Monday,
October 30, 2000
Good afternoon. Welcome and
thank you for coming.
This is my first opportunity to address the
campus as a whole since my inaugural address more than a year ago. So I plan to
speak at some length on where we stand and where we are heading.
I recognize that labor issues are uppermost
in many of your minds. But I am here to deliver an address on the general state
of the campus, and in that context, there are other matters to be considered,
as well. So I will deliver the address as it was originally conceived, with the
matters of most immediate concern at the end. In my mind, what comes beforehand
is also important, albeit less pressing.
A PERSONAL REFLECTION
The experience of serving as chancellor can
best be characterized by paraphrasing Winston Churchill's renowned description
of war: periods of tedium, interspersed with moments of terror.
Since the dissolution of UCSF-Stanford, I no
longer find myself in a state of war. But I do still find myself occasionally
in terror: that the wonderful people who make this place work at all levels
will disappear; that no one has yet found a way to bridle the economy of health
care, which presently has all academic health centers in its slipstream; that I
will awake one morning and find that UCSF Stanford has been reconstituted; or
that I will have to deliver a state of the campus address in the midst of
strife over wages.
My moments of terror not withstanding, UCSF
remains one of the premier biomedical institutions in the world. Look at any
reasonable parameter - extramural funding of research, philanthropic giving,
quality of our students, laurels for our current faculty, recruitment of new
faculty, ambitious and visionary undertakings for the future, ranks of grateful
patients, contributions to human welfare; look at any of these and you will see
no evidence that we have been diminished. Challenged and distressed? Certainly.
But diminished? Certainly not.
Now we face a decade that is likely to be
marked by instability. Instability is not universally bad. It is inherent to
creativity, and creativity has been and should always be our hallmark.
But to sustain creativity, UCSF needs
stability at its core: stability in the loyalty and satisfaction of its staff
and faculty; stability in the infrastructure that is required for the
fulfillment of our mission. The quest for that stability will be at the heart
of all I have to say today.
A former president of Harvard University,
Derek Bok, once remarked that, "universities are institutions run by
amateurs for the education of professionals".
I have two quarrels with that statement.
First, there is much more to the university
than the "education of professionals." I believe that higher
education, whether undergraduate, graduate or professional, has as much to do
with character as with career. If higher education has a central flaw today, it
is a preoccupation with career and a neglect of character.
Now about those amateurs. The indictment of
amateurism certainly applies to me. But fortunately for UCSF, I am supported by
a fine group of thoroughbred executives, whose commitment to the welfare of
UCSF is unbending, even sacrificial.
There are other views, of course: there are
always other views. Late last year, during the denouement over a proposed
recharge for our electronic network service (ENS), I received a letter from a
member of the faculty that complained as follows: "Departments have had to
make do with constant staffing levels and constant administrative budgets for
many years now. There is a widespread perception that similar constraints do
not apply to the Chancellor's office or the Deans' offices... A similarly
negative perception surrounds the Office of the President."
I confess that, before becoming chancellor,
I might have been prone to sign off on such a letter (although I never did,
because I felt I had no relevant data, only preconceptions). And to this day, I
might still accept the part about the Office of the President. But I know
better for our campus.
During the early 1990's, the University of
California suffered draconian budget cuts. The result at all campuses was a
thinning of management and staff to a perilous extreme. To this day, the
workforce at UCSF remains lean. To say otherwise would demean the tireless efforts
of many people who often do the work of several mere mortals.
NEW LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT
I am deeply committed to improving the
performance of administration and management at UCSF. My colleagues and I in
the campus leadership are trying to reconfigure and revitalize diverse elements
of the campus administration. I want to speak briefly on those efforts.
I begin with the appointment of Zach Hall to
the position of Executive Vice Chancellor, which will become effective
immediately upon its approval by the UC Office of the President (UCOP). Until
now, UCSF has been the only campus within the UC system without an Executive
Vice Chancellor. But the advent of our initiative at Mission Bay has made life
at UCSF much more complex than before. It has become desirable that the
chancellor have a second in command who can speak with full authority for the
campus.
Since his appointment as Vice Chancellor for
Research more than two years ago, Zach has served informally as that second in
command. His appointment as Executive Vice Chancellor formalizes his authority,
and credentials him in our many dealings with the external world. It will not
change my own interactions with the leadership of the campus, with our schools,
or with the campus community at large.
Zach brings deep knowledge of our campus to
his new authority, along with broad experience in academic leadership, and
astute judgment. I am very grateful to have him as a colleague as we proceed
through these crucial years in the history of UCSF.
I am also very pleased with our two new
Deans, Mary Anne Koda-Kimble of Pharmacy, and Kathy Dracup of Nursing.
I appointed Mary Anne during the first
months of my chancellorship, and she has become a mainstay in our academic
leadership. She is the first Asian-American to serve as dean of any of our
schools, and the first woman to serve as dean of any of our schools other than
nursing.
Kathy Dracup joined us in March of this
year, moving from UCLA, where she was Chair of the Acute Care Section in the
School of Nursing. She studied at UCSF and knows us well, yet brings a fresh
perspective gained from her years in exile.
We have looked to the
outside to strengthen other facets of our administration, as well. Recent
arrivals include:
I welcome the fresh perspectives these folks
can bring to our affairs.
