UC President Robert Dynes rallied his troops of UC alumni and friends who convened in Sacramento Tuesday for the annual UC Day, telling them "there isn't another university in the world that has the impact" on the state, nation and the world.

"Each of the campuses has world-class work and [offers] a world-class education," Dynes told a crowd of more than 150 systemwide students, faculty, staff, donors and others who had gathered for his morning pep talk. "Each campus must have things that they are the best in the world at. Bring them all together … and we form the best university in the world."

Most important, Dynes said, he wanted to remind his audience that UC as a public, land-grant institution serves a higher calling than many of its peer institutions that tend to be private, well-endowed universities.

UC has an obligation to tend to and meet society's needs, Dynes said: "We are not a group of people who sit around and look at our navels and think about it."

As he prepared the volunteer UC lobbying corps for its morning and afternoon of visits with lawmakers and Gov. Schwarzenegger's office, Dynes urged "you alumni whose lives have truly been affected by the University of California [to] … just speak from your heart."

Referring to the controversy over UC executive compensation, Dynes acknowledged, "We're under extreme heat right now." But he quickly added that UC has plenty of good news to discuss with lawmakers:

• UC, in a partnership with a private consortium, recently won the contract to continue to manage the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
• UC, along with the California State University system, has taken the lead on the Cal Teach program designed to quadruple the number of people earning science and mathematics teaching credentials, from 250 per year to 1,000 per year by 2010.
• Finally, after years of annual and uncertain budget cuts, UC has a stable budget, thanks to the compact that Dynes signed with Schwarzenegger.
• Two UC campuses — Riverside and Merced — "are thinking hard," Dynes said, about providing medical education to underserved regions of the state.

Dynes urged his volunteer corps, many of whom were UC students in Sacramento for the day, to stress to lawmakers the importance of the governor's proposed "buy-out" of student fee hikes for the 2006-07 academic year, and to urge them to reinstate a $17 million allocaion for academic preparation, or outreach, programs for the UC, as the legislators did last year.

The programs and the students they help are "vital to the life blood of the university," Dynes said. "Please bring it up in talks with legislators. If we don't do it, it isn't going to happen."

Later, UC Davis Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef met with a delegation of about 30 Aggie advocates, echoing many of the same themes. "The state of California is better because of the University of California," the chancellor said, "and it will continue to get better."

He gave the UC Davis team something in particular to cheer about, pointing out that statistics on federal research grants show that UC Davis ($505 million) moved ahead of UC Berkeley ($491 million) last year, putting UC Davis in fourth place in the UC system. UCLA was the leader ($814 million), followed by UC San Francisco ($808 million) and UC San Diego ($728 million).

"UC just blows away the competition," Vanderhoef said, when it comes to federal government grants to universities to tackle big problems.

At a reception Tuesday night, the Alumni Associations of the University of California presented its annual Legislator of the Year award to state Sen. Tom Torlakson,

D-Antioch, an alumnus of UC Berkeley.

The alumni group gave its Advocate of the Year award to a team of eight business leaders who have traveled to Sacramento for the past two years to speak about UC's importance to the business community and the state.

The honorees: Representing UCLA — Richard Ziman, chairman and chief executive officer, Arden Realty Inc.; Richard Bergman, CEO, Bergman Group Inc.; and Ed Catmull, president, Pixar Animation Studios. Representing UC Irvine — Steven Joe, president and CEO, D-Link North America; Michael Mussallem, chairman and CEO, Edwards LifeSciences LLC; David Pyott, chairman and CEO, Allergan Inc.; and Ted Smith, founder and retired chairman, FileNet Corp. Team leader — Henry Samueli, chairman and chief technology officer, Broadcom Corp.