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Task force chairman and Executive Vice Chancellor Daniel Neuman discusses the Competitiveness Tas

A recent report by the Competitiveness Task Force made suggestions on how the school can improve its ability to compete with other universities.

“How do we become better than we are?” was the agenda, said task force chairman and Executive Vice Chancellor Daniel Neuman.

The task force, created by Chancellor Albert Carnesale at last year’s chancellor’s retreat, focused on faculty merit and graduate program quality as the fundamental components for determining the competitive degree of a university.

“Whatever we can do to attract the best faculty, and the best students, will make us the best kind of university,” Neuman said

The task force addressed the difference between UCLA and its principal competitors in education, and presented eight recommendations for bridging a growing resource gap.

The report has been given to Carnesale to determine which of the suggestions will materialize.

One recommendation urges Carnesale to enhance UCLA’s ability to recruit premier faculty and graduate students by offering 200 new endowed chair positions and 400 additional graduate fellowships and teaching apprenticeships.

“Endowed chairs do two important things: they actually lend both prestige and resource to people who hold them,” said Neuman.

“This gives a significant competitive edge in recruiting ... because of the funds and the prestige,” he added.

Although UCLA currently has 164 endowed chairs; 67 of those chairs are vacant.

The eight advisements were divided into four sub-categories. One category dealt with space management and planning, and recommended the university install an assistant or associate vice chancellor position to oversee this matter.

“Space is an essential, scarce, and costly resource that deserves to be planned and managed in the same way as we manage financial resource,” the report said.

Neuman said the way the campus thinks about its space is very important. He referred to the Bunche Hall vending kiosk constructed last August, and the frustration it caused faculty and students working in the building. Faculty members complained that the vending machine ruined the aesthetic feel of the Bunche courtyard. The kiosk, which cost $75,000 to build, would have cost another $25,000 to remove.

The eight final recommendations came from an initial pool of 140 considered by Action Groups – sub-committees within the task force.

Neuman said he believed virtually all of the task force’s recommendations will be implemented, and that none of the suggestions were outside the scope of university ability.

“Part of the excellence of the task force was having a keen sense of what is doable,” he said.

But task force member and Academic Senate vice chairman Cliff Brunk said some suggestions are impossible to implement, but that Carnesale would be open to ideas.

“(Carnesale) wishes to make UCLA more competitive,” Brunk said.

As at any bureaucratic institution, the suggestions Carnesale chooses to implement will take time.

“I would like to have these recommendations moving in implementable space ... by autumn,” Neuman said. He added that though they may be implementable, the changes may not yet be in “implementable space.”