I want also to note the appointment from
within our ranks of Karen Butter as University Librarian and Eric Vermillion as
Assistant Vice Chancellor for Budget.
I took the time to talk about management
today for several reasons: because I want you to know that I care about the
quality of our management; because I thought you should know how much revision
has occurred; and because I know that there are occasional breaches between
management and the remainder of the UCSF community. I very much want to seal
those breaches, I want this place to be a seamless whole. I have asked the
campus leadership to be as consultative as is humanly possible, to talk with
all of you as the need demands.
I am pleased with the quality of my
colleagues in the campus leadership. Working with them has been a source of
great pleasure and satisfaction, one of the genuinely fulfilling aspects of the
chancellorship.
I cannot conclude these remarks on
leadership without noting with deep grief the recent death of Campus Counsel
Shelley Drake. Shelley exemplified so many of the good things about UCSF. She
was a devoted public servant, a person of complete integrity, a friend in need
to many of us. She will be sorely missed.
MONEY MATTERS
I turn now to money matters. My previous
fiduciary responsibilities were limited to stewardship of research grants,
balancing my own check book (a practice that I abandoned more than forty years
ago...), and occasional enquiries about why the two pages of my monthly income
statement from UCSF always arrived in two separate envelopes (the mystery was
never solved, but the practice has since disappeared).
Now I find myself with the ultimate
authority for two institutional budgets whose aggregate value exceeds 1.5
billion dollars. That might sound exhilarating to you – most everyone enjoys
spending money, the more the better. But in reality, virtually all of this
money lies beyond my immediate reach.
To begin with, the Medical Center is a
free-standing business entity. Whatever payments it might make to the campus
and its schools for services rendered are of its own choosing - I have no
obligatory call on any of its funds. Likewise, whatever operating losses it
incurs are its own to recoup. They do not threaten the fiscal integrity of the
campus.
I wanted to make that clear because
misapprehensions about the matter were abundant during the angst over the
failure of UCSF-Stanford. I encountered more than one person both on and off
campus who literally believed that losses by the medical center could bankrupt
the campus. That is not the case, although such losses do have grave
implications for the performance of our mission, and we have no intention of
letting them continue.
The campus itself currently has an operating
budget of around one billion dollars that is in the black, albeit stretched to
the limit. Of that billion, six million is available to the chancellor for
discretionary use - unfunded mandates, emergencies or new departures of every
conceivable sort. For example, the new costs of the electronic network service
alone drained these funds of 4 million dollars in the current fiscal year.
The campus needs more money for operations:
to shore up our infrastructure, to properly compensate our employees, to fuel
new research and innovative teaching - to mention just a few. Where can we get
that money? The answers provide a nasty dose of reality.
Do not expect much help from the state,
which continues to provide less than a quarter of our annual revenues. The
governor, legislature, and university leadership are all preoccupied with the
undergraduate enrollment growth that is anticipated over the coming decade -
how to fund that growth and how to make it properly diverse. The substantial
increases in the budget for the University of California over the past two
years mainly reflect that preoccupation.
A recurrent refrain, from our faculty in
particular, has been that UCSF should somehow increase the share of indirect
costs that it receives from the university. The reality is that, for some
years, we have been receiving nearly all that we could expect. Until now, the
payments were not all derived from indirect costs, but the dollar value added
up to our fair share.
Now the President's Office has announced its
intention to return 94% of all new indirect costs to the campuses where they
are raised. There will be some modest gain for us in that. I am pleased to say
that UCSF was one of the lead campuses in the campaign to make the return of
indirect costs more rational and equitable.
In addition, the campus is now negotiating
with the federal government for an increase in our indirect cost rate. We hope
for some modest gain there, as well.
Operating costs are one thing, but capital
needs for construction are another - and these are truly prodigious. Here is a
list of the major capital projects now in various stages of planning or
execution:
·
Mission Bay
·
Parnassus Services
Building
·
Moffitt/Long Hospital
Improvement
·
New Toland Hall (Radiobiology
Replacement)
·
Children's Services
·
Mount Zion Research
Building
·
Parnassus Heights
Reconfiguration
·
Mount Zion
Reconfiguration
·
New Hospital
This list has grown substantially since I
took office two years ago, and it does not include the plans to construct new
buildings at SFGH and Fresno that would house UCSF programs.
The estimated price tag: 3.5 billion dollars
or more. At the moment, we have credible financing for the first phase of
Mission Bay and the Parnassus Heights Services Building - a total of around 500
million dollars. That leaves 3 billion and spare change to be found.
Can we count on the state for help here? I
answer succinctly with a quote from the university's Vice-President for Budget:
"State capital funds must be regarded as a source of funding assistance,
rather than a primary support." In other words, find the money yourself.
He is speaking from reality. The capital
budget from state appropriations for the entire University of California is 213
million dollars this fiscal year. Our share of that is presently around 4% and
is scheduled to decline in subsequent years, consequent again to the needs
engendered at other campuses by undergraduate enrollment.
One of the fundamental difficulties here is
the reluctance of our legislators to accept greater responsibility for the
research facilities of the university. The Legislative Analyst of California
sets the tone by regularly opposing appropriations for university laboratory
buildings, arguing that research is not central to the instructional mission of
the university and should therefore be self-sustaining in every regard. That
position is so antithetical to our own understanding of the university and its
purposes, that it takes a while to assimilate. Our legislative testimony in opposition
to the position of the Analyst has become almost an annual ritual.
