an important priority for the university, especially since Proposition 209, so UC will work closely with the governor and the Legislature over the next several months with the aim of having that money restored.

Reputation and campus grow

Beyond a more hopeful state budget, there are other reasons for my optimism.

All of you, for example, have contributed to the campus's moving up in national research rankings. UC Davis is now ranked 14th among all U.S. universities -- both public and private -- in overall research funding according to the National Science Foundation. That is a remarkable distinction -- and a strong testament to the quality of your scholarship and to your competitive success at a time when research dollars are getting harder to come by. As well, your strong inclination -- and this is truly unique to the Davis campus -- your strong inclination to pursue interdisciplinary research at a time when interdisciplinary efforts are particularly prized has also enabled us to be unusually successful.

Add to that several other indicators of positive momentum and you can see why I remain optimistic:

• Your expertise continues to be noted nationally. Just in the past week, a UC Davis sociology professor was interviewed on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, two UC Davis Sloan fellows were announced, one of our English professors was quoted in the Chicago Tribune, and the San Francisco Chronicle cited the views of a UC Davis plant and water scientist.
• As well, our building boom continues, with our new Genome and Biomedical Sciences Building coming on line this past fall, and our Sciences Laboratory Building and lecture hall opening this quarter.

Construction continues on the School of Veterinary Medicine classroom complex, and on its teaching and research facility, and on the new Mathematical Sciences Building. We just broke ground last week on the School of Medicine's Sacramento education center and library, and we will break ground this summer on Giedt Hall -- that's a new classroom facility that will be added to the engineering district of campus. Also next summer, we will break ground for the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science, including classrooms, laboratories, offices and meeting rooms as well as adjacent vineyards.

Construction dominoes will subsequently provide refurbished space for Communications, Political Science and Social Sciences. And funding has been reserved for a new building to ease space constraints within the Division of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies.

• And we are moving forward with West Village. This is a truly innovative new neighborhood to be constructed on campus property west of Highway 113. It will not only provide greatly needed affordable housing for our faculty, staff and students but it will be a wonderful resource for our city -- from its magnet high school and community college classrooms to its recreational fields, ponds, and bike paths. We are currently consulting with various campus constituencies -- including the Academic Senate's Faculty Welfare Committee -- about how units in the neighborhood should be allocated. And we an-ticipate announcing soon the development team for the village. (See related story on page 1.)

Alumni say institution is on the rise

We have also received very positive and welcome news from our alumni. A recent survey of the classes of 1973, 1983 and 1993 confirms that students' level of satisfaction with UC Davis has not fallen over the years, even as campus undergraduate enrollment grew from 11,300 in 1973 to 17,300 in 1993. A steady 96 percent of alumni said they felt "satisfied" or "very satisfied" with their undergraduate education. That's a higher percentage than recorded by other universities similarly quizzing their graduates.

A majority of our alums also said they viewed their relationship with their alma mater as one of "family" -- a finding that reinforces one of this campus's deeply held values. It's your dedication -- and the dedication of our staff -- that has inspired such extraordinarily positive feelings.

In fact, additional survey research confirms that UC Davis is seen by all of our constituencies -- faculty, staff, students, parents, alumni and the general public -- as a "dynamic institution on the rise."

That view -- of a university of great distinction well on its way to the highest levels of achievement -- was recently confirmed by the provost and me in a series of small statewide gatherings of friends and supporters.

As we prepare for our first comprehensive fund-raising campaign, they challenged us to make a convincing, passionate and unique case for private support for the campus they feel so very strongly about. We have much work ahead of us if we are to be successful in this multi-year undertaking, but we have much good will to draw upon as we focus our efforts and strengthen the culture of philanthropy at UC Davis. (The campus is studying a fund-raising target of perhaps $900 million in a period that would stretch from 2005 to 2012. It would be the university's largest fund-raising campaign since its inception in 1908 and position the campus for the next century.)

The power of partnering

It is partnership that will help us succeed -- a partnership with our alumni and with our friends, and a partnership with one another as together we seek to sustain the level of quality long associated with the University of California and to achieve our long-term aspirations.

A partnership is also how I see our system of shared governance -- a system crucial to ensuring the excellence of the University of California, a system with clear delegations of authority and responsibility to the faculty and to the administration.

The senate's recent Special Committee report titled 'Mending the Wall' makes a strong case for the importance of a healthy system of shared governance. And I wholeheartedly agree with the aims of the report -- to move the campus to the highest possible levels of academic excellence through the good-faith exercise of our shared responsibilities.

