With growth placing more demand on the campus to plan, UC Davis is elevating its top financial and facilities planning position from associate vice chancellor to vice chancellor. The campus is beginning a national search for the new vice chancellor for resource management and planning. Administration and faculty leaders believe the campus needs a full-time policy-level executive to oversee its fast-growing and critical resource management and planning functions. Upgrading the vacant post, they say, will help attract top-caliber candidates. The new vice chancellor will also oversee the campus's internal audit unit, direct planning for projects involving private and public agency partners, and possibly develop a new program to help departments improve their effectiveness. Upgrading the position will bring to five the number of vice chancellors who report to Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Robert Grey and Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef. Other vice chancellors oversee student affairs, research, administration and university relations. "The increasing complexity of the campus, the overly broad purview of the executive vice chancellor and the need to recruit the best possible person reduced our choices to one-we had to upgrade this position," Vanderhoef said. In a memo last month to deans and vice chancellors, the chancellor said the campus' size alone justifies elevating the position. "The resource management and planning requirements of our growing campus have become increasingly complex and demanding," he wrote. From 1991 to 1999, UC Davis' operating budget grew from $945 million to $1.5 billion, Vanderhoef said. Faculty ranks rose by approximately 90 to close to 1,700 and the university's staff grew from 9,578 to nearly 12,000 employees over the same period. And student enrollment, which was 22,528, now exceeds 25,000. More growth is on the way, with Tidal Wave II expected to bring another 63,000 students into the UC system over the next decade. The UC Office of the President has asked the campus to plan for possible enrollment growth to more than 30,000 students by 2010. Over the next six to eight years, UC Davis expects to fill about 500 faculty vacancies, about 350 created by retirements and the remaining 150 from enrollment growth. "The quality of the planning that we do over the next five to 10 years will be critical in determining how successful we are as a campus in meeting the challenges implicit in this growth," Grey said. "The new vice chancellor will have a critical role in ensuring our ultimate success." UC Davis will be the fourth of the 10 UC campuses to create vice chancellor positions for budget or resource management. Vanderhoef said UC Berkeley, UCLA and UC San Diego now have similar titles. The upgrade in the position has the backing of Academic Senate Chair Jeff Gibeling as well as the senate's Committee on Academic Planning and Budget Review. "As we're trying to plan for growth-enrollment growth, faculty growth-and plan for space, there's going to be a lot more work to be done in the next five to 10 years," Gibeling said. He predicted most faculty members will agree with the change. "I think they recognize the importance of having the appropriate administrators at the appropriate levels." Gibeling said the new vice chancellor will provide much needed policy-level assistance to Grey, who serves as the campus's chief academic officer and chief operations officer, as well as the governing board for the UC Davis Health System. At the same time, the senate Committee on Academic Planning and Budget Review is seeking to expand its own membership from six to eight or nine people, he said. "The two steps-raising the level of this position and increasing the size of the committee-will strengthen the connection between the senate and administration on budget issues," Gibeling said. The associate vice chancellor for resource management and planning position has been vacant since July 1998, when Richard Meisinger, then associate vice chancellor for planning and budget, was named associate provost for academic planning. After a national search, UC Davis offered the job last spring to a University of Colo-rado at Boulder administrator who initially accepted but later withdrew for personal reasons. In addition to overseeing the campus Planning and Budget Office, the new vice chancellor will work with deans and the vice chancellors for research, university relations and administration in planning special projects and academic initiatives that involve private and governmental partners. The campus is also exploring whether to establish a "continuous quality improvement" program like those at UC Berkeley, University of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania State University and Rutgers University to help departments improve their operations. Moving the internal auditor's office to a vice chancellor who does not manage numerous operating units addresses concerns about the appearance of its independence. The auditor currently reports to the Office of Administration, which oversees about 70 financial and administrative activities and which, by its very nature, is frequently audited.