Bond issues are another major source of
capital funds for the university. They are not easy to come by, in part because
they are hostage to electoral whim. The most recent issue of state bonds on
behalf of education raised 900 million dollars. Our share of that was the
munificent sum of 21 million dollars, to compensate us for the eventual loss of
University Hall, which we must demolish by 2005.
The governor and legislature recently authorized
the issuance of 600 million dollars worth of lease revenue bonds, to be used
for capital at the medical centers of UC. But those dollars are entirely tied
to seismic needs, and despite the reputation of San Francisco as the queen of
earthquakes, our share will be only 25 million - we have only modest seismic
problems that must be rectified by 2008. Instead, the deadline for full seismic
overhaul of our hospitals is 2030. More on this later.
MEDICAL CENTER
Any talk of money brings our medical center
to the fore. We are still healing the wounds incurred during that dark night of
the soul known as UCSF-Stanford.
It was not a good time for any of us. It
began with great uncertainty. After a brief hiatus, it got progressively worse.
Allow me a personal vignette. During one
meeting of the UCSF-Stanford Board, I found myself being chastised as a
"suit" by a critic of the merger.
This was an ignominy that I had never, in my
wildest dreams, expected to receive or deserve - it was one of the singularly
low moments in my professional career. More to the point, I was at the time
wearing not a suit, but a tattered blazer, in a futile effort to stay abreast
of the trimly dressed cohort from The Cardinal.
Our medical center emerged from the merger
with an attenuated and disaffected staff; no CEO, COO, CFO or CIO;
substantially less cash than we took into the merger; monthly operating losses
on the order of 4 million dollars; and an accumulated debt of 100 million
dollars, to be shared equally with Stanford.
Everyone concerned resolved that the first
order of business must be two-fold: to bring our former employees back into the
family in an equitable manner; and to rebuild the senior leadership of the
medical center.
In particular, I watched with great anxiety
the negotiation of new contracts with the nurses and staff who were returning
to our payroll from UCSF-Stanford, hoping that these negotiations could be
concluded both equitably and expeditiously.
UCSF made it clear to the negotiators that
settlement was imperative, that circumstances here demanded exceptional
considerations. I was immensely relieved when settlements were reached. I know
that not everyone involved felt well treated. But the circumstances were
extraordinarily difficult.
An arbitration lawyer of my acquaintance
once told me that one indicator of a good settlement is when neither side is
completely happy. The dreary implication of this is that there is no such thing
as a settlement in which both sides are completely happy. But hope springs
eternal...
I want to laud and thank once again the
campus staff who engineered the return of merger employees to the payroll of
our medical center. They performed in an heroic manner, far beyond the call of
duty.
Above all else, however, UCSF owes am
immense debt of gratitude to the physicians, nurses and staff who endured the
turmoil engendered by the formation and dissolution of UCSF-Stanford. I want
here to formally acknowledge that debt, extend my personal gratitude to these
fine people for their forbearance, and express my regret that matters could not
have taken a better turn.
What about new leadership for our medical
center? We had a search for a new CEO up and running well before the divorce
papers had been filed. The prospects seemed intimidating: we were asking
someone to undertake a wrenching task, for compensation well below market
standards.
But we got lucky. Because in the face of an
extremely tight and seemingly unaffordable market place for such talent, we
were able to recruit Mark Laret from UCI. We felt Mark would be the perfect
match for us: he has extensive experience with hospital administration within
the UC, had supervised a major financial turn-around at the UCI medical center,
and shares the values we all believe are essential to success.
Mark arrived in April and fit in so well,
that it feels to me as if he has always been here. I doubt that Mark shares
that feeling, as yet - the complexities of this place are staggering. Mark has
been moving aggressively to improve staff morale, patient service, and
financial performance, and to assemble the remainder of his leadership team.
So we may be out of that dark night. But we
are not out of the woods.
On the encouraging side: our physicians and
staff continue to perform miracles in the face of difficult odds; we have new
leadership, albeit incomplete; our medical center received excellent bond
ratings at the time of the divorce, demonstrating faith in our capabilities and
future; admissions to our hospital are booming (a double-edged sword, as you shall
hear); and our financial performance has improved - we are presently operating
on a budget plan prepared by the Hunter Group at the time of the demerger, and
we are essentially on that budget, although still operating in the red.
On the problematic side: Our hospital
remains understaffed and overbooked - one disappointed patient likened us to
United Airlines. The staff, nurses, and physicians are harried. The facilities
and infrastructure are inadequate.
For the moment, we continue to deliver world
class care, an immense tribute to all involved. But how much longer can that
continue without remediation of our major difficulties?
Our most urgent short-term
objectives:
·
Complete the
recruitment of new senior leadership
·
Find interim solutions
for the overbooking problem (turning folks away is not a wise option for us,
although United Airlines has been known to do that).
·
Solve the problems that
continue to plague the information systems of our medical center;
·
Improve the
circumstances of our staff;
·
And enhance the
financial performance of the hospital.
Can we expect any external
help? The Federal government has at last taken notice of the dire straits at
academic health centers, and we are hopeful that will bring some financial
relief. But to a large extent, we will be left to our own devices.
