The Gentle Persuader : UCSD Thrives Under Chancellor’s Steady Focus

When Richard T. Atkinson visited the UC San Diego campus for the first time in March, 1980, he already knew of the remarkable collection of professors assembled at the young institution, less than 16 years old at the time but already ranked as the best among universities created after World War II.

Atkinson took little time as the fifth and newest UCSD chancellor to proclaim his priority to be one of preserving academic quality.

After initial discussions with faculty, students and staff, there was near-unanimous praise for his stellar academic credentials as a leading psychologist at Stanford University, his managerial talent honed as head of the National Science Foundation, and his charm and willingness to listen, debate and make himself accessible to both the campus and the community.

Now, after a decade of prodigious growth and expansion at the campus, Atkinson--the longest-serving chancellor at UCSD--says his actions, from new programs to new buildings, all stem from his original and still top priority to enhance faculty quality.

And the university community--indeed, the San Diego community at large--continues to speak overwhelmingly of his energy, his intellectual interests and his ability to deflect animosities and disputes that otherwise would combine over a decade to diminish a chancellor’s effectiveness. Among the many changes:

* The number of full-time faculty members jumped 41%, from 753 to 1,061. The number of faculty chairs endowed by local individuals or corporations grew from zero to 31. Enrollment climbed from 11,183 students to 17,595.

For entering classes, composite Scholastic Aptitude Test scores rose from 1059 to 1138 and high-school grade point averages from 3.45 to 3.74.

* The university created a division of engineering, a department of communications, centers for research in magnetic recording and in molecular genetics, and institutes for research on aging and on global conflict. It established graduate schools in Pacific Rim studies and in architecture, the nation’s largest earthquake structural testing laboratory, a national supercomputer center and a U.S.-Mexican studies program, and expanded its medical school to include strong clinical ties to the community.

* UCSD was named to membership in the Assn. of American Universities, a group of the top 58 research institutions. The faculty won many academic awards, including six MacArthur prizes (which reward uncommon talent with money for research), three National Medal of Science awards, eight Presidential Young Investigator awards and two Pulitzer Prizes. Federal research funding zoomed from $115 million in 1980 to $171 million in 1990, making UCSD fifth among all American universities in receipt of federal grant money.

* Construction totaling almost half a billion dollars radically altered the look of the campus, with new buildings for engineering, for medicine, for undergraduate classrooms, for undergraduate dormitories, for performing arts with the Mandell Weiss Center and the La Jolla Playhouse, and for student life with the sprawling Price Center.

* With a monthly payroll of $30 million to 15,000 employees and annual purchases of $300 million in goods and services, economists estimate that UCSD contributed almost $1 billion a year to San Diego’s economy by 1989.

Atkinson’s “great, and I’ve taught under a lot of great college presidents, from Dwight Eisenhower and Nicholas Butler at Columbia to Robert Sproul and Clark Kerr at Berkeley,” said William Nierenberg, the iconoclastic director-emeritus of UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

“He exercises authority in a very gentle way, which I could never do, because he will tolerate a certain amount of inefficiency, here and there, for the greater goal of the overall campus.

“And he’s a fabulous fund-raiser--again in an easy, gentle way--and things have gotten built on this campus in a way that I would have never guessed in 100 years.”

UCSD’s first chancellor in 1960, physicist Herbert York, calls Atkinson an “academic entrepreneur” with the ability to spot promising new areas and programs, who took an already good university to even higher levels.

“Atkinson certainly has created the general atmosphere” for advancement, York said, although noting that “the growth and quality on a campus involve more than just a single person, whether a chancellor or anyone else. As chancellor, you don’t have a lot of room to intervene in established departments,” given the strong tradition of faculty governance in the University of California system.

“But, in devising new units or recruiting new people, you can play a big role and steer resources,” York added, agreeing with the Pacific Rim school’s dean, Peter Gourevich, who said that Atkinson “is the type of person who at the right moment says, ‘Yes,’ really strongly, and pounces like a lion on the opportunity.”

R. Barry McComic, the developer of Rancho Bernardo in the early 1960s, said Atkinson “has a fantastic enthusiasm for the university that is infectious.”

McComic is one of 500 members of the Chancellor’s Associates--up from about 80 when Atkinson first arrived--who donate $1,500 annually into a discretionary fund to support special UCSD projects. In addition, McComic has helped shepherd the UCSD Foundation from $4 million in 1980 to its present $52-million endowment, which contributes almost $9 million a year to the university.

“If you stay around Dick long enough,” McComic said, “you begin to hear yourself spouting the statistics and talking about professors that he is continually telling people about, and you begin repeating them to other people . . . the place is absolutely full of excitement and has the brightest and the most talented and most motivated people around San Diego.”

