Peltason Leaves Legacy of Progress at UCI : Chancellor: He shaped it into one of the most promising young universities.

IRVINE —  The delivery man arrived Saturday morning with yet another armload of flowers for Jack and Suzie Peltason, gifts from well-wishers on his surprise selection as the new president of the University of California system.

Peltason answered the door at his home at UC Irvine, where he has been chancellor since 1984. As he signed for these tributes, the 68-year-old political scientist glanced at the assorted spring flowers and remarked--as if to those who say he may be too old for the job--that the occasion is “better than being buried.”

It was quintessential Peltason--making light of his promotion to one of the most prestigious jobs in U.S. higher education.

But his homespun humor and affable style masks perceptive intelligence and political savvy. Combined with his commitment to academic excellence, educators on campus and elsewhere say those qualities have helped the respected constitutional scholar shape UCI into one of the nation’s most promising young universities.

As chancellor for the past eight years, Peltason has presided over the greatest period of sustained growth--in buildings, in fund raising, in big-name hires and in research grants--in the university’s 27-year history. He did it with a minimum of conflict and confusion.

“To maintain the quality and also the progress of the university as he did, that’s a great legacy,” said UC Berkeley Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien, who served as Peltason’s second-in-command from 1988 to 1990.

Peltason is also credited with repairing strained relations with the city of Irvine and reaching out to the greater Orange County business and social community, which has responded with major endowments, as well as partnerships in a community theater and research facilities.

“Jack is a real consensus builder,” said Gary Hunt, senior vice president of the Irvine Co., which under former owner Joan Irvine Smith led the push to establish the university on donated company land in the early 1960s.

“He understands the dynamics of politics and the need to work with very diverse special interest groups, and he has a real ability to identify each of their concerns and bring them together,” Hunt said. “He’ll probably be the best friend the University of California can have with the Legislature and the governor.”

Peltason doesn’t lobby in the conventional sense of the word, said State Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach), who has helped UCI garner millions of dollars in state construction funds in recent years.

“It’s a very personal approach. He provides the right information and accurate detail at the right time,” Bergeson said. “He knows who to make the telephone call to, and that’s very important when you’re dealing with the state and federal government.”

Peltason is not without critics--gays who demand housing for domestic partners, ethnic minorities who want a more diverse faculty and curriculum, and environmentalists who have opposed building a chancellor’s home and entertainment center on nesting grounds for the California gnatcatcher, which is proposed for federal listing as an endangered species.

Others call it a matter of style.

Some university presidents are seen as dynamic, pioneering leaders, said historian Spencer C. Olin, a founding UCI faculty member now serving as acting dean of humanities. “Jack Peltason is a different kind of chancellor, and nonetheless effective for it, in my opinion. He is a shaper of consensus, rather than a dictator of policy.”

Even critics say Peltason, a champion of democratic process and academic tradition who prizes civility, has always been willing to consider opposing points of view.

“He is receptive when students want to meet with him, and when there is a need he is more than willing to listen,” said senior Dean Matsubayashi, chairman of UCI’s Asian-Pacific Student Assn., which has been clamoring for an Asian-American studies program and more professors of Asian heritage.

“He’s like your grandfather,” said former UC student regent Jenny Doh, who often opposed Peltason’s policies during her five years at UCI. “Whether he’s chancellor or president, he’s not in the game to con you or promote himself. . . . The things he does are powered by his commitment to the university. Even if you disagree with him, that’s so much better than working with somebody who isn’t.”

Born in 1923 in St. Louis, Peltason earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in political science at the University of Missouri in 1943 and 1944. He received his Ph.D in political science from Princeton University in 1947.

In 1951, Peltason became professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he later served as dean of liberal arts and sciences until founding UCI Chancellor Daniel Aldrich made him UCI’s first vice chancellor of academic affairs when the campus opened in 1965.

But in 1967, the University of Illinois persuaded him to return as chancellor of the Urbana-Champaign campus, where his first five years were marked by vitriolic student protests--against the Vietnam War, the government and racism. The National Guard came to the campus twice, the state police three times.

“I remember having to move kids’ bedrooms because bricks were being thrown through the windows,” Peltason said.

He eventually moved to the education council in Washington. But in 1984, UC regents tapped him to succeed Aldrich as chancellor of UCI.

Many thought the charismatic Aldrich would be a hard act to follow. But Peltason’s consensus-building style made it possible for him to move toward his oft-stated goal of making UCI a “world-class university.”

Over the years, he has become a close friend of retiring UC President David P. Gardner, and special favorite of the regents for his charm and his ability to put issues in perspective.

