• printer friendly
• mail this article
• iPod format
• digg

Photo

During his 14 years as dean, Scott Waugh navigated budget cuts, eased the restraints of Prop. 209

Scott Waugh, the dean of social sciences who has served for longer than any other top administrator in the UCLA College, announced this week he will step down at the end of the school year.

Waugh, who is also a history professor, will have been dean for 14 years and will have worked at UCLA for 28 years when he steps down June 30, 2006.

He noted jokingly in an e-mail announcing his resignation to colleagues that he had been dean for “more than enough time to do considerable mischief.”

“Being dean has been a wonderful experience, sometimes frustrating, often challenging, always stimulating. The greatest pleasure has been working with all of you, few of whom I would have known as a historian of medieval England,” he wrote in the e-mail.

He now plans to take a year off, then return to teaching and researching medieval history at UCLA, which he said was difficult while acting as dean.

“That’s a part of your life you don’t do as an administrator,” he said.

Waugh became dean in 1992, and one of his first challenges was negotiating an end to the student hunger strikes that prompted the creation of a chicano studies research center.

That came full circle for him with the departmentalization of the center this past January – the cause those fasting students had originally been fighting for. He called the departmentalization “very gratifying.”

Another defining point of his tenure was dealing with state budget cuts while trying to maintain faculty recruiting and the quality of the social science programs – a task Waugh said was his biggest challenge.

“It hasn’t been easy because we haven’t had all the resources (to maintain quality) given the challenge,” he said.

Patricia O’Brien, dean of the College, said Waugh’s handling of the difficult budget situation has been one of his biggest accomplishments.

She also said numerous departments in the social sciences have maintained top-10 rankings in their fields under Waugh.

“That’s not an accident,” she said.

Anthropology Chairman Douglas Hollan said Waugh’s decision to step down was a “terrible loss for the College” and praised his ability to fairly distribute budget cuts among departments.

“During the time that I’ve been chair we were all trying to contend with the big budget cuts,” Hollan said. “Given that everyone was going to have to share the pain, I think he did a good job of distributing the pain in a fair and just way.”

Waugh’s time as dean also saw the passage of Prop. 209, which outlawed consideration of race or ethnicity in hiring for stage agencies, including the UC, posing new problems for faculty recruitment.

Waugh said his division tried to work within the restraints of Prop. 209 by identifying fields with female or minority candidates – such as political science or ethnic studies departments – and make sure applicant pools reflected the demographics of candidates in those fields.

O’Brien noted Waugh’s interactions with faculty and his collaborative style as part of what made him successful.

“It’s easy when you’re sitting in an administrative position to get removed with what’s happening on the ground,” she said. “That’s not the case with Scott.”

Colleagues also said he was attentive to faculty issues.

“As an (interdepartmental program chair), Scott has been tremendously supportive and I worked with him quite well,” said Min Zhou, former chairwoman of the Asian American studies department.

“I found that he is a dean who is very receptive of departmental demands, and also he’s very willing to listen,” she said, adding, “Whether or not he can do it is quite another thing.”

Zhou also said Waugh “has provided guidance to get things through the administrative maze” of making Asian American studies its own department, which was approved last October.

He said he chose now to step down because he believes the social sciences are on relatively secure financial footing, and now is a good opportunity for someone else to take the reins.

Among other activities he will undertake during a year off following his resignation, he’s looking forward to catching up on some sleep and, he said with laugh, “re-toning his intellectual muscles.”