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Chancellor Emeritus Charles E. Young (left) and Chancellor Albert Carnesale, pictured here on May

Soon, Albert Carnesale will be a part of UCLA’s past. The outgoing chancellor will join the university’s seven chief executives before him in the annals of UCLA history.

For one particularly notable member of the campus community, Carnesale’s place in that lineage and impact on UCLA history is related to his own.

That man is former Chancellor Charles Young, who led the university for 29 years before Carnesale, the longest tenure of any UCLA chancellor.

He describes Carnesale as “someone who followed a kind of legend, someone who’d been there forever,” though Young is quick to emphasize he doesn’t mean to flatter himself.

“I think that was a difficult job to follow someone who had that cachet ... that length of time,” said Young, 74, in a telephone interview. “In a way, what he did was move us out of the Chuck Young era, which ... had to be done. Chuck Young wasn’t there anymore.”

Carnesale’s nine-year tenure at UCLA – along with Young’s 29 years and Franklin D. Murphy’s eight before both of them – comprises the last in a trio of chancellors who have led the university through 46 years of UCLA history, or more than half of the 87 years the university has existed.

Rick Tuttle, a UCLA alumnus, adviser to the undergraduate student government and longtime UCLA observer, called Carnesale one of “three powerhouses” who have provided the campus with a measure of stability for nearly half a century.

“Run that against most of the other major institutions, it’s really an incredible record of continuity,” Tuttle said.

The three chancellors guided UCLA through more than four decades of social change, which included the Cold War, the free speech movement, the civil rights movement and a post-Sept. 11 world.

For comparison, during the same period UC Berkeley has had nine chancellors, the University of California has had eight presidents, and the United States has had 10 presidents.

That trio of chancellors also presided over enormous growth within the university. In 1965, during Murphy’s chancellorship, UCLA had 26,119 students, according to the UC’s digital history archive. Today, at the end of Carnesale’s term, that number has grown to 35,625. The number of UCLA library volumes has grown from 2.8 million in 1968 to 8 million today.

Young said that period of stability has been important to UCLA’s growth and rise to prominence among American universities.

“You don’t want stasis, but you want stability and you want some consistency and continuity, and I think UCLA has had that,” Young said.

The “powerhouse” period started with Murphy, who entered office in 1960. Under Murphy, the School of Public Health was established, the University Research Library (now known as Charles E. Young Research Library) was completed, and John Wooden’s historic run of basketball championships began.

Young said Murphy, who was also his mentor, set the stage for the enormous growth that would follow.

“His tenure set up UCLA for great movement forward in many ways,” Young said. “He, much more than I, was able to dig deeply into the political, industrial, financial community of Los Angeles – that was his style and his interest – and develop the kind of support base for UCLA that was absolutely critical.”

Young’s tenure saw the university’s operating expenditures grow from $169.7 million to $2 billion over his 29 years (UCLA’s operating budget grew to $3.2 billion by 2003-2004).

Under Young, buildings sprouted up left and right: There were 236 campus buildings when his chancellorship ended, compared to 109 when it began.

Tuttle, who worked as Los Angeles city controller while Young was in office, said he was struck by the authenticity of all three men.

“They’re tough guys; they’re straight from the shoulder,” Tuttle said.

Carnesale said he realizes comparisons between him and his predecessors – specifically Young – are unavoidable, but emphasizes, as do other administrators, that they each served at different times in the university’s history, which in turn required different approaches.

“(Young) deserves a great deal of credit. He really transformed UCLA, so you want to learn from that. At the same time, this was a new phase in UCLA’s development and history, and so while there should be continuity, there should also be change,” Carnesale said.

In assessing Carnesale’s legacy, administrators invariably point to Campaign UCLA – the record-breaking $3 billion fundraising initiative – as one of his greatest accomplishments.

Judith Smith, vice provost of undergraduate education, used the analogy of the growth and development of a person to describe different chancellors’ roles in the campus’s history.

She said that while Young “kind of moved (UCLA) from adolescence to young adult,” during a period of rapid financial growth and development of the campus, Carnesale inherited it “as it reached young adulthood” when “changes are going to be slower.”

She pointed to Campaign UCLA as an important part of dealing with what she said was a more difficult economic climate, amid crippling state budget cuts, than what Young dealt with.

Young called Carnesale’s time a period of “consolidation,” during which Carnesale helped maximize the potential provided by the programs and finances set up before him.

Now, in the context of the university’s prominence and size, Young said he hopes UCLA’s next chancellor will take more risks and try new initiatives to improve the university.

“Despite the fact that UCLA is now huge in every way and great in every way, we need to kind of get back into that battling, underdog feel. That’s not being critical of Al; I don’t think that’s what was needed,” he said. “But I think now we need to begin to press forward a little more.”

He said that advancement could include thinking differently about financing public education, suggesting a stronger push towards privatization, or increased private donations as compared to state funding – a concept Carnesale has often advocated – as one direction to take.

In looking back at Carnesale’s time, Young said the outgoing chancellor’s style was well-suited for the time in UCLA history in which he led the university.

“(Carnesale) probably was just the right kind of person to serve during that period,” Young said.

“There’s no more important institution in the world than the great American ... university, and UCLA is one of the best of those,” he said.