With its reputation as a global center for learning and cutting-edge scholarship, UCLA is by any measure a stellar university. But even with such eminence, it’s not always easy being a Bruin. As detailed throughout this issue of UCLA Magazine, UCLA faces difficult challenges as it strives in an environment of dwindling resources and intense competition among universities to vie for the top researchers, the top scholars, the top students.
Nevertheless, in spite of these challenges outstanding faculty and gifted students — not to mention vigorous advocates and generous donors, both large and small — continue to make the commitment to UCLA, and by so doing they are vital players in the university’s continuing evolution to greater heights.
Why do they make the choice to affiliate with UCLA? And once they have made that choice, what keeps them here?
For some it is the chance to work among the world’s leading scholars in their particular discipline. For others, the broad diversity of the campus community is what first attracted them. Others view UCLA as essential to the societal and economic well-being of the state itself.
“Few schools can match all that UCLA has to offer,” says one alumnus and longtime supporter. For a faculty member, it is about the students: “Their promise, all the potential they hold, the excellence they represent — that’s what keeps me going.” And from a student: “I feel very fortunate and very privileged to be able to study here. It’s a great place to test out my own ideas and have them challenged and fortified.”
Following is a small sampling of some of those people who choose to call UCLA their home.
Kimberle Crenshaw
Professor of Law
With family roots deep in the civil rights movement, Kimberle Crenshaw calls herself a third-generation activist. Her entire law-school career — at Harvard and the University of Wisconsin — was “built on an imperative to understand the relevance of race to law and law to race, and to make that an integral part of law-school education,” she says.
So Crenshaw was thrilled in 1986 when she received a call from UCLA Law Professor Joel Handler asking if she was interested in a position at the Westwood campus. That, says Crenshaw, was “like asking a kid if he’s interested in Disneyland.” UCLA’s law school, after all, was regarded as the most diverse in the country for its faculty, student population and the type of work being done here.
She was just 26 when she arrived at UCLA, and immediately felt accepted. “My colleagues offered the support I needed to develop as a scholar, and that made all the difference in the world to me,” she recalls. “UCLA took a chance on me; I was raw material when they brought me in. They were ahead of the game in their commitment to developing young talent and incorporating those values into the function of the institution.”
Ten years after her arrival at UCLA, California voters passed Proposition 209, which banned universities from using race criteria in admissions. That placed constraints on UCLA that people have come to interpret in different ways, Crenshaw says. “We’re still trying to arrive at some kind of settlement about what the parameters of non-discrimination and non-preference actually are,” Crenshaw says, “and that’s what makes UCLA a critical place to be.”
Furthermore, Crenshaw says, UCLA is the birthplace of critical race studies and has a “treasure trove” of academics and faculty. The law school maintains one of the most diverse faculties in the country, with people who teach race and law as they pertain to all major racial groups. This provides for a unique blend that can be used to attract the best students, she adds.
Currently, Crenshaw splits her time between UCLA and Columbia Law School, teaching and conducting research on both campuses. While she enjoys her time at Columbia, she says she has no plans to leave UCLA.
“One can think about public institutions as being attractive because of their educational mission, and about private institutions as being attractive because of their tradition of academic excellence,” Crenshaw says. “UCLA’s mission of achieving excellence through diversity blends the best of both worlds: It is an institution that is publicly minded, but also it is an institution that is heavily invested in producing the best ideas and practices that can help reshape our society.” — Wendy Soderburg ’82
Alexandra Loew
M. Arch. ’02, Ph.D. Student,
Department of Architecture
What does UCLA’s Department of Architecture have to offer that schools like Harvard, Columbia and Yale don’t?
Internationally acclaimed, leading-edge thinkers like department Chair Sylvia Lavin, professors Thom Mayne, Robert Somol and Greg Lynn and associated faculty such as David Erdman and Mark Lee, to name just a few, says Ph.D. student Alexandra Loew.
“When you think about architecture, you think about who the voices are that mean the most to you,” says Loew, who obtained her undergraduate degree in cultural anthropology from the University of Chicago, then attended the London School of Economics, where she studied social anthropology. “Who is writing and publishing and practicing and designing? Whose voice seems to most clearly point in the direction that you would like to see the field move into?
“I thought long and hard about where I would go,” says Loew. “There weren’t many programs, even when you look at the Ivy Leagues, that had as many interesting voices.
“This — at UCLA — is where architecture is being shaped and directed.”
In her third year in the program, Loew is working toward a Ph.D. in critical studies of architectural culture. While she has ambitions of one day having her own architectural practice, she also aspires to teach.