The committee, in making its case, cites a line from Robert Frost's poem 'Mending Wall.' That well-known quote is 'Good fences make good neighbors.'

I must confess that the choice of that imagery puzzles me. Other passages from this same Robert Frost poem more readily resonate. For example: 'Something there is that doesn't love a wall. That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun, And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. ... Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down.'

I'm a biologist, not a poet, but it strikes me that perhaps more helpful imagery for us might be a bridge rather than a wall -- a bridge to encourage consultation and collaboration…with appropriate respect always, of course, for the distinctive authority and responsibility vested in the faculty and vested in the administration.

Bridge-building will pay off

I'd like to mention three areas of active bridge building between the senate and campus administrators -- all areas where we need to work together in order to make the best decisions and to best serve the long-term interests of UC Davis.

Those three areas are the budget, graduate student support and time-to-degree.

First, when Dan (Simmons) assumed the chair of the Davis Division of the Academic Senate, he identified, as the senate's highest priority, more substantive and earlier involvement in budget decisions. I think Dan, the Executive Council and the Committee on Academic Planning and Budget Review would say that we've tried hard to be responsive to that concern. The provost and folks within the Office of Resource Management and Planning are working closely with them to design a process for ensuring that faculty have the opportunity to receive, to analyze and to comment on budget proposals -- both at the college and school level and at the campus-wide level.

Most recently those discussions have centered on the allocation of faculty positions -- always an important matter but particularly now that we have entered into a period of more modest enrollment and hiring growth. The dialogue has been quite fruitful, with insights gleaned from the multiple perspectives of everyone at the table. But more work is needed and we need to work together.

Prioritizing graduate support

Second, graduate student support is an issue of growing concern, for us certainly, but also for UC President (Robert) Dynes and for the regents. UC and California continue to lag behind other universities and states in enrolling and supporting talented graduate students. Here at UC Davis, we have improved our ranking within the UC system in per capita net stipends awarded to graduate students, although we are still below the systemwide average. The gain has come from faculty and campus investments in supporting graduate students.

For example, this year Graduate Studies Dean Jeff Gibeling and Provost Virginia Hinshaw joined together to provide $4.5 million to increase block grants, to mitigate recent fee increases and to ease the transition to a new non-resident tuition remission program for graduate student researchers. In the longer term, graduate student support is certain to be a featured objective of our comprehensive campaign. It must be one of our top priorities. In the meantime, Jeff is continuing to consult with the senate on new mechanisms that might be considered for allocating funds for graduate student support. Again, more work is needed and we need to work together.

Third, the time it takes our students to earn their degrees is also a matter of growing concern -- and not just to us but also to the federal and state government.

In UC's funding compact with the governor, the issue of time-to-degree is mentioned five times as a measure of accountability. And, while other UC campuses are improving their four-year graduation rates -- some, like UCLA, rather dramatically -- Davis has remained the lowest of the UC campuses for all but one of the last 15 years. Beyond placing our funding at risk, we also diminish access and dilute available financial aid when our students take longer than four years to graduate.

Provost Hinshaw recently appointed a task force co-chaired by Interim Vice Provost Fred Wood and Senate Undergraduate Council Chair Matt Farrens to explore why our students tend to take longer to graduate, why our sister campuses are able to do better, and to recommend how we might shorten time-to-degree. Together, we have our best chance to make improvements.

And, again, more work is needed and we need to work together.

Briefly, before I close, I'd like to mention one other topic for your consideration -- a topic that is clearly the faculty's area of responsibility and authority, not the administration's.

Promoting international experience

And that is how we might increase opportunities for our students to gain an international experience. I feel so strongly our responsibility to prepare our students to be world citizens. And providing a quarter of international study need not necessarily delay a student's progress toward degree. It's my hope that a global perspective will eventually permeate our curriculum and our discussions and that the day will come when all of our students will be able to have an experience in another culture.

We are exploring this issue as the theme of next September's Chancellor's Fall Conference and would welcome the senate leadership's participation in those discussions.

In closing, I want to reiterate what Dan and I have often said to each other: Shared governance is a partnership. And it's a partnership that requires respect for each other's good faith in the exercise of judgment. We won't always agree, but I hope we can always feel understood by the other and assured that we've each done our best to safeguard the long-term best interests of this university, our university.

Thank you very much."