For the longer haul, we must confront the
necessity to rebuild our hospital by 2030. It is probably permissible to call
Moffitt Hospital venerable, but as of 2030, the building becomes ineligible for
occupancy by patients because of seismic code. As for Long Hospital, I resort
to a description that I have heard repeatedly over the years: "the oldest
new hospital ever built." So rebuild we must, the sooner the better. A
lengthy stream of consequences flows from this reality.
UCSF has launched a planning effort to
ascertain where our hospital of the future should be located, what form it
should take, when it could be constructed, and what consequences all this might
hold for the other facilities and programs of UCSF. I have asked that this
planning be done as expeditiously as possible - in a time frame of months
rather than years. We already have a preliminary analysis provided by a
consulting firm. Now the further work falls to a campus committee co-chaired by
CEO Mark Laret and Vice Chancellor Bruce Spaulding.
Do not ask how we might pay for all this: it
is too early to know.
MISSION BAY
If the medical center represents one of the
titanic capital challenges before us, the other is our new campus at Mission
Bay. A minimum of ten years of strategic planning preceeded the decision to
develop this campus - thousands of hours of analysis and deliberation. The end
result was a Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) for UCSF, approved by the Board
of Regents in 1997. The plan specified that UCSF should acquire and develop a
second major site in order to compensate for the inadequate space here at
Parnassus Heights.
I myself was uncomfortable with the
recommendation, because like many others, I recognized the difficulties
inherent to geographical fragmentation of our academic community. But the
problem addressed by the LRDP was chronic and severe: UCSF has been sustaining
a premier health science campus with less space and infrastructure than any of
the institutions to which we are commonly compared.
We are proscribed from expansion at our
location here on Parnassus Heights by an agreement that was imposed by the
Board of Regents while I was still young, and that is still vigorously
scrutinized by the community in which we reside.
We have been forced into Rube Goldberg
solutions that create inefficient and crowded facilities. We have been unable
to pursue visionary new initiatives that would catch the wave of advance in
biomedical science and health care. We have seen dreams thwarted.
In the end, we had no other choice. So we
elected to develop a second campus in the Mission Bay neighborhood of San
Francisco, a neighborhood created at the turn of the previous century by
filling an inlet of San Francisco Bay with debris from the 1906 earthquake. Of
all the options available to us, Mission Bay was the most desirable in location
and potential. And to make matters even better, the owners of the land were
persuaded to make it a donation to the university - a donation whose value has
by now passed 100 million dollars.
The magnitude of our undertaking at Mission
Bay is Herculean. The first phase of the project, due on line by 2003, will
create the equivalent of Rockefeller University. By the time the entire Mission
Bay project is completed several decades from now, it will have constituted the
largest development in San Francisco since the building of Golden Gate Park.
The completed UCSF campus at Mission Bay will be equal in size to the
California Institute of Technology.
What is our vision for Mission Bay? In its
first phase, the new campus will provide state of the art facilities for many
of our existing faculty and permit a limited number of new ventures. The theme
will be fundamental, multidisciplinary research: molecular and cellular biology,
pharmaceutical chemistry and chemical biology, developmental neurobiology and
human genetics - all stirred together in an intellectual melting pot.
The first phase will comprise at least two
research buildings, and a campus community center for recreation, conferencing
and other activities. The buildings will border on an expansive central green.
The design for all three buildings has been completed, and construction of the
first research building - to be named Genentech Hall consequent to a gift of 50
million dollars - is well underway. As you will hear later, we also plan to
construct campus housing on the eastern side of 4th Street, and to have this
open by 2004 at the latest. The housing will include a large facility for child
care.
And there may be even more. UCSF has joined
a consortium with the Berkeley and Santa Cruz campuses to compete for one of
three research institutes commissioned by Governor Davis, under the rubric of
the California Institutes for Science and Innovation. If we succeed, an additional
building will be constructed in connection with Genentech Hall, and could open
as part of Phase I.
We have put great energy and concern into
the architecture for our buildings at Mission Bay, engaging distinguished
architects, and submitting their designs to an exhaustive and sometimes
contentious review - aesthetic judgment is a highly individual and
idiosyncratic matter, and that makes for controversy, even acrimony.
But trust me, we have done better than some.
Last year, the University of Texas lost the services of the renowned architects
Herzog and de Meuron when their contemporary design for a campus art museum was
deemed unacceptable by the regents of the university. (Herzog and de Meuron
also happen to be the architects for the new De Young Museum here in San
Francisco - a building whose design also has its detractors, I should say.)
One Texas regent objected to the flat roof
proposed by the architects: "I have a big problem with flat roofs,"
he announced. "I have a flat roof on my house. I wouldn't want a flat roof
[on the museum]." One headline in Austin described the affair as
"Beverly Hillbillies vs. the Bauhaus." Herzog and de Meuron quit in
disgust. Praise be, our Regents are more enlightened.
At 7:30 AM last May 4, an image appeared on my
computer screen at the chancellor's residence, showing that the first girder
for Genentech Hall had just been erected.
Three months later, the steelwork was
entirely in place, with a little fir tree somewhere on the top - the
"topping off" traditional to the construction trade. The project is
on schedule and 7 million dollars under budget.
I have heard a fear that resources for
operation will be drained to Mission Bay, at the expense of Parnassus Heights.
It should probably suffice for me to note that my own laboratory will remain on
Parnassus Heights, so neglect of this place seems unlikely. But I can offer
further assurances.
