NEW UCLA CHANCELLOR FULFILLS DREAM.

Byline: Herbert A. Sample Scripps-McClatchy Western Service

A white shirt and $100 a week.

Those were the dreams of a young Albert Carnesale in 1950s Bronx. The son of a cab driver and housewife, he figured he could reach his goals by going to college and getting a decent job.

But Carnesale, provost of Harvard University, long ago surpassed that dream and in July will fulfill another one when he takes over as chancellor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

``I leave Harvard with tears in my eyes for friends and colleagues at the institution,'' Carnesale, 60, said during an interview in his comfortable, unpretentious office. ``The reason for leaving is I'm excited about the prospects of leading UCLA at this time.''

And so he might. After more than two decades of teaching and administering in the relative tranquillity of the country's oldest university - the past three as second-in-charge here - Carnesale will become top dog at what arguably is the best-known public or private university west of the Mississippi.

While no stranger to the intricacies of internal and external politics, the stage on which Carnesale will display his skills at UCLA will be bigger than at Harvard, and the audience watching his every move will be much larger, diverse and powerful.

He also arrives at a time of controversy over the impact of Proposition 209, the successful 1996 initiative that eliminated race- and gender-based affirmative action programs at University of California campuses and other state programs.

But few here doubt Carnesale, described variously as engaging, fair, charming, decisive and adaptable, will meet the challenge before him.

``He has a joy of life,'' said Professor Richard Zeckhauser, a friend who teaches political economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. ``His attitude is a great feast will spread before him, and he will sample heartily and be sure to put ample succulent dishes on the table as well.''

Carnesale arrived at Harvard in 1974 with a resume that lacked much of the rarefied academic firepower of many colleagues. Trained as a mechanical engineer at Cooper Union in New York, he had earned a doctorate in nuclear engineering at North Carolina State University, where he also taught and headed an environmental studies office.

But his practical experience was deep. He was a member of the U.S. team that negotiated the first Strategic Arms Limitation Talks agreement with the Soviet Union. He also was a consultant on military and civilian nuclear issues to a number of government agencies, including the defense and energy departments, and author of books on the nuclear arms race.

``It was very easy to identify him as someone out of the ordinary,'' said Spurgeon Keeny, president of the Arms Control Association, who worked with Carnesale at the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in the early 1970s. ``He was very bright, very quick, asked the right questions, and was very soon on top of the business.''

His one professional slip, though no fault of his own, was a 1980 appointment by President Jimmy Carter to head the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Then-Tennessee Sen. Howard Baker apparently didn't like Carnesale's views on the Clinch River breeder reactor program, and he scuttled Carter's selection.

In 1991, some 17 years after joining the Kennedy school, Carnesale was named dean. At the time, he recalled, only one of the tenured professors was a woman, and the rest were white males. In his four years as dean, he recruited as tenured professors two African-Americans, one Latino and four other women.

But he did it with little fanfare, said Archie Epps, Harvard College's dean of students. ``He works quietly. He's very effective.''

Though vague on the specifics and insistent that he did not focus on race or gender, Carnesale said he improved the diversity of the small Kennedy school faculty by altering the process by which potential professors were identified.

``By and large, you had to change the procedures by which you searched for faculty,'' he said. ``Not change your standards but change the procedures so you could look for people who would be the maximum value added to the school.''

``You'll notice the quality of these people by any standard,'' he said, citing two of his catches, Chief Judge Emeritus A. Leon Higginbotham Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals and William Julius Wilson, who has written extensively on race, class and public policy. ``I mean, these are superstars.''

And Carnesale said a diverse student body - by ethnicity, gender, class and other factors - is also vital. ``I think it is essential that if you're going to be preparing leaders for society, that the students have some experience of the society,'' he explained.

But whether Carnesale's concept of how to accomplish diversity can be transplanted to UCLA in the post-affirmative action age is an open question. It's a subject about which he chooses to say little.

``I don't know,'' he replied when asked. ``I'm hesitant to comment on things that require some degree of expertise on UCLA, because I don't have it.''