Education: On the Spot

Gardner will head Cal

Well, Dad, I guess you're going to be a lameduck in Utah and a sitting duck in California," quipped Lisa Gardner, 16, when she heard about her father's appointment last week. On July 1, after a decade as the University of Utah's popular president, David Pierpont Gardner, 49, takes on what is probably the nation's most challenging job in education. He will become the 15th president of the nine-campus, 139,176-student University of California, the finest public university system in the U.S., and one, as Gardner says, "where all the forces blowing through society come to bear."

When he replaces David S. Saxon, who is leaving California to become chairman of the governing board at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Gardner will face some pressing problems: a 2% cut of $23 million in state aid this year, to $1.13 billion; lagging faculty salaries (16.5% below the average at such other prestigious institutions as Harvard and Michigan); the need to find $4 billion during the next decade to modernize the university's science and technology departments. Gardner will also have to handle pressure to increase the proportion of women on the faculty (currently 11.6%) and minorities in the student body (5.6%). He will have to decide whether to side with liberals on the faculty and in the student body and relinquish university control of the Los Alamos and Livermore atomic-weapons laboratories.

Gardner knows full well what he is getting into. Says Michael Heyman, chancellor of the university's Berkeley campus: "I tend to think of this as someone coming back into the family." In all, Gardner has spent a dozen years in the California system, first as a student earning his M.A. in political science and doctorate in higher education at Berkeley, then as a skilled, tactful administrator. As Santa Barbara's vice chancellor during the riot-torn late '60s and early '70s, he worked effectively as liaison between the university administration, the Governor, the students and local police.

In 1973, Gardner was appointed president of the University of Utah. Gardner, who is a Mormon, was able to ease the rivalry between Mormons and non-Mormons over key appointments to the university. He named deans and other officials without any regard to their religions. By 1981, he had led an expansion drive that raised the budget from $102 million to $264 million, and by 1982 the number of students had increased from 19,000 to 24,365. Utah's math and biology departments were rated "the most improved" during the past five years by the Conference Board of Associated Research Councils, composed of a number of learned societies. Barney Clark received his artificial heart at Utah's medical school.

In August 1981, the White House chose Gardner to head the President's National Commission on Excellence in Education, an 18-member, blue-ribbon group that is studying ways of bolstering the nation's educational system. The commission's final report is due next month. "It will be hard-hitting," Gardner promises.