UCSC Chancellor Cynthia Larive up for regular five-year review

In her six years leading UC Santa Cruz, Chancellor Cynthia Larive has gone through a global pandemic, historic campus unrest due to the war in Gaza, the school’s budget crisis and an existential threat from the Trump administration’s attacks on higher education funding. 

How well she has led the campus through those challenges and more will be the focus of new University of California President James B. Milliken and faculty leaders from UCSC and systemwide in a pending, regular five-year review. 

Milliken will initiate the review as Larive is due for her first one this fall, “but it has not been confirmed yet,” UC Office of the President spokesperson Stett Holbrook told Lookout via email this week.

Larive is past due for her first review because the UC Office of the President fell behind on doing reviews “due to the pandemic,” he said. Holbrook declined to say how long the review process will take. Considered “confidential personnel matters,” the results of the reviews aren’t public.  

Holbrook told Lookout that Larive doesn’t have a contract with the university, and he didn’t respond to questions clarifying if an employment agreement exists for chancellors. 

Larive told Lookout via email she’s looking forward to the new school year and declined to say if the review was scheduled yet, how she feels about having her first review and how she feels about her time as chancellor so far. 

“I’m incredibly proud to serve as UC Santa Cruz’s chancellor,” she said. “I remain deeply inspired by our faculty, staff, and students who are helping to make a lasting, positive impact on California and the world.”

The UC Board of Regents appointed Larive in May 2019, making her UCSC’s 11th chancellor. Before taking the role, she served as provost and executive vice chancellor at UC Riverside, and served in various administrative roles after beginning her career as a chemistry professor at the University of Kansas in 1992. She replaced former chancellor George Blumenthal, who stepped down after about 13 years at UCSC.

Over the past 15 years, the time university presidents serve in their roles has declined by about three years, according to a 2022 American College President Survey conducted by the American Council on Education. In 2006, presidents served for about 8.5 years. By 2022, the average tenure had dropped to 5.9 years. 

How the chancellor review process works

The UC Office of the President’s review of campus chancellors is done in collaboration with the UC-wide Academic Senate and each campus’ academic senate. The UC-wide and campus-level senate groups are the faculty governing bodies that set policy on a range of topics like curriculum, admissions and budgeting. 

The process includes a chancellor self-evaluation and review committee report summarizing letters from, and potentially interviews, with faculty. 

The chancellor review committee report is confidential and meant to help the president discuss the review with the chancellor. Guidelines for the review process state that the report will cover “strengths, areas for improvement, and any areas needing further examination. The report will not serve as an up-or-down judgment on the chancellor’s service.”

The chancellor review committee will be made up of five academic senate members: three from UCSC and two from other campuses. Three from UCSC are nominated by the UCSC Committee on Committees and selected by the UC Academic Council chair, currently Steven Cheung. The two other members of the review committee will be nominated by the UC-wide Committee on Committees and are also selected by the council chair. 

The membership of the chancellor review committee won’t be public. The UCSC academic senate may request that the chancellor review committee conduct interviews with faculty as part of the review.

Additionally, the UCSC Academic Senate chair, currently Matt McCarthy, will work with former chairs who served during Larive’s tenure to prepare a letter that reflects their view of her performance. 

While personnel reviews are confidential, a recent faculty survey described a lack of confidence in the campus leadership. 

Two influential faculty committees that are part of the campus academic senate – the Committee on Teaching and the Committee on Educational Policy – released a report, dated May 16, on results from a faculty survey that depicted low morale and frustration over the negative impacts of budget cuts on learning and research. The campus has been struggling to resolve large annual deficits, citing rapidly rising labor costs and stagnant enrollment and tuition. 

In the report, faculty said the budget cuts implemented by the campus will result in “poorer curricula with poorer delivery of classes, diminished and disappearing graduate programs, diminished levels of student success in ways that exacerbate equity.”

“Our highest campus administrators, our report finds, are communicating poorly in ways that exacerbate these negative effects,” the report stated. 

Less than a month after that report was published, Larive’s second-in-command, former campus provost Lori Kletzer, announced she was stepping down and returning to her faculty role. 

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