One such issue was the money-losing UCI Medical Center. The regents and Gardner had asked Peltason to make financial stability of the hospital his No. 1 priority. But red ink continued to flow. It reached crisis proportions in 1990, prompting Peltason and UC officials to threaten ending its contract with the state as the hospital treating the bulk of Orange County’s poor Medi-Cal patients.

Yet otherwise impatient regents were said to be extremely tolerant of Peltason’s seemingly tireless efforts, not only to improve county and state reimbursement for the poor but also to spark creation of a county task force that is now examining the problem of indigent care.

Many on campus say Peltason came with a more important mission for the campus as a whole: to build bridges with the business and civic community and to boost UCI’S academic caliber.

“In the last years under Aldrich, the place had sort of ground to a halt,” said one longtime faculty member, who like others interviewed did not want to be quoted by namecriticizing the late chancellor. “The budget was growing and I think (Aldrich) got comfortable with not doing anything. Campus-community relations were poor. . . . Then Peltason showed up and he instantly became very visible, constantly talking that good-vibes kind of talk.”

Peltason’s low-key yet engaging demeanor, combined with his willingness to court the private sector, has paid dividends.

“He was able to develop relationships with the business community and persuade them to invest in the campus,” said Judy Rosener, a professor in UCI’s Graduate School of Management.

He won the trust of philanthropists Arnold and Mabel Beckman, developers Donald Bren and Kathryn G. Thompson, Western Digital’s Roger Thompson, and Vita Tech Intl. founder Thomas Tierney.

Total private donations increased from $13.5 million the year he arrived to $22.2 million last year. Under his administration, the UCI College of Medicine endowment has grown from $5.9 million in 1985 to $30 million now.

“People give to an institution where they believe in the leadership,” said Donna Howard, UCI’s assistant vice chancellor of health sciences. “As a fund-raiser . . . my job is easier because the community looks up to (Peltason). They believe their investment is a good one.”

The university also launched controversial partnerships with companies such as Hitachi, which opened a $16.5-million joint biomedical laboratory at UCI in 1990, becoming the first Japanese corporation to build a research facility at a U.S. university. Hitachi scientists labor in one part of the building, UCI scientists in another.

Some on campus and elsewhere question the propriety of giving private companies, particularly foreign ones, access to the research of scientists at public universities.

Peltason argues that contractual agreements provide ample protection against leaks of the university’s intellectual property. Hitachi would have the same access as any other company bidding for licensing of university breakthroughs. In hindsight, however, he admits that it may have been wiser politically for Hitachi to build two buildings, one for its scientists and another for UCI.

But UCI historian Gilbert Gonzalez, among others, worries about what he calls the “commercialization” of the university.

“These kind of arrangements move the sciences away from basic research,” Gonzalez said. “More importantly, there are other aspects of a university that are not commercially glamorous, such as ethnic studies. . . . They have the potential to be placed on the margin of university priorities because they don’t attract private investment.”

UCI has grown in other ways since Peltason’s arrival. Enrollment is up 34% to nearly 17,000 students this year. With an influx of Asian-American students, particularly Vietnamese, UCI now has the greatest percentage of nonwhite students of any UC campus.

Classroom space did not keep pace with enrollment because of a lack of funds during the four terms of Govs. Ronald Reagan and Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., Peltason said. UCI students were forced to sit in aisles and on steps in a rented movie theater off campus and other novel locations.

Since 1984, more than three dozen projects have been built at UCI at a cost of more than $388 million. Much of that came from state construction funds, which Peltason lobbied skillfully to obtain.

Peltason’s other priority was to hire “a critical mass” of top-flight scientists and scholars who would raise both the profile of UCI and build on existing strengths, such as the pioneering atmospheric chemistry of F. Sherwood Rowland and an English Department that is now world-renowned.

Historian Olin was one of many professors who initially wondered whether in Peltason’s quest for big-bucks hires, the existing faculty was not getting its due.

“I used to call it the ‘Star Trek,’ ” Olin said. “But on balance, it has been terrific for the campus.”

The heavy emphasis on faculty recruitment has also boosted the university’s share of private and federal research dollars, which jumped 87% under Peltason to $78 million last year.

Another of Peltason’s accomplishments has been healing the rift with neighboring Irvine.

During the last years of Aldrich’s tenure, tensions were high over everything from joint use of baseball fields to the so-called “Hospital Wars,” a pitched battle over building a hospital in the Irvine area. UCI School of Medicine physicians wanted a research-oriented hospital on campus, but state officials ultimately favored business and community leaders who sought a community hospital in the city.

