CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA. — Both the University of Virginia and its provost, Gene D. Block, exude stability.
The 182-year-old campus founded and designed by Thomas Jefferson is a glory of Early Americana in brick, white columns and flowering dogwoods. Administrators sometimes speak of "Mr. Jefferson" as if he might inspect the library tomorrow, and the restored 1820s dorm room of Edgar Allan Poe is on display.
The school has been Block's only employer since he took his first job here as an assistant professor of biology 29 years ago. He has been married to the same woman, Carol, for 37 years, and for decades he has researched the same general topic: biological clocks.
But now, the alarm clock is ringing for change in Block's life. At 58, he is moving across three time zones for a new, very big job. On Aug. 1 he is scheduled to become chancellor of UCLA, which is about a century younger and has about twice as many students as the University of Virginia's 19,000.
"It's time. It's time to move," said Block, a white-haired man who, despite his time in the South, retains a slight New York accent from his childhood as the son of a dairy products distributor in the Catskills region.
Block has been second-in-command for six years at Virginia, where he pushed for improving sciences on a campus known for humanities and worked for greater ethnic and gender diversity among the faculty and students. He always thought that if he left Charlottesville, he would head a smaller institution, "a fixer-upper."
But at UCLA, a plan collapsed last year to hire a Syracuse University administrator to succeed Chancellor Albert Carnesale, the highly successful fundraiser who led the school in a low-key manner for nine years. Then the university began to court Block. The school's strong emphasis on science and engineering appealed to him, as did its Asian ties and Pacific Rim location in a city with about 100 times Charlottesville's 41,000 population.
"UCLA is a very successful, mature university. But you don't want to just maintain it; you want to make it better," he said during an interview in Charlottesville.
Although he has visited Westwood frequently since his appointment in December, he said it was too soon to plan specifics. But he spoke of wanting to better connect the campus with the city, create more small classes for undergraduates, help young faculty members afford housing and improve diversity without violating the state's ban on affirmative action.