Atkinson professes reluctance to take the major credit for UCSD’s progress, reflecting a cautious public stance built up over years of political battles, both in Washington as NSF director and in academia, as well as his gentlemanly sense of style that dictates letting accomplishments speak for themselves.

“Everything good from this university flows from the faculty, and they set the whole climate,” the 60-year-old chancellor said. “I understand the importance of having a first-rank faculty fully engaged in academic pursuits.

“So I am aggressive in interactions and do have conflicts over issues, but I go out of my way to maintain good relations, to avoid personal animosities, even with those whom I am at odds with on intellectual issues.”

David Gardner, president of the UC system, said Atkinson’s “impeccable academic credentials and his years of teaching and research all prepared him for a campus that has high expectations and exacting standards for itself . . . a faculty that is both proud and insistent on its own prerogatives.”

“The fit is just right between UC San Diego and Dick Atkinson,” Gardner said, adding that UCSD now ranks among the top 25 universities nationally, along with UC Berkeley and UCLA, and enjoys an international reputation in many areas, both science and non-science.

The founding father of UCSD, oceanographer Roger Revelle, said Atkinson “is not in any way someone who rubs people the wrong way. He genuinely has a sweet disposition.”

Atkinson was keenly aware in 1980 when named chancellor that his predecessor, William D. McElroy, had resigned in part from conflict with the Academic Senate, which had voted a no-confidence resolution concerning his administrative policies.

“But, even after 10 years, he is still sensitive to the need for shared governance with the faculty” and the need for avoiding big surprises, said Katja Lindenberg, a chemical physicist and former chair of the Academic Senate.

Lindenberg said that Atkinson always consults before pushing a particular course of action, such as creating the division of engineering in 1982 and pushing continued enrollment in the early 1980s despite inadequate state funding until Gov. Deukmejian began increasing UC budgets. Concurrence of the senate is required before the university can carry out new curriculum or academic programs.

“He loves hearing what you have to say, to have open argument, . . . I miss the debating matches that I used to have with him” as faculty senate chair, said Lindenberg, a UCSD professor for 21 years.

“Dick is intellectually engaged in what the faculty is doing, he likes to know what they are doing and what kinds of things they are interested in,” said Patrick Ledden, provost of Muir College, one of five undergraduate campus residential units.

Economist Theodore Groves, the present chair of the Academic Senate, recalled the annual dinner last month at UCLA, at which chancellors from all nine campuses and their major assistants dine together.

“I was talking with one of my colleagues (about some research on Benjamin Franklin) and Dick overheard what was being said and immediately joined us,” Groves said, “talking about Franklin’s science interest and how he (Atkinson) had become familiar with it while planning a Bicentennial proposal regarding Franklin when he was head of the National Science Foundation. . . . He’s not just a public relations person like so many chancellors.”

Atkinson also takes on greater responsibility for recruiting faculty members than do many chancellors, said Roy Ritchie, UCSD history professor who also serves as an associate chancellor.

“If there is a key recruitment or even a retention issue, Dick is willing to get into the thing and help in any way he can,” Ritchie said.

Gourevich of the Pacific Rim school said Atkinson gave vital credibility to Gourevich’s efforts in 1986 and 1987 to recruit prominent professors from across the nation for the new graduate school.

“I was just chairman of a steering committee at the time,” Gourevich said. “Atkinson was able to reassure people like (Laurence Krause from the Brookings Institution in Washington) that UC was committed to the concept, that the school was really important to the campus.”

“He was very persuasive with me,” Ramon Gutierrez, professor of history, said of Atkinson’s role in UCSD’s recruitment of him from Pomona College in 1982. Gutierrez received a MacArthur Prize in 1983.

“At the time, I had a variety of offers from other schools, and I remember my apprehension about coming to La Jolla because of the cost of housing and the whole issue of the University of California paying less than private universities.

“Atkinson went out of his way to invite me to campus, to make sure that housing was available to me, to talk to me about salary and incentives.”

Atkinson said: “I think it makes a difference that I am interested, and I do have a lot of intellectual interest, and a lot of connections through the international scene.”

But he confessed some surprise at the growth in the faculty over the past decade.

“Even I never expected it would climb from some 700 to almost 1,200, but that shows why private funding and endowment support is so important,” Atkinson said, referring to his community fund raising. For UC-endowed chairs, a minimum $250,000 donation is required, to cover research and other activities not paid by the basic state-funded salary.

By all accounts, Atkinson has been wildly successful in deepening UCSD’s roots within the community and in particular in nurturing the region’s growing biomedical and high-technology firms through outreach programs with the university’s high-powered science and medical departments.

