Editor's note: Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef and Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Robert Grey sat down recently with Dateline Editor Susanne Rockwell to talk about how growth will affect the campus, faculty, staff and our surrounding communities. Susanne Rockwell: While the regents and Office of the President have been working at a macro level to set target student numbers for the next decade, I've heard you, Larry, talk at your brown-bags about how each campus is taking care of its own destiny. What is your vision for UC Davis in 2010? Larry Vanderhoef: First, vision is the easy part, especially if you are surrounded by bright people. Implementing the vision is the real challenge. We intend that UC Davis will rise to the highest ranks as a public university in the land-grant tradition. It is our further intention that we will maintain our historical areas of strength and simultaneously grow, sometimes de novo, in those areas that will bring a greater balance of excellence across the spectrum of our academic programs. Again, though, striking the vision is the less difficult part of the process. That is the importance of the academic planning that Bob is overseeing. It is how we're developing a sense of where we want to be, and how we'll get there. Basically, we are not going to grow across the board; rather we are going to grow most where we can get the most for our resources. SGR: Bob, can you give more details? Robert Grey: We have been at this academic planning for more than two years in an effort to engage the whole campus, with the help of the deans and the Academic Planning Council. We're now coming to the conclusion, and we have a number of decisions to make. We thought that it was important, in thinking about the future of the campus, to begin by asking, "What new things should we be doing?" We selected, finally, 10 initiatives. We have eight fully developed and being implemented. The ninth, the environment, is critically important; it's back on the drawing board at the moment, but will be finished by spring. We've finished the equally important reviews of the academic plans that each dean has developed with the assistance of the academic departments and the faculty. With the help of the Academic Planning Council, we will decide which programs will grow and to what extent. That, in essence, will be our Academic Plan. It won't be very long. It will simply chart that course and explain why we've made those decisions. SGR: So it's premature to talk about vision? LNV: You can speak about it in general terms like, "We intend to maintain the strengths that we currently have. We do not want to sacrifice those...." SGR: Can you list them? LNV: They are our traditional strengths, generally in the sciences: agricultural sciences, veterinary medicine, engineering, biological sciences. But we would, as well, like to build new areas that will enhance the already strong reputation that the campus has. We have often spoken about bringing balance to the campus by building strength in the social sciences and humanities. Again, though, striking the vision in general terms is the easy part; bringing specifics to the vision, which is the academic planning, is the tough part. There is also the need to continue to pursue diversity in our constituencies. We will be better if we are more diverse. SGR: What measures are being taken to raise our academic profile and position ourselves even more competitively among Research I universities? RDG: One thing that we have given a lot of attention to in recent years is infrastructure, by which I mean facilities for the support of research. The faculty is responsible for whatever success the university enjoys. The campus has for many years now directed the lion's share of our indirect costs, which came from sponsored research, to buildings and facilities. We have an example of a new building that is planned to support our Genomics Initiative. It's a $95 million building that will be sited on the health-sciences part of the campus near Tupper Hall. It will be funded, primarily, from indirect costs from sponsored research. It will house about 70 principal investigators. In terms of academic planning, we have set some guidelines that also aim to pay attention to our competitiveness. One thing we have asked the deans and departments to do is to select from their many options just a few things so we can develop programs with scientists or scholars that really stand out nationally. We are urging the departments to aim very high in their aspirations. SGR: What about hiring senior faculty who will draw students, who already have grant money and who are at a point in their careers where they can boost the university's reputation? RDG: We in the University of California have been very committed to a strategy of growing our own. We take pride in that. To be successful, however, every department has to have a culture that helps beginning faculty members develop their career so they can achieve their full potential. That means, in any department, school or college, there needs to be a sufficient number of mentors and leaders. Senior faculty members need to shoulder most of the responsibilities for administrative functions to let junior faculty members pay attention to their teaching and research responsibilities. That's a very different idea from simply hiring a lot of senior people in order to enhance reputation. SGR: How are we going to pay for all of this growth -- capital, research, salaries -- with state funds that are only 26 percent of our budget now? RDG: The good news is the costs for faculty and the academic support staff