President Robert Dynes and an initial group of 190 senior leaders from across UC met March 19-20 in Irvine at the UC Senior Leadership Forum. This was the first step in launching an institution-wide strategic program to address succession planning and the need to further develop within the University's own ranks the next generation of UC leaders.

The Forum was designed to lay the groundwork for involving other leaders, and the entire UC community, in efforts to identify, grow, and sustain leadership talent at all levels across the University.

Dynes has called this initiative "the University's most important campaign in recent years." Current trends point to a forecasted increase of 300 percent in the retirement of key UC leaders in the next five years. Dynes has called for the formulation of an innovative development and succession program to deal with this substantial loss of talent and knowledge.

Details about the Forum and the future progress of UC's Leadership Talent Development and Succession Planning Initiative are available on the Initiative website.