“I’m much more interested in the discourse of architecture than in putting things up,” she says.
Loew, in fact, already teaches, holding one post as a teaching assistant at UCLA and another at the Southern California Institute of Architecture in downtown Los Angeles, where she offers instruction in subjects ranging from advanced decoration and ornamentation to thesis preparation. She also works part-time at an architectural firm in Santa Monica.
Working three jobs while attending school full-time isn’t ideal — “At someplace like Princeton or Yale I’d have my tuition paid and receive a stipend as well,” she says — but she’s willing to make the trade-off to be at UCLA. “I try to take jobs that I can think of as paid research, where what I’m learning on that job helps me prepare for my career.”
This April, Loew will travel to Rotterdam with a team of UCLA architecture students to participate in the first Dutch biennale of architecture, a competition in which each team will research and propose architectural solutions to the growing problems of urban mobility. Only nine universities throughout the world were invited to the biennale, with UCLA invited to represent the United States.
“I feel very fortunate and very privileged to be able to study here,” says Loew. “It’s a great place to test out my own ideas and have them be challenged and fortified.
“I love it. I’m on the edge of my seat all the time.” — Judy Lin-Eftekhar
Andrew Katz
’69, J.D. ’72, Alumnus,
Donor and UCLA Parent
When Andrew Katz was a young man deciding where he would go to college, he was most impressed by UCLA, with its high academic quality coupled with low tuition — not to mention a great gymnastics team he planned to join. Katz completed a B.S. in the school of engineering and then a graduate degree at the law school.
Some two decades after his graduation, Katz — now a partner with the law firm of Mitchell, Silberberg and Knupp in West Los Angeles — and his wife, Denise, whom he met at UCLA, helped their daughters, both of whom would major in theater, choose a college.
In addition to UCLA, Katz recalls, “Our older daughter, Shoshannah, seriously considered Sarah Lawrence, and our younger daughter, Marlene, considered NYU and Cal.”
They chose UCLA.
“They were impressed by the quality of the theater program,” Katz says, “especially at how highly rated it was in light of the cost of going anywhere else. And even though tuition at Cal would have been essentially the same, its theater program couldn’t compare with UCLA’s.”
The Katzes are also longtime donors to UCLA, having begun to give to the law school shortly after Katz received his degree. They raised their contributions to a higher level when Shoshannah came to campus.
“I realized her attendance at UCLA was saving us a bundle compared to sending her to a private school,” says Katz. “The typical cost of a year at a top-ranked private university is easily $25,000 to $30,000 per year, including housing, while at UCLA it is no more than half that amount.”
The Katzes began to contribute to the Department of Theater, Film and Television and the UCLA Fund, which provides unrestricted funds for the chancellor to apply in areas of the university’s most significant need. “This enables the chancellor to better serve the university’s mission to provide our students with the best possible education,” Katz notes.
Katz is also active in soliciting additional funding. He serves as a member of the Board of Governors of the UCLA Foundation and as one of three vice chairs of the UCLA Fund, and is very involved with the Parents Fund.
UCLA’s growing financial constraints, Katz says, have amplified his efforts. “I am working actively to find better ways to make known the needs of UCLA and the benefits to alumni, parents and friends of UCLA who participate.
“I consider UCLA to be in line with any private college or university, including the Ivy League schools,” he says. “When quality, cost, location, diversity of student body and athletic success are factored in, few schools can match all that UCLA has to offer.” — J.L.E.
Walter Allen
Professor of Sociology
Walter Allen realized that UCLA would be an exceptional opportunity for him when he stepped into a class on campus for the first time.
It was 1987, and Allen was then on the sociology faculty at the University of Michigan and being wooed by UCLA. “What tipped the scale for me — what really got me excited about this university — was going into a class and seeing the rainbow of colors,” he says. “It really drove home the point for me that excellence in higher education is enhanced when the cultural and racial diversity of an institution is strong.”
That diversity slipped in the wake of 1996’s Proposition 209, which banned race from consideration as a criterion for admission, but “we’ve gained some ground that was lost, and there’s still a ways to go to ensure that the excellence that emerges from diversity reaches its full potential,” Allen says.
Allen, who has won awards from six national organizations for his scholarship exploring the academic experience, college choices among Black and Latino students and the status of Black males in American society, feels a strong personal and professional connection to the public university experience.
“My education after high school was entirely at private institutions, so for me it is enlightening to be associated with a public institution that achieves excellence while serving a broader population,” he says.
Still, there are formidable challenges that must be overcome teaching at a state school, rather than an elite private with more resources.