are fully covered. We just came back into alignment last year, and the enrollment growth for the immediate future is fully covered. As long as the strong economy continues, that's not on our worry list. Our biggest challenge is facilities. One of the university's strategies is to aim to increase its share in the next bond issue for higher education. Currently we are receiving about $225 million a year for all 10 campuses from the last bond act. The Office of the President is aiming to add about $100 million more to our annual share in the next bond act. That will take us a pretty long way building the new facilities we'll need for growth. In the past five years, funding for our facilities from the state has involved only 30 percent. We've been in a mode of funding facilities from other sources for quite a long while now, and that will continue. SGR: What about funding for the sciences? Startup costs average around $400,000 per faculty member in science and engineering compared to a campuswide average startup package of $131,000. LNV: Pretty expensive, isn't it? But, in fact, if we hire the right people, they are, with grant support, able to pay for all of their research, all of their travel, all of their graduate students, renovations, everything. They pay for their programs. RDG: We've been planning ahead for several years. We have budgeted wisely for fostering the faculty. We have given the deans a good deal more latitude. To my knowledge, we have not yet lost a recruitment for lack of startup money. We do, however, have some very serious deficiencies in laboratory facilities, especially in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and in the School of Veterinary Medicine, that must be remodeled or replaced if we care to be competitive. On the salary side, we are able to compete very well with all public institutions. There are a few private institutions in the country that we don't always compete with because to do so would so deform UC's salary scale to a degree that would be unfair to faculty already here.... SGR: Like Harvard and Yale? RDG: Well, Duke is a prime example. Duke last year hired one of our rising stars, who had just gotten tenure, at a salary that few, if any, of our above-scale full professors are at. Both for reasons of principle and practice, we chose not to match that salary. SGR: What part of the growth do you see for the social sciences and the humanities? RDG: Several years ago we appointed a commission chaired by Peter Lindert to examine the social sciences here and make recommendations on how to strengthen them. It became clear from that that we really are underinvested in the social sciences. They really are a natural growth area: There's a lot of student interest, and there is critically important research to be done. We'd also like to strengthen the humanities. The issue of growth there is less clear. Student demand is not as strong. We are very interested in having very strong programs in the arts and humanities, but we don't know what that will translate into in terms of growth. SGR: It's clear we're going to see growth in the number of students and faculty members. What's going to happen with staff? LNV: We have no choice. We have to increase their numbers. RDG: When I said we were fully covered for new enrollment growth, that money covers new faculty members and administrative support staff. So, there will be a commensurate growth. Janet [Hamilton, vice chancellor for administration] has been in charge of the follow-up to the Staff Workload Issues Task Force Report. She and her staff are just about to unveil a proposal, which we intend to support, that will include a consultation group that departments and units can call on to help them re-engineer their processes and rethink their priorities. This won't solve all of our current staffing problems -- and we have some that are serious -- but it will help. SGR: What's your take on various ideas to accommodate the growing numbers of students coming to UC? RDG: We have to be creative and use our facilities optimally. Neither we nor any other [UC] campus, however, are thinking about fielding a full-spectrum summer quarter. We will focus on specific offerings that will enhance our programs. SGR: What are you doing to work with the various governmental leaders in the region to accommodate our campus growth? LNV: Our annual growth is anticipated to be 2.2 percent: That's what gets us to 30,000-31,000 students over 10 years. Our growth rate will be slower than most UC campuses because we're closer to our target. That absolute growth number is not unfair to us at all. It is our fair share in the solution of the University of California problem, namely to accommodate all of these new UC-eligible students. With Measure J's passage, the cost of housing will, in my opinion, go up, as well as the rental costs of apartments. That means we have to be thinking about impacts on Winters, Dixon and Woodland. And we also have to be thinking about our own on-campus solutions for housing for our students, faculty and staff -- solutions that would minimally impact the city of Davis. SGR: Would that include an elementary school on campus? LNV: Even that has to be put on the table as a possibility. That would very likely be done in collaboration with the Davis school system. We also would want our campus growth to have minimal impact on transportation and on downtown Davis traffic. What our plan becomes can't be clear until we've had the discussions that will come along with developing the new Long Range Development Plan. We must be communicating well with lots of groups -- internally and externally -- as we plan our growth.