Meet New University of California President Dr. Michael V. Drake He takes the helm at a time of pandemic, THE 21ST PRESIDENT of the University of social distancing and serious budget choices. California oversees UC’s MONICA LOZANO: For purposes of full disclosure, I want to mention that I served on the Board of Regents of the University of California for 15 years, and President Drake and I overlapped for almost the entire time. Today I’m pleased to welcome back to California, to The Commonwealth Club, this prominent academic leader the day after the election for a timely discussion of the challenges facing public higher education and the challenges facing our nation more broadly. So, welcome, President Drake. It’s good to see you again. MICHAEL V. DRAKE: Wonderful to see you, Monica. LOZANO: You had great success when you were at The Ohio State University. You increased enrollment, increased diversity, brought in more research dollars. But there was something about this particular opportunity that compelled you to come back not just to California but to the University of California, under what everybody would say are probably the most challenging times in its history. I want to ask you about that decision to come back, but I also want to think about leading during times of crisis. That must have been something that called to you also, because, as we said, the challenges facing the UC are just tremendous right now. What made you come back?
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DRAKE: My wife and I were Californians. We grew up here. We met in college—I was in college near here. Then she went to law school at Berkeley when I was in medical school. So we raised our family here, and our family’s here. We felt like Californians. We always were planning in some way to at least spend some part of the next phase of our lives reconnecting with California. That was always in the offing. We weren’t planning on doing something quite this intense, I think. We thought about another phase of life. But honestly, during that time of the initial lockdown when we were dealing with COVID, I had been working quite intensively with The Ohio State University for all of those years. During the time of the lockdown, it just seemed like this wasn’t the time to be on the sidelines, that we really needed all hands on deck. Discussing with the committee the opportunity to come back if there was something that we could contribute to this effort, this seemed like a time for all of us to be doing our best to help us get through this extraordinarily challenging time in our country’s history. That was compelling. That was one thing. Let me say the other thing that was really compelling is, with the [experience] of being at UCSF and being at the office of the president in a different role, a couple of decades ago
world-renowned system of 10 campuses, five medical centers, three nationally affiliated labs, more than 280,000 students and 230,000 faculty and staff. From the November 4, 2020, online program “Meet New University of California President Dr. Michael V. Drake.” Part of The Commonwealth Club’s series on Ethics and Accountability, underwritten by the Travers Family Foundation. Dr. MICHAEL V. DRAKE, M.D., President, University of California In conversation with MONICA LOZANO, President and CEO, College Futures Foundation
Dr. Michael V. Drake was appointed UC president this past summer.
