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Strategic Plan

Effective UCLA

Staff at UCLA

Overview

Over the years, UCLA’s administrative practices have grown alongside our expanding mission. To reflect the latest standards of excellence across higher education, we need to modernize our practices to match the pace and possibilities of the future. To continue driving excellence in research, teaching and service, we must ensure that the way we operate is as forward-thinking as the work we support. 


This initiative will advance and align UCLA’s administrative functions to operate more efficiently, transparently and in closer partnership with the needs of our campus community. By improving systems, processes and technologies, we will create an administrative foundation that empowers our faculty, staff and students to pursue UCLA’s mission with greater agility, innovation and impact.

This initiative advances the fifth goal of our strategic plan: Become a more effective institution. 

Goals

  • Align UCLA’s administrative operations to create more efficient, modern and agile practices across the university.
  • Elevate administrative service quality to deliver a high-value user experience and enable strategic reinvestment in UCLA’s academic mission.
  • Strengthen institutional resilience by minimizing operational risks, enhancing cybersecurity, improving policy and legal compliance, and strengthening business continuity practices.
  • Empower individuals and build core competencies through continuous process improvement across our campus.
  • Leverage enterprise assets by optimizing campus space utilization and maximize the effective use of university resources.

Expected Outcomes

  • Streamlined administrative workflows that reduce duplication and establish clearer accountability across the university.
  • Strengthened core systems and cybersecurity to ensure institutional resilience and data protection.
  • High-value user experience driven by agile, coordinated operations that eliminate bureaucratic friction and enable strategic reinvestment in UCLA’s core academic mission.
  • Clearer policies and procedures that drive consistency and regulatory compliance.
  • Increased staff engagement and ownership of continuous process improvement initiatives.
  • Optimized space utilization powered by data-driven insights into occupancy patterns across campus facilities.

Progress in Motion

  • As part of One IT, conducting campuswide discovery work through June 2026 to better understand UCLA’s IT landscape across people, processes, services, technology, security and IT-related spending.
  • Engaging 12 cross-campus working groups to evaluate constituency experiences, technology and campus capabilities and to develop recommendations by late May 2026.
  • Facilitating the IT Alignment Council (ITAC) to strengthen governance and provide oversight for technology investments, software purchasing, contractor engagements and IT hiring decisions during the transition. 
  • Unifying the employee experience by integrating HR units and establishing Communities of Practice across seven functional areas to standardize best practices and foster campus-wide collaboration.
  • Vice Chancellor Christine Lovely, who joined UCLA in early 2026, is conducting listening sessions with UCLA leadership and HR professionals to gather direct employee insights and develop a deeper understanding of the university’s needs and priorities.
  • Embedding continuous process improvement across campus through Lean Six Sigma training, resulting in 306 yellow belt certifications and a submission portal for evaluating and advancing operational improvements. 
  • Aligning facility use with academic needs through occupancy pilots that reduced the summer footprint by 25% and identified potential for a 40% reduction in energy use.
  • UCLA’s Strategic Communications and Marketing department is finding opportunities to operate more efficiently—improving systems, processes and operating structures to work most effectively for the benefit of UCLA.

“Effective UCLA is about more than just operational efficiency; it is about responsible stewardship. By modernizing our administrative ecosystem, streamlining business processes, and empowering our staff to remove barriers, we can free up resources to better enable our world-class academic and research enterprise.” –Michael J. Beck, Administrative Vice Chancellor

Meet the Leads

Effective UCLA Steering Committee:

  • Darnell Hunt, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost (Co-chair)
  • Michael Beck, Administrative Vice Chancellor (Co-chair)
  • Lucy Avetisyan, Chief Information Officer
  • Claire Chaumont, Special Advisor to the Chancellor
  • Christina Christie, Dean, School of Education and Information Studies
  • Miguel Garcia-Garibay, Dean, Division of Physical Sciences
  • Tim Groeling, Professor, Department of Communication Studies
  • Reem Hanna-Harwell, Interim Vice Chancellor and Chief Financial Officer
  • Athena Jackson, University Librarian
  • Christine Lovely, Vice Chancellor and Chief People Officer
  • Mary Osako, Vice Chancellor Strategic for Communications
  • Julie Sina, Chief of Staff to the Chancellor
  • Aaron Tornell, Professor of Economics

Meets Goal 5: Become a more effective institution

UCLA’s organization and processes have evolved over the course of more than a century. While much of our remarkably complex institution operates smoothly, inefficiencies have also developed. To ensure we can support brilliant research, excellent teaching and exciting new initiatives with our limited resources, the university must improve its systems and processes, free up resources, adjust incentive structures and modernize its technology. This will allow UCLA to meet its full potential. 

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