First, no current state operating funds are
being used to fund the capital program at Mission Bay: they are serving the
purposes for which they were allocated.
Second, when the buildings at Mission Bay
come on line, we will be entitled to additional operating funds from the
university as a result of the increase in our space. And we expect the research
programs at Mission Bay to be every bit as self-sustaining there as they are
here - if not more so, because they will have the opportunity to be more
expansive than in the past.
PARNASSUS HEIGHTS
Back here at Parnassus Heights, I hope that
research on human disease will find new prosperity. Clinical research in
particular has been something of a second class citizen at UCSF. I want to see
that change.
I am optimistic about preservation of the
intellectual capital at Parnassus Heights: some of our most distinguished
faculty and their research groups will be remaining here, and there will be
opportunities to recruit more.
Make no mistake, space at Parnassus Heights
will still be at a premium, in part because we must demolish University Hall
for seismic reasons. As a result, there may be little more than 40,000 ASF come
vacant after the opening of Mission Bay - roughly the equivalent of 4 floors in
one of the Health Science Towers. That is not exactly a baronial allotment.
The campus knew that this would be a problem
well before I was named chancellor. So during his year as chancellor, Haile
Debas appointed a faculty committee to design the distribution of those
precious 40,000 asf. The result was a competition among eleven newly formed
research programs, which were submitted to a faculty committee for review.
The results of this review were announced
just a few weeks ago. The committee chose four programs: Genetics of Complex
Diseases and Therapeutics, Center for Stem Cell Biology and Tissue Development,
the Immunology Program, and the Sandler Center for Asthma Research. Two more
are being held in reserve, should additional space become available: Basic
Research in Infectious Disease, and Craniofacial Biology and Tissue Repair.
Each of these programs is an exciting new
departure for UCSF, each is interdisciplinary, three are interdepartmental, and
two are interschool. As these programs take shape, we hope the opportunity will
arise for constructive reconfiguration of space at Parnassus Heights, aimed at
more efficient utilization and more rational clustering of research groups -
our space here is infamously balkanized.
The meager amount of space released at
Parnassus Heights has been disappointing to many of our faculty and departments
that will not benefit immediately from Mission Bay or the reconfiguration at
Parnassus Heights. So we are looking for ways to accommodate these needs.
Initial steps include construction of what we are calling "New Toland
Hall," to replace the Radiobiology Building, and an additional research
building at Mount Zion Hospital. But more will be necessary.
FACULTY GROWTH
We do not expect our base of FTEs for
faculty to grow by very much over the next decade - it is too tightly linked to
enrollment. Why then do we hope to exploit the opportunities at Mission Bay and
Parnassus Heights to expand our faculty? Because after long and tedious
deliberations, the university has finally authorized the equivalent of tenure
for professorships backed by private endowments rather than FTE's. This is
vital, because it is very difficult to recruit front-rank individuals without
the potential for tenure. So once again, UCSF will be able to improve itself by
being entrepreneurial.
I believe that we have the capability. Over
the past five years, the campus has secured the funds for 55 endowed chairs and
distinguished professorships, and the trajectory is on the rise. The challenge
here will be to create a donor culture that allows distribution of
professorships strategically among the disciplines, rather than letting the
assignments fall to units by default.
HOUSING
It has become axiomatic that the phrase
"affordable housing" is an oxymoron in San Francisco: the housing
crisis in our fair city is the stuff of which legends are made, deserving
adjectives such as "surreal" and "punitive."
To dramatize: of all the major academic
institutions in the United States, Stanford and UCSF are situated in two of the
most expensive real estate markets. You could do modestly better were you
willing to live in either Los Angeles or Boston, heaven forfend; and New Haven
turns out to be a REAL bargin - as well it should.
We are feeling the impact of this crisis
across the board - it is affecting our ability to attract and retain staff,
students, housestaff, postdoctoral fellows and faculty.
UCSF is presently not well positioned to
cope with the housing crisis. Our housing stock accommodates no more than 16%
of our student body, virtually none of our faculty, and none of our housestaff
or postdoctoral fellows.
The campus does offer mortgage assistance to
senior management and faculty. The program was initiated in 1984 and has since
awarded a total of approximately 46 million dollars in mortgage loans, at
interest rates below market. So some individuals have found this program
useful. But virtually no one finds it adequate.
Having outlined the dimensions of our
problem, I turn to the search for solutions. Our LRDP of 1997 showed some
foresight by setting the goal of eventually accommodating 25% of our student
body in campus housing, and perhaps 15% of our postdoctoral fellows. But the
plan was silent on housestaff and faculty.
Over the past two years, the campus has
worked with the Sedway consultant group to develop a plan for student and
fellow housing. As a result of that exercise, we are now planning to provide
600 beds of housing on our Mission Bay campus, with a mixture of units that
will be suitable for students, fellows, and housestaff. We plan to have this
housing operational by 2004, if not earlier.
We will reconfigure our properties at
Parnassus Heights to offer an additional 80 beds to serve a mixed constituency.
The campus is also negotiating for the use of 50 rental units in the new
housing being constructed by the USF.
As an additional interim measure, the campus
has recently authorized salary supplements to housestaff for housing [maximum
of 20K over duration of residency]. There is no great joy in this: the
supplements are taxable, and the funds must come from academic departments -
there are no other resources available.
