Thank you, Chair Anguiano, and congratulations again on your election as chair. I look forward to working closely with you and Vice Chair Robinson during the coming year.
I want to join the chair in welcoming our new alumni regent-designates, our new student regent designate, and our new staff advisor. We're delighted that you have all joined the board.
I also want to thank the Academic Senate Chair as he concludes his term. I benefited greatly from his counsel, and I greatly appreciate his service. I look forward to working closely with vice chair, Susannah Scott, as she begins her chairmanship this fall.
This is also Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Katherine Newman’s final Regents meeting as she joins the UC Berkeley faculty as the Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Public Policy. Provost Newman has agreed to serve as Senior Advisor to the President in support of the University’s international research partnerships and Degree Plus program during the transition. Please join me in thanking Provost Newman for her dedicated service to the University.
I have appreciated the opportunity to spend time with Chair Anguiano as she prepared to lead this Board, and I have been impressed by the dedication, thoughtfulness, and sense of responsibility she brings to this role.
Her recognition of the Board’s role as stewards of public trust resonates.
As she suggests, effective stewardship is forward-looking. It requires us to look beyond today's agenda and anticipate the needs of a rapidly changing California. Each of our decisions helps shape an institution that will continue serving the state for many years to come.
Public universities were created by and exist to serve their states. The University of California was created to educate California's most talented students, prepare leaders through outstanding graduate and professional education, conduct research that changes the world, and contribute significantly to building the economy of the state.
Californians have always supported the academic excellence of UC, and the University has continued to deliver. Look no further than a record five Nobel Prize winners from the University of California last year. People from all over the world took notice, and I can’t tell you how many times I was asked: how does UC do that? Excellence at that level does not exist without continuing to invest in it and nurture it. Similarly, Californians have also always believed in access, and they have taken understandable pride in the engines of social and economic mobility that are our community colleges, CSU, and UC. Both excellence and access are part of our heritage and keys to UC’s future.
The University's founders in 1868 could not have imagined today's California. But by 1960, those crafting the Master Plan understood that demand for higher education would far outstrip capacity. And California's population has roughly tripled since then. It is no secret that demand for a UC education continues to exceed supply.
That’s why the first recommendation in the 2023 report from the Regents’ Task Force on Institutional Growth, chaired by Regent Anguiano, has such relevance today. The report calls for us to reimagine how and where UC happens.
That doesn’t mean abandoning the core elements of our mission—access and excellence—far from it. It means thinking about how we can make high quality UC offerings available to more Californians. That means growing our campuses and other sites where possible. It also means taking advantage of technology to reach more Californians throughout their lifetimes.
That’s what I mean when I talk about a Master Plan for the 21st century. Not relitigating institutional boundaries set in 1960—which, perhaps surprisingly but for a variety of reasons, still make basic sense—but recognizing that recent and rapid developments in technology—unimaginable to President Kerr and his collaborators—shift the ground dramatically. We need to consider how we use all the resources now available to us to reimagine and advance the university today. We must preserve what this university does so well while working to serve Californians even better.
Our underlying commitment to serving California is the same today as it was in 1960: building and supporting academic excellence and broadening educational opportunity.
How we fulfill those responsibilities will continue to evolve. We cannot know exactly what California—or the university—will look like 20 years from now. But we know there will be profound changes; in how people learn, in the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence, in the changing nature of work, and in the needs of the communities we serve.
Meeting these needs requires evaluating evidence, deliberating thoughtfully, listening carefully to one another, and committing to the tradition of shared governance that has served this University so well for over 100 years.
It also requires humility. We should not assume that we already know the answers.
Our shared governance requires that the Board and administration thoughtfully exercise their fiduciary obligation, working closely with experts on our faculty, to address the important issues facing the University regarding college readiness, including the A-G requirements and the role of standardized tests as one factor in admissions.
These are consequential questions about how to best prepare California's students for success at the world's leading public research university and to continue to fulfill our responsibility to the people of this state. That is the fiduciary responsibility this Board owes the people of California, and it is important that we get these decisions right.
We must approach our work thoughtfully but without delay. We should take the time necessary to reach our decisions, but no more. The Board’s work should be grounded in evidence and clearly communicated to the public of the state it serves.
If we approach our work with this spirit, I am confident that together we will leave the University of California stronger than we found it, better prepared to serve future generations, and even more deserving of the trust the people of California have placed in us.