Some town-gown hostility is inevitable, but Irvine Mayor Sally Anne Sheridan said Peltason went out of his way to reach out to city officials.

“I’d been a community leader since 1974 and I’d never been invited to come to campus and sit down and talk to the chancellor,” Sheridan said. “It was right after Jack started that he and Suzie invited me to dinner.”

Another encounter sealed his acceptance by Irvine’s social set. Sheridan had invited the Peltasons to a fine arts reception. It was a formal affair, but the chancellor’s staff told him only that it was an evening event at a park.

He came in a jumpsuit, carrying a flashlight.

“It didn’t bother him at all that everyone else was in evening clothes,” Sheridan recalled. “He has a grand sense of humor about himself. That endeared him to everybody.”

Peltason is usually unpretentious in dress as well as demeanor. His shock of silver hair often looks askew from his habit of scratching his head as he ponders a question.

His hobby is updating the two books he has co-authored, “Government by the People” and “Understanding the Constitution,” standard political science texts.

“I don’t play golf,” Peltason said. “I work on one of my textbooks every day. That’s my therapy.”

Before his selection as UC president last week, he and his wife were looking forward to spending more time with their six grandchildren. In 1990, he was granted an extension to serve past the mandatory retirement age of 67 for top UC executives. His retirement within a few years was a foregone conclusion.

Then came the call on March 30 from UC regents’ chairman Meredith L. Khachigian, asking him to accept the search committee’s nomination to replace Gardner.

It wasn’t a job Peltason sought, although his name was always mentioned among the leading candidates. In fact, he had backed longtime UCLA Chancellor Charles E. Young. But when the search committee deadlocked over Young and UC San Diego Chancellor Richard C. Atkinson, the group turned to Peltason.

Suzie Peltason was caught by surprise when she called her husband at the office that afternoon.

“He said: ‘Get ready to move.’ . . . My first reaction was momentary dismay, the way I felt when my youngest child was 11 years old and I found out I was pregnant,” she recalled. “Back then, I said, ‘Hey God, this is not in my life’s plan,’ and it was like God said, ‘You’ll love it.’ And we did. I expect this will be the same.”

At UCI, celebrations of Peltason’s new job have been bittersweet.

“Wherever he works, it becomes like a family for him,” said Ruth Ann Baker, Peltason’s executive assistant.. “So he’s grieving a little bit over his baby here.”

Peltason won’t really leave Irvine when he assumes the presidency on Oct. 1. He’ll shuttle between UC headquarters in Oakland and an office he will open near the campus. “I’m going to maintain a presence in Orange County, in Southern California, not only at the regents’ request, but at my own desire,” he said.

Those plans, combined with his age, continue to fuel speculation that Peltason will be a caretaker chancellor. His three-year contract lists Sept. 30, 1995, as his retirement date, though UC officials say that may be extended.

Peltason demurs when asked about his agenda as president, noting that Gardner remains firmly in charge through Sept. 30. But he intends to carry his consensual style north.

“I will be heavily reliant on the nine chancellors,” he said. “Chancellor Young at UCLA is one of the most powerful and admired people in all of higher education. . . . And Tien in the East Bay is quickly building a network. I will be in contact with all of them.”

UC Irvine: The Peltason Years

A look at the growth of UC Irvine under the leadership of Chancellor Jack W. Peltason:

Enrollment*

1984: 12,684

1991: 16,949

* Excludes Health Sciences-College of Medicine

Student Diversity

1984 1991 % Change White 6,607 6,813 +3% Black 320 401 +25% Asian 2,762 4,894 +77% Latino 783 1,408 +80%

Annual Operating Budget In millions of dollars ‘86-’87: 409.8 ‘87-’88: 454.4 ‘88-’89: 502.2 ‘89-’90: 551.7 ‘90-’91: 581.2 Private Funds Raised In millions of dollars ‘84-’85: 13.5 ‘85-’86: 18.2 ‘86-’87: 17.9 ‘87-’88: 19.3 ‘88-’89: 32.8 ‘89-’90: 27.4 ‘90-’91: 22.2 Research Contracts, Grants In millions of dollars ‘84-’85: 41.8 ‘85-’86: 50.0 ‘86-’87: 51.5 ‘87-’88: 58.0 ‘88-’89: 51.4 ‘89-’90: 68.7 ‘90-’91: 78.1 Source: UC Irvine Researched by KRISTINA LINDGREN and APRIL JACKSON / Los Angeles Times