We are currently working with other campuses
and the UCOP in an effort to make our mortgage programs more realistic and more
flexible. At least some of the proposed revisions are likely to face resistance
from the Board of Regents.
Together, these measures will take us well
beyond our original goals for students and fellows. But they amount to only a
band-aid for housestaff and faculty.
Accordingly, I have appointed an advisory
committee to ascertain the full extent of our need for housestaff and faculty
housing, and to propose remedies. The committee is chaired by Professor Maxine
Papadakis. I have asked this group to work quickly. I am sure that they would
welcome any and all constructive suggestions.
It is important to understand the economics
in this endeavor. The campus has no funds to build housing and no obvious
source from which to solicit them. But we can invite private developers to
build and manage housing according to our stipulations, as other UC campuses
have already done. The enabling ingredient here is free land, which allows the
housing to be offered at affordable rates. We have been able to exploit this
formula at Mission Bay, and we need to find additional opportunities of this
sort.
QUALITY OF CAMPUS LIFE
In addition to providing more housing for
our campus community, I am also eager to improve the general quality of campus
life with measures of convenience, pleasure and diversion. I mention a few
examples.
Parking: No hope here at Parnassus Heights.
(When I was much younger, I backed an initiative to drill a parking garage into
Mount Sutro; nothing came of that.) But we will be providing ample parking at
Mission Bay. Some advocates of public transit have argued that we should
provide less, in an effort to drive folks into Muni and Bart. It is true that
the N Judah line will eventually extend to the main entrance of our Mission Bay
campus, stopping at Pac Bell Park on the way - I can testify to the latter from
personal experience.
Elevators: There is not much that could be
said - they are the graveyard of Chancellors.
Culture: A series of wonderful noontime
concerts is in its third year, thanks to the initiative and energy of Dr. Pearl
Toy and the skillful facilitation by EMPACT. This is an excellent example of an
idea from the ranks, the sort of individual initiative that I welcome. I am
eagerly awaiting the appearance of someone with the capability to bring us
"Jazz at Noon" or the like.
Art: I have substantially augmented the
current budget for campus art and have designated 1% of all future construction
costs for art at all our sites. Two campus committees and an external advisory
board are presently at work planning how to implement this initiative. Some of
its initial fruits have probably caught your attention.
We are in the midst of a long-term effort to
preserve and enhance Sutro Forest, a remarkable expanse of urban open space
that few if any of us would want to lose. The forest is a matter of great
concern to all of San Francisco, and there are diverse views of what should
happen to it.
The differences in opinion arise in part
from the fact that the forest is an artifact, planted from scratch by Adolph
Sutro almost a century ago, on what had previously been coastal grassland. For
the moment, the campus is restoring trails and cleaning out some of the more
intrusive brush. But we are also nearing completion of a strategic plan that
will deal with the larger issues of the forest, in particular, how and when to
remove and replace the eucalyptus trees that will begin a massive die-off in
the not too distant future.
FUND RAISING
By now you can appreciate how great the need
is for UCSF to develop new sources of income. In response to that need, we have
turned with ever increasing urgency to our friends in the private sector, and
they have responded admirably.
The record is gratifying. UCSF received a
total of 315 million dollars as gifts in fiscal year 1999, an increase of 92%
over 1998. Very few health science institutions in the United States can match
that. Within the UC system, only the entire campus of UCLA did better, and that
was by a slim margin.
There has been a remarkable increase in
gifts for general purposes, mainly research and allied activities. And we have
had great success in building the bank account required to construct the first
phase at Mission Bay. The total required to satisfy our business plan for
construction is 210 million dollars. As of this week, we have received 143
million dollars towards that goal, or 68% of the total. We have until 2003 to
find the remainder. Judging from the current trajectory, we should succeed.
Indeed, our Development Office has set April, 2001, as the deadline to have the
full 210 million dollars promised as formal pledges.
These data allow me to address an anxiety
that has been rattling around our halls ever since the Mission Bay adventure
was launched. There has been concern that the formidable fund raising required
to build Mission Bay might impoverish philanthropy for Parnassus Heights, and
for any programs other than bricks and mortar.
The record to date should mitigate that
concern: a 42 million dollar increase in gifts for general purposes, an
unprecedented increase in one year. Indeed, it is my impression that the
intense interest in Mission Bay among donors has fueled other forms of giving
to us.
Fueled by this success, UCSF plans to
announce a new Capital Fund Campaign next year, with a goal of 1.2 billion
dollars. Some of you have already participated in the groundwork for this
campaign, which is currently being laid within the schools and medical center.
I want to pay special tribute to the
volunteers who help us raise these monies. I note in particular two important
groups of friends: the Board of Directors of the UCSF Foundation, who help us
in many ways; and the Leadership Group that has spearheaded our special
fund-raising drive for Mission Bay, with their own extraordinary generosity,
and with their activism on our behalf in the Bay Area community.
We should all be proud that these folks
think highly of us. They are accomplished individuals, with great respect for
what we do and how we do it. The time-honored axiom that UCSF is a well-kept
secret in San Francisco is no longer true.
I also salute the efforts of Associate Vice
Chancellor Kathleen Kane and her colleagues in the Development Office. None of
this would be remotely possible without them.
