The Bell Curve -- Joseph N. Bell

Chancellor Ralph Cicerone arrived at UC Irvine’s first baseball game

in 10 years a half-hour early because he and Athletic Director Dan

Guerrero were scheduled jointly to throw out the first two pitches of a

new season and the chancellor wanted to work out the kinks in his arm.

That’s when Cicerone discovered he’d forgotten his baseball glove. So he

and Guerrero played barehanded catch with a hardball behind the stands

before the game. It worked. The chancellor threw a perfect strike. But he

paid a price. His hands were bruised and sore the next morning.

Cicerone also threw from the mound rather than fudging closer to the

plate. And he stayed to the end of a game that dragged on for almost five

hours in arctic weather. All of this seems to symbolize rather well the

determination of his UCI administration to gear up to the new and growing

prestige of a campus that U.S. News and World Report ranks among the top

10 public universities in the United States. UCI also stands in the same

rarefied company in the total number of applicants for admission last

year.

And part of that gearing up, Cicerone told me in an interview at his

office last week, is to seek a stronger connection with the community in

which UCI lives. I can get behind that. Even though I had a small part in

UCI’s growth as a teacher there for two decades, I can certainly be a lot

more neighborly.

“Look around our campus tonight,” he said. “Princeton is playing

volleyball and UCLA is playing baseball here. I don’t know how many

lectures and other activities open to the public are going on tonight.

There are our extension courses, which are a real resource. Besides our

performing arts, exciting activities are taking place in engineering and

computer science. On any day of the week, top people from all over the

world are giving special lectures on our campus.

“But I still hear from too many local people saying, ‘I didn’t know

that was happening.’ Martin Luther King’s daughter spoke here last week,

for example -- a dynamic, spiritual and dramatic stage presence. I think

more people would have been on hand to hear her if we had publicized it

better. We haven’t done a good enough job of this or of making it easy

for community people to come to activities on the campus. We’re working

hard at both of these things now.”

He ticked off a number of examples, starting with his satisfaction

that the Pilot is now covering the UCI campus. Facilities at the school

of the arts are being upgraded around a newly designed plaza. Parking

capacity is being steadily enlarged. The university’s CEO Roundtable --

comprising a group of Orange County corporate leaders dedicated to

building bridges to the community -- is setting the tone for an

increasing number of community volunteers involved in campus activities.

The new baseball stadium will soon be enlarged so it will be suitable for

NCAA playoff games. There is more. Much more.

But the biggest challenge is getting the word out to UCI’s neighbors.

And, to that end, efforts are underway to create a master calendar

that can be assembled well enough ahead to permit planning and will

provide daily information on campus activities. The calendar would be

offered to newspapers, posted on the university’s Web site, and sent out

to campus mailing lists. On a more modest scale, a new electronic sign on

campus, paid for by students, is putting up messages 24 hours a day

describing campus activities.

Chancellor Cicerone -- an internationally acclaimed atmospheric

scientist -- is sympathetic to interscholastic athletics and admits to

feeling some pressure about adding a Division I football team now that

UCI is in the big time in so many other ways. He explained to me in

detail the economic trade-offs that make it impossible for him to support

such a move.

Then he added: “Our athletic programs are built on student athletes,

and I think we’re doing that so far. For example, three of our basketball

players are on the dean’s list, and a fourth is very close. But the only

way to get the money to start a football program is through television,

and it requires a winning team to get on TV. Big money makes it very

difficult to run a clean program and have real students on the team.”

But his enthusiasm for what is taking place at UCI these days is

boundless. So is his desire to involve the campus with its neighbors. He

talked with special satisfaction about UCI’s outreach programs to local

students that range from a professor who plays Saturday morning math

games with gifted school kids to the support faculty members offer to

public school students in the arts.

Like Dan Aldrich, UCI’s first chancellor, Cicerone assiduously picks

up trash he encounters on the campus because he feels strongly that “the

beauty of the campus is vital.”

That beauty is just one of the many reasons UCI’s neighbors should

take a closer look at how we can share in the depth and breadth of its

phenomenal growth.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.