“The biggest challenge here is to hustle up the resources my students need to supplement what the university is able to provide. I have colleagues at private institutions that are resource-rich, and frankly, I have been tempted by some of those institutions,” he says. But instead of making that leap, “I look for creative ways to compensate for the financial limitations by working to identify more funds on campus and off, and by continuing to recognize the benefits of being at UCLA.”
Topping the list of benefits are Allen’s students, particularly undergraduates: “Teaching is the center of everything I do,” says Allen, a winner of UCLA’s Luckman Distinguished Teaching Award. “The students are the main reason I’m here. They are constantly a treat.”
His most gratifying experience, Allen says, “has been to light or fan the intellectual flame among students who have been written off because they were former gang-bangers or Black or poor or recent immigrants. These students most remind me of my own academic and intellectual trajectory, a journey that was boosted by teachers who recognized my potential and encouraged my growth.”
In the end, Allen says, “it is the quality of these students — their promise, all the potential they hold, the excellence they represent — that’s what keeps me going. To watch them blossom in this environment, to work in collaborative relationships and recognize their full potential is what makes UCLA truly special.” — Harlan Lebo
Colleen Sutton
Ph.D. Student,
Chemistry and Biochemistry
Colleen Sutton dreams of becoming a professor of organic chemistry and has a passion for research into compounds that fight life-threatening disease. To realize that dream, she applied to many graduate schools — Stanford and Yale among them.
Ultimately, she chose UCLA.
“Once the offer from UCLA came in, I had no inclination to go elsewhere,” Sutton says. “I had already decided that UCLA had the very best to offer me, and that the research group I could join would be perfectly in line with my interests.”
So Sutton packed up her belongings three years ago and moved from Canada to Westwood. She had earned her bachelor of science, with honors, in chemistry and biochemistry from the University of Western Ontario, and had developed a research interest in antioxidants — natural compounds that combat the destructive effects of cell oxidation upon the human body.
Sutton is currently working with the research group of Professor Christopher Foote, a world-renowned leader in the field of photo-oxidation. With his team, she is studying the photochemistry and photophysics of the photoactive drug hypericin, a chemical present in the herb St. John’s Wort that has been found capable of killing cancer cells and HIV.
“I was so excited that Professor Foote — who is brilliant and well-respected in the scientific community — had accepted me into his group,” Sutton says. “I am thrilled to be working with him.”
In the midst of what appears to be an otherwise perfect situation, Sutton admits that her funding as a graduate student at a public university is a challenge.
“I may have received greater financial support at a private institution, and that would have made things a lot easier,” she says. “I always expected to be a poor graduate student, but the L.A. prices make it even harder.”
Sutton draws part of her income from a teaching fellowship provided by her department. And while she reports that “all the teaching I have had to do has allowed me to realize how much I love it,” that job cuts by one-half the time she has to conduct research. Furthermore, even after winning a prestigious Canadian federal scholarship last year, she found that she still wasn’t bringing in enough to live on, so this year she has taken on a second teaching job.
Financial hardships aside, Sutton says she has never regretted coming to UCLA.
“UCLA is the place I need to be to get my career established,” she says. “It’s very exciting to belong to a research group that is well-respected and doing research in interesting and relevant areas of chemistry. I know that the experience I’m getting here will genuinely help me in my future endeavors.” — J.L.E.
Heather Lueck
Senior, Psychology
As an aspiring actress, Heather Lueck was adept at getting inside the heads of the characters she would portray. From her theater background grew a fascination while she was a student at Santa Monica College for psychology and neuroscience. But when her instructors encouraged her to apply to UCLA, she was a little apprehensive. “Since the university is so large, I didn’t expect to have personal contact with professors,” she says.
She overcame those concerns and, within her first year after transferring, found herself in a situation that would be the envy of any graduate student, let alone an undergrad: conducting original research alongside not just one, but two scholars working on the cutting edge of her fields of interest.
Now in her senior year as a psychology major with a minor in neuroscience, Lueck is studying language acquisition among autistic children under the guidance of UCLA psychologist O. Ivar Lovaas, a pioneer in behavior intervention for autistic children. And with neuroscientist Michael S. Fanselow, a leading authority in fear conditioning, learning and memory, she is exploring the role of damage to a specific area of the brain in memory loss. Lueck hopes to one day meld the two fields to illuminate neurobiology’s role in the language disorders to which autistic children are prone.
Though she is surrounded by world-class researchers and mentors, it has not always been easy for Lueck, studying at a university as large as UCLA. Parking, for example, has been a continuing hassle. And she is concerned that because of the university’s more limited financial resources in comparison with top private schools, not all students might have access to the kind of encouragement and opportunities she has enjoyed.