DIVERSITY
I turn now to what I believe to be one of
our noblest challenges: the need to honor and pursue diversity within every
element of our campus community. There can be no denying the challenge of
diversity. By the year 2030, minority populations will make up 40% of all
Americans. By July 1, 2001, Caucasians will no longer constitute a majority of
the population in California; indeed, at that point, no one racial or ethnic
group will predominate in numbers. In the Golden State, at least, we shall all
be minorities. But some of us will still be "underrepresented
minorities."
It is imperative that all minorities be
properly represented in all walks of life, and in positions of authority and
distinction. The shape of our future as a culture rests on that imperative.
Will we be a melting pot, a patch-work quilt, or a fragmented vase?
There are other powerful arguments to
nurture diversity. Let me mention four.
First and foremost, nurturing diversity
honors and serves one of our most fundamental heritages: the right to equal
opportunity.
Second, the community of higher education
has an obligation to train multicultural leadership, yet our own house is not
in order. In his book "Race Matters," Cornell West wrote about the plight
of African-American intellectuals, their "...utter marginality behind the
walls of academe and their sense of impotence in the wider world of American
culture and politics." This is an unconscionable and destructive
circumstance that must be changed. And it is not a singular example.
Third, diversity represents opportunity. The
truth is too big to be contained in any one culture. We have so much to learn
from one another, particularly across the boundaries of cultural heritage.
Fourth, if we are to be effective in our
diverse missions, we must eliminate what Harold Freeman has called the
"lens of race": from our instruction; from our delivery of health
care; and most importantly, from the eyes of those we train, because they are
the future.
Over the past decade, UCSF has built up a
substantial apparatus to advise the chancellor on many aspects of diversity,
including race, ethnicity, gender bias, sexual orientation, and personal
disabilities. I am grateful to the members of these advisory groups for their
diligence and thoughtfulness.
The newest of these is the Executive
Committee on Diversity, composed of senior leadership from all of the Schools
and chaired by Vice Chancellor Dee Bainton. I created this group to be certain
that the campus would act expeditiously and effectively on recommendations that
I accept from the various advisory groups.
The advisory process has generated an
aggressive agenda that addresses some of our deficiencies in the realm of
diversity. Here are examples:
The underlying objective of all this is to
change the way people think and act. That is not easily done: it is a mandate
for saints, and few of us fit that description.
The measures I just summarized are addressed
to the diversity of the UCSF community itself. But we face another large
challenge: diversification of the individuals we educate into the health care
professions.
To dramatize: for more than five years now,
there has been a continuing decline in the number of minority students applying
and being admitted to schools of medicine in the United States. This is a
national trend, and despite our best efforts, it is happening at UCSF: in 1995,
there were 36 African Americans and 58 Latinos enrolled in the entering medical
class at UCSF; last year, there were 9 of each, and this year, 11 and 7 - out
of a class of 141 - the fewest in 30 years.
Similar trends are apparent in some of the
other disciplines represented at UCSF. The problem has become so prominent
among medical schools that President Atkinson created a university commission
to study its origins and possible solutions. The report of this commission is
due soon.
Why are these declines happening? The answer
that I hear most often is that the health care professions are no longer as
attractive as they once were, that managed care has spread a repellent blight
among our ranks, and that the new generation would rather make quick money in
the new economy.
But there are other factors, as well,
factors that demand our attention. Too many of our children attend schools that
are in a deplorable state of repair and performance. Too many of our children
attend schools that have little hope of properly preparing their students to
undertake higher education. Too many of our children come from social
circumstances that are not likely to instill the motivation to become a health
care professional or scientist.
Sitting where it does in the educational
hierarchy, UCSF should and does view all of these factors with great alarm. So
within the constraints of our competence and resources, we are trying to make a
difference.
Our efforts can be traced to the pioneering
spirit of our Science and Health Education Partnership with the public schools
of San Francisco, founded in 1986 by Professor Bruce Alberts while he was Chair
of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, long before
"outreach" had become a mantra for the University of California at
large. SEP (as it is known) remains the guiding spirit for all that UCSF does
by way of outreach, but we have added other dimensions to it - more than a
dozen programs aimed variously at K-12 schools, teachers, undergraduates and
the general public.
Through these various measures, we hope to
improve science education in our schools, to alert young people to the
opportunities in science and the health care professions, to help our high
school students become eligible for higher education, and to dramatize the
opportunities for professional education here at UCSF.
The campus is also reaching out more
emphatically to the Bay Area community by offering a MiniMedical school for the
second consecutive year. This program of evening lectures by many of our premier
faculty has been hugely successful. I thank Assistant Vice Chancellor Carol Fox
and her staff for mounting this ambitious effort, and Professor Allan Basbaum,
the current faculty director of the program.
The campus has built the annual monetary
support for these efforts to more than three million dollars in public and
private funds. But volunteerism remains at the heart of all these efforts. If
you are not presently helping and would like to, my office can point you in the
right direction.
UCSF AS WORKPLACE
I want finally to speak about UCSF as
work-place. This should be a good place to work. Alas, many of you feel that it
is not. The reasons for this fall roughly into two categories: money and ethos.
The more urgent of these is money. UCSF is
blessed with devoted and effective employees, who render invaluable service to
the university and the public. I consider it an unacceptable inequity that many
of our employees are paid wages below market level. This inequity has become so
acute that I chose to distribute an email about it to the entire campus last
Thursday evening.
