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Gene Block, University of Virginia provost, was named UCLA’s next chancellor Dec. 21, endin

A man wearing a bold blue-striped tie and a wide smile walked into a conference room filled with members of the UC Board of Regents and members of the press. He sat in the most central seat and began to speak after his introduction as the new chancellor of UCLA.

Those strides to the seat and the speech following the introduction marked the beginning of a new era at UCLA – the start of new leadership under recently named Chancellor Gene Block.

Block, the high-spirited provost from the University of Virginia, spoke with enthusiasm about starting his new role after the regents named him the ninth chancellor of UCLA on Dec. 21, 2006.

The sixth chancellor in UCLA history with a background in the sciences, Block earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology from Stanford and both his master’s and doctoral degrees in psychology from the University of Oregon.

His expertise lies in the areas of cellular and neural mechanisms of sleep and wake cycles, with research into the effects of aging on cells in the brain that form the biological clock.

Block’s annual salary is set at $416,000, which is almost $100,000 more than his predecessor, Albert Carnesale, and current Interim Chancellor Norman Abrams. Block’s salary makes him one of the two highest-paid campus leaders within the University of California system, making as much as UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau and more than UC President Robert Dynes.

Dynes recently declined a pay raise amid a scandal in which the UC was accused of granting millions of dollars in unreported compensation packages to university employees.

The UC Regents met by teleconference during closed session and confirmed Dynes’ recommendation to appoint Block, ending the yearlong search process initiated by Carnesale’s announcement to step down.

Block, who said a hopeful message in a fortune cookie reassured him that his decision to come to UCLA was a leap in the right direction, said he sees diversity within the student body and faculty as a priority.

“The student body doesn’t look like what the population looks like. It’s out of touch with what the population looks like, so I can’t overemphasize that we have to work on diversity within the student body,” Block said.

The two areas in which Block envisions improvement are the enrollment of already accepted students from minority backgrounds and the advancement of the K-12 school systems.

“One piece you have to make certain is that every student from underrepresented groups that gets accepted into UCLA will want to enroll” to improve the yield of those from underrepresented groups that get accepted to actually choose to come to UCLA, Block said.

“Also, in the long run you have to figure out strategies to making students more competitive and that is done by improving schools from the K-12 levels,” Block added.

Such interest is not foreign to UCLA, as Abrams helped integrate the admissions process into a holistic approach.

In addition to working to diversify the student population, training faculty to recruit a more diverse applicant pool is also a task on Block’s to-do list.

But that will be a slow process, because faculty can be offered tenured positions and usually stay for longer periods of time, Block said.

Smiling and using his hands to gesture while speaking, Block often showed his interest in a topic by physical movements. He said his leadership philosophy is not much different in terms of seeing interaction with others as an important part of his job.

“I lead by consultation. What I’ve discovered is that you hire really bright people and you listen to them. Collectively, they can produce really great ideas that individually none of us would have come up with. It doesn’t mean a leader shouldn’t have vision, but listening to others is very important,” Block said.

The role of the chancellor is to oversee all aspects of the university. Block said he sees himself as a “conductor coordinating all the activities.”

“A lot of it is being a conductor and getting all the pieces working together. It’s an orchestration with room for creativity,” Block said.

Vivek Shetty, the chairman of the Academic Senate, said Block seemed “like a very open person and the type of person that would want to reach out.”

“UCLA has a wonderful collection of faculty, staff administrators and students. I see them all as talented musicians. The chancellor acts as a conductor of them and he will create and sustain a world class of people and they will create music together,” Shetty said.

John Oakley, a faculty representative to the regents, said the board considered attributes besides Block’s scholarly contributions and administrative experience.

“(Block) has the right kind of style and California sunniness to fit in well with UCLA and to make the most of its unique attributes, including the world-class cultural city UCLA is centralized in,” Oakley said.

Present at the meeting when the announcement was made were several students wishing to share what they expect from the new chancellor. Among them was Jenny Wood, former Undergraduate Students Association Council president, who also served on the advisory committee to Dynes for the selection of the new chancellor.

Wood said she wants the new chancellor to “make a commitment to improving access to higher education to all Californians and actively work to increase access to underrepresented communities ... and low-income communities here at UCLA.”

Block will don a blue UCLA cap starting August 2007, when he will take up the chancellorship.

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