Such opportunities have paid off handsomely for Lueck; she was selected as one of three undergrads to be honored May 12 at the annual College of Letters and Science College Award Dinner, and her professors believe she has an excellent shot at either of the two paths she is considering: medical school or an M.D./Ph.D. program.
Not bad for a would-be actress who once thought that she would be more likely to play the role of a doctor than actually be one.
“Acting was always very meaningful to me,” she says. “But at UCLA, I’ve found a love for these children and a mission in trying to help them. I feel like I have a broader purpose.” — Meg Sullivan
Andrea Ghez
Professor of Physics and Astronomy
When Andrea Ghez decided in 1994 to join the astronomy faculty at UCLA, her reasoning was pretty straightforward.
“If you do infrared astronomy, UCLA is the best place to be,” she says.
It was that reputation and the access UCLA could provide to the W.M. Keck Observatory’s 10-meter Keck I telescope atop the dormant Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii that drew Ghez to Westwood. In the time she has been here, Ghez has made a significant mark: Discover magazine named her one of the top-20 scientists in the country under 40 who “will likely change our fundamental understanding of the world and our place in it,” and she has won the Newton Lacy Pierce Prize in Astronomy for outstanding achievement by an astronomer early in his/her career.
Her work with the Keck I — the world’s largest optical and infrared telescope — has led to remarkable discoveries, including her demonstration of the existence of a monstrous black hole some 24,000 light-years away at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, with a mass 2.6 million times that of our sun. While Ghez’s initial findings four years ago were greeted with skepticism by some astronomers, the evidence supporting her conclusions has been substantially strengthened by recent discoveries, Ghez reported in February at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “The case for the supermassive black hole was strong before, and we have substantially improved it,” she says. “Now it’s a 99.99-percent certainty. We can rule out every alternative that has been proposed.”
It is a facility like Keck, which is co-owned by the University of California and Caltech, that makes such discoveries possible, she says. “The Keck Observatory is the best facility in the world for infrared astronomy. It allows us to do experiments that no one else can do. UCLA has made itself the leader in infrared astronomy at Keck.”
In addition to the value she places on the facilities available to her, Ghez likewise values her faculty colleagues in UCLA’s Department of Physics and Astronomy.
“The department has thought very strategically about how to hire,” she says. “UCLA is also very good about treating young faculty well, and giving them a strong voice in the future of the department. A lot of people in this department have had other offers, and they have chosen to stay. That tells you that something is right here.” — Stuart Wolpert ’81
Howard Welinsky
’72 Advocate
In the rarefied world of the politically connected, no one’s name opens more doors for UCLA in Sacramento or Washington, D.C., than Howard Welinsky’s. A self-avowed political junkie, Welinsky is the volunteer alumnus that UCLA advocates most often call upon to make the Big Call to an elected official or the Big Pitch to a legislative leader.
“We try not to tap him too much because he already does so much on his own,” says Keith Parker, assistant vice chancellor of Government and Community Relations. “But when it’s really crunch time, we reach out to him. I couldn’t even begin to express how much he’s helped us.”
Why does a man who already has a full-time job — he is a senior vice president of administration for Warner Bros. Pictures Distributing — choose to spend countless additional hours at breakfast meetings and lunches, as well as evenings and weekends, working to persuade elected officials to see things from UCLA’s perspective?
“To me, UCLA is really a special place. Words can’t adequately capture what UCLA means to Los Angeles and to California,” Welinsky says. “It’s a world-class institution that many people don’t always understand or fully appreciate.”
The resounding message he carries to Sacramento and to the political meet-and-greets he attends around the state sounds like this: To do world-class breakthrough research that has become synonymous with UCLA, we must recruit the best talent there is. “But how can we attract the best when Princeton, Harvard and Yale can offer these same people 20 to 25 percent more money? That’s the case I take to Sacramento.”
As a member of the California Postsecondary Education Commission, Welinsky views with alarm the annual salary studies he reads that show the University of California lagging behind other schools with which it competes. “I look at how UC compares with the higher-end privates, and I get very, very worried,” he says.
Welinsky didn’t undertake his role as a volunteer advocate until 15 years after he graduated, when he spent a day in Sacramento with university volunteers visiting legislators. Then he came to fully understand how important UCLA was to so many people.
Today, he takes great pride in seeing front-page headlines that tout UCLA’s latest research breakthroughs, knowing he played a role as a volunteer. “To sell UCLA,” he says, “is to sell the future.” — Cynthia Lee