I was bemused to learn that some few of you,
at least, believe that I wrote the email in response to an Open Letter carried
in last week's Synapse, which arrived on my desk Friday morning - fourteen
hours after my email had been transmitted. Would that I could write so quickly.
The truth of the matter is that I had been working on that email for more than
a week - the many drafts still litter my desk at home.
Before highlighting what I said in that
message, I want to make a few general remarks on my role in collective
bargaining. Under the rules of bargaining by the university, I do not
participate at the table, have no role in formulating offers, and am not
authorized to publicly advocate any specific feature of an offer from either
side.
It is the Office of the President that holds
both the authority and responsibility for system-wide bargaining, because it is
they who must obtain and manage the monies required for state-funded positions.
Chancellors do have the fiduciary
responsibility to notify the university when a proffered or contemplated offer
threatens to exceed the funds available to us. But when I give such notice, I
do so only as warning that more money needs to be found. In the current
instance, our campus would need more money than we now have in order to take
all clerical workers to market level pay, yet I remain an advocate for doing
this as expeditiously as possible, and I must rely on the university to find
the money. I cannot see how such a position could be construed as "voting
against" an equitable settlement.
There is another point that I want everyone
to understand. Every time I make a public statement about collective
bargaining, I run the risk of saying something that violates the rules of
bargaining, of destabilizing the bargaining process, or of insubordination as
an officer of the university. Those are some of the reasons that it took me a
week to write that email.
All of that said, here is the essence of
what I tried to communicate in my email message, with a few embellishments.
That said, I want also to
emphasize that discussions among the chancellors and president are often and
rightfully conducted in confidence, and I am not willing to betray that trust
by remarking on the details of any such discussion.
Ethos is a more subtle problem than wages,
but equally troubling. I would like all the employees of UCSF to take
satisfaction from their work, confident that whatever they are doing is serving
a higher purpose and is appreciated. I regret to say that this is far from the
case - one of the most deeply disappointing revelations during my initial
months as chancellor.
Rather, many of our employees feel
undervalued, over worked, and victims of uncivil supervision. I cannot
countenance this. It is instinctive for me to insist that all of our employees
be valued, nurtured, and treated with proper respect - they deserve this, and
without it, they grow disaffected.
Disaffection among our staff is hardly a new
problem. I know that former chancellor Joseph Martin got an earful about it
when he took office, in the wake of the devastating budgetary cuts of the early
1990's - to which we can still trace some of our woes.
During his year as chancellor, Haile Debas
endorsed an initiative to create a more supportive work environment for all
employees at UCSF. I took up that initiative with enthusiasm and have asked
that it be pressed forward vigorously.
I got things going formally in the spring of
1999, by appointing an ad hoc committee to oversee the initiative. That
committee is co-chaired by Alma Sisco-Smith of the staff and Professor Peter
Kollman of the faculty, who have my heartfelt gratitude for this vital service.
The Committee has crafted more than 25
distinct programs designed to improve UCSF as a workplace. Examples include
more tolerant attitudes towards release-time, more flexible work hours, greater
opportunities for telecommuting, a new program for conflict resolution,
improved orientation of new employees, job fairs, exercises in team building,
mentoring and internship programs, other opportunities for career development,
and an escort service to improve personal safety - an initiative that came from
student leadership.
Implementation of these programs is
proceeding apace. The Committee reports its progress periodically to the
Chancellor's Cabinet, so the initiative has the attention of all the senior
leadership on campus. I applaud all of this and will provide both the authority
of my office and all possible resources to keep the momentum going. But I
recognize that wages remain the central issue.
As an adjunct to the initiative on
supportive work environment, the campus has issued that Code of Conduct I
mentioned before, intended for our entire community - students, faculty and
staff alike. This code defines how we are expected to behave towards one
another, and towards the world beyond our walls. I ask that you all take its
message to heart.
Provision of a supportive work environment
is humane. It is also pragmatic. None of us can be effective if we have
disaffected colleagues. As an institution of healing, this place above all
others should foster dignified and respectful personal relationships.
We must strive to sustain the potent
tradition of UCSF as a community of many and varied souls who work together in
a common cause. Arrogance and elitism do not serve this community well.
I have the utmost respect for all of our
employees. I have come to know many of you during my thirty-three years at
UCSF, and I value those acquaintances and friendships. I urgently want all of
you to be properly compensated and happy in your work. I will continue to work
as best I can towards those objectives. I will need your help.
CONCLUSION
The agenda for UCSF over the next decade is
an agenda for change.
The avant garde musician/artist John Cage
once remarked that: "...THE fear in life is the fear of change."
And in his book "THE NEW NEW
THING," Michael Lewis called change..."the most vicious force a human
being may be subjected to."
My own preference is for the more familiar
aphorism: "Change is good."
However you view change, it is inevitable
for all of us, and at UCSF, it has become a daily event. We must seize the need
for change and transform it into opportunity - opportunity for personal growth
and institutional success.
I close with the same lines of poetry from
Adrienne Rich that I used in my inaugural address, a little more than one year
ago:
"My heart is moved by
all I cannot save:
So much has been destroyed
I have to cast my lot with
those
Who age after age,
perversely,
With no extraordinary power,
Reconstitute the
world."
I apologize for taking what may have been
too much of your time, and thank you for your attention.