UC officials and those involved in the search for the next chancellor have not confirmed or denied a report in the Los Angeles Times that named Deborah Freund, provost at Syracuse University, the sole remaining candidate to replace Chancellor Albert Carnesale.
According to the Times, Freund is in final negotiations with university officials about taking the chancellorship, and she and UC President Robert Dynes are in negotiations over her compensation package.
The Times cited anonymous sources who are “close to the search.”
According to UC spokesman Noel Van Nyhuis, “the search has not been completed and the chancellorship has yet to be offered to anyone.”
In addition to her current position as provost, Freund is the vice chancellor for academic affairs and a professor of public administration at Syracuse. She is also a renowned health economist, especially in the areas of PharmacoEconomics, a field whose founding with which she is credited, as well as Medicaid, according to Syracuse’s Web site.
Because of the confidential nature of the search process, search committee members are expected to keep from disclosing specifics of the committee’s progress.
UCLA Graduate Students Association President Jared Fox, who sits on the search committee, said the search began with close to 1,000 candidates, but the pool of applicants has narrowed since.
Undergraduate Students Association Council President Jenny Wood, who also sits on the search committee, said the committee forwarded the names of “under 10” candidates to Dynes, but she refused to confirm or deny that Freund was one of them.
Fox, Wood and Student Regent Adam Rosenthal all said the decision is not yet finalized.
The three committee members also said they were disappointed in seeing the story leaked to the Times because it indicates that someone from the internal committee discussed information that should not have been shared.
“Whoever said anything about the process, whether it was true or not, violated the confidences of the regents. It was totally uncalled for, and I was personally offended,” Rosenthal said.
Van Nyhuis said Dynes hopes to makes his recommendation for UCLA’s ninth chief executive to the UC Board of Regents soon. But the spokesman did not specify whether Dynes’ recommendation would be announced in time to be approved at the regents meeting scheduled for May 16-18 at UC San Francisco.
Carnesale announced in September that he would be stepping down in late June after serving as the chancellor of UCLA since 1997.
A search committee was formed in early December with the job of reviewing candidates for the position and forwarding a recommendation to Dynes.