(U-WIRE) LOS ANGELES--Former Vice President Al Gore announced Friday he would soon begin an academic relationship with the University of California at Los Angeles, but information about exactly what his role will be is being kept in something of a lock box.
Though the details of the nature and duration of Gore's involvement with the university are still tentative, Barbara J. Nelson, dean of the School of Public Policy and Social Research, said Gore will have a teaching presence at the school, making regular interaction with faculty and possibly with students.
Several major newspapers reported last week that Gore already accepted teaching posts at three universities: Columbia University, in New York, and Middle Tennessee State University and Fisk University, both in Tennessee.
Gore will visit the UCLA campus on Wednesday to participate in meetings and a faculty symposium with Chancellor Albert Carnesale and Pediatrics and Public Health Professor Neal Halfon, as well as other faculty members.
In conjunction with Halfon, who is the director of UCLA's Institute for Healthier Children, Families and Communities, Gore's work at UCLA will be in the emerging academic discipline of family-centered community building.
The new approach to the study of communities integrates a variety of areas of public policy, economics, social sciences and even architecture.
\(Tipper and I) have both made a strong personal and professional commitment to supporting and strengthening the family at a time of tremendous cultural and economic upheaval,"" Gore said in an interview last week with The New York Times.
Nelson said Gore would be working extensively with the faculty involved with this new interdisciplinary approach to community development.
The addition of Gore to the campus community will not only make him the second former Democratic nominee to join the ranks of UCLA scholars but also the second man who lost the presidency to a member of the Bush clan.
The first, visiting professor and former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, who lost the presidential race in 1988, currently teaches two courses at UCLA: an undergraduate class on California public policy issues and a graduate level class on bureaucracy and public management.