UCSD faculty members are responsible for the formation of 35 biotechnology firms in San Diego County, according to university records.

“I don’t know of any chancellor who has better relations with the surrounding community than Dick has,” UC President Gardner said.

Dan Pegg, head of the Economic Development Corp. in San Diego, a city-sponsored agency to attract business to San Diego, said few residents realize “the involvement that UCSD has had in the major diversification of San Diego’s economy . . . a great deal of our high-tech manufacturing and biomed could not have happened without the university, and Atkinson has made it a high priority to listen to any concept or proposal and look for reasons to say ‘yes’ in helping the community.”

Atkinson said the results stem from good timing, “in that we sort of hit our stride (in the decade) just as the region did . . . it’s a synergetic activity.”

State Sen. Lucy Killea (D-San Diego), who earned her doctorate in Latin American history at UCSD, said a great deal of Atkinson’s success with the community comes “because he is one of the easiest people to talk to. He knows how to listen, which is unusual for someone who has the position he has, which involves so much speaking and telling other people his views.

“He’s even helped get the alumni association going.”

There have been a few disappointments for Atkinson, of course. His attempts to establish a law school in the early 1980s met with opposition from the Board of Regents and the state Legislature, although he still believes that a law school will one day be inevitable.

Minority hiring still lags behind goals, although Atkinson devised a systemwide program called “targets of opportunity,” under which a department is given permission to hire a promising minority scholar, even if student enrollments do not justify an additional faculty appointment.

Also, the Academic Senate remains uncomfortable with proposals for a department of ethnic studies. Atkinson has designated Gutierrez to head a special committee to come up with plans as well as to improve the often uneasy relationships between the existing interdisciplinary programs in particular fields--such as ethnic studies, science studies and Asian studies--and individual academic departments.

But Groves pointed to the ethnic studies controversy as an example of Atkinson’s collegial management style.

“We’ve struggled with this and some people, quite frankly, would have breathed a sigh of relief if Atkinson had just let the issue die, but he feels we really need to have a commitment here, that there are changing demands on the university and a changing intellectual climate,” Groves said.

Atkinson’s most stressful time as chancellor came in 1982 and involved not a university-related crisis but a personal one. He was sued by a former assistant professor of education at Harvard University, who claimed that Atkinson impregnated her in 1977 and then persuaded her to have an abortion by falsely promising to father a child by her later.

Atkinson consistently denied the allegations, but in February, 1986, he agreed to pay Lee Perry $250,000 to settle her claims. She had charged that Atkinson caused her emotional distress by threatening to destroy her academic reputation and suggesting at one point that she commit suicide to resolve the mental distress caused by his failure to impregnate her a second time.

Atkinson said the settlement was not an admission of liability, but he and his wife wanted to bring the matter to a close and avoid the expense and uncertainty of further legal proceedings. He has subsequently declined to discuss the lawsuit, saying it is a legal matter about which he has been advised not to comment.

A veteran UCSD official, who asked not to be identified, said the campus community “was remarkably sympathetic and understanding, and did not feel what happened was important at all for what the campus is about.

“While I am sure he was under a fantastic strain, he was able to keep it quite separate from his duties as chancellor, and he showed it is possible to separate your personal life from a productive career during a time of crisis.”

However, some professors believe it might have negatively affected Atkinson’s consideration as a replacement for former UC President David Saxon, who left the post in 1982.

Today, Atkinson says he has no interest in leaving UCSD for any other job. “I like it here, and I plan to be around a lot longer,” he said, although he must retire by age 67 under UC regulations.

“I don’t have the urge to go anywhere else,” Atkinson said, although he conceded that in the past he might have considered some foundation posts if offered, in particular with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.

Earlier this month, press reports from San Francisco named him as Gardner’s first choice to assume the chancellor’s post at Berkeley. Gardner denied he had targeted Atkinson. The UCSD chancellor, although saying, “It was obvious my name was among many put into consideration,” added, “I never asked to be considered.”

Atkinson has just completed a yearlong term as president of the prestigious American Assn. for the Advancement of Science, where he consistently sounded the warning about a growing lack of American scientists and engineers being trained to maintain the nation’s competitiveness into the 21st Century.

Atkinson will take a two-month leave of absence in April and May to lobby in Washington with congressional leaders and other policy-makers for greater national resources to train more scientists and engineers, including establishment of a National Fellowship Program to award 3,000 new four-year fellowships annually to doctoral candidates in science.

Asked about his priorities at UCSD upon his return, Atkinson again hearkened back to the theme he began with in 1980.

“Faculty excellence, faculty quality,” he said. “All the other things that I do, from a new school to whatever, will all be within that overall framework.”