Members of the Assembly:

Thanks for the opportunity to keep you informed about Merced Campus developments. President Atkinson's report, section 7, gives a reasonable overview of the current status of Merced activities. My report to the spring meeting of the Assembly is included in the minutes in your blue books. Since that time, we have met four times. Our activities have been shaped by two related major events.

First was the appointment of Carol Tomlinson-Keasey as Chancellor. We were thus finally dealing with a real embodiment of UC Merced, rather than the hypothetical Merced of the last several years.

Second was her decision at the outset that she did not intend to recruit a Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs for the next few years. This was a surprise to us. Discussions with her did not alter this position, which was based primarily on budget considerations.

Her plan is to hold the VC functions herself and to appoint an academic director for the embryo Sierra Nevada Research Institute and a Dean for Engineering at an early time.

Concerned about the need to develop the campus on a balanced, integrated basis, we are pushing the planning for recruiting two other Deans to generate a troika that can be in place by 2002 when serious faculty recruiting must begin.

We are also debating the nature of the overall campus organization, particularly the desirability of implementing a college approach in the UCSD style.

Insofar as Task Force involvement in UCM administration, I participate in the Chancellor's weekly senior staff meetings. There are two Task Force members on each of the several planning groups. Part of each of our meetings is devoted to reports and discussions of budgets, physical plant and infrastructure development and environmental stewardship, and we see that our inputs are given consideration. The Chancellor is starting the process of recruiting a Vice Chancellor for Administration and has asked for two Task Force members to be members of the search committee.

As far as Senate functions are concerned, Prof. Coleman has noted that there is now in place a separate Merced Committee on Academic Personnel. Geoff Mason, Chair of that group meets with the Task Force as an ex-officio member. With your actions this afternoon, the mechanisms for interim approval of courses and curricula are being developed. The Council has given the Task Force the authority to act as the consulting body in relation to accepting endowments for chairs. Other functions will be addressed as circumstances dictate.

Finally - our portion of the UCM web site, through which we hope to keep you informed, is badly out of date. We will be updating this in the next few weeks.

I appreciate your support and look forward to reporting to you in the future. - I would be glad to answer any questions.

Respectfully,

F. N. Spiess, Chair

The subsequent questions, and my responses, are included in the minutes of the meeting. They principally concerned the adequacy of the planned operating budget, the lack of a full time Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs; and the timetable for campus development.

---

Please send questions, comments and suggestions to Maria.Bertero-Barcelo@ucop.edu
This page last updated: May 16, 2000