Berkeleyan
Santa Cruz chancellor appointed UC provost
| 25 February 2004
| |    M.R.C. Greenwood |
UC Santa Cruz Chancellor M.R.C. Greenwood was appointed provost and senior vice president of academic affairs, the second-highest post in the UC system, during a special meeting of the UC Regents on Monday.
Greenwood, an internationally recognized expert in genetics and nutrition and a national leader in science and higher-education policy, has served as chancellor of UCSC since 1996. She will assume her new post on April 1.
UC President Robert C. Dynes praised Greenwood for her “tremendous energy, academic accomplishment, and administrative skill,” adding that she “brings the perfect credentials to this position.”
“Throughout the nation,” Dynes observed, “public higher education is facing major challenges — the challenges of constrained state resources, increasing demand for services, and increasing expectations as our society looks to universities for answers to our most pressing problems. The University of California needs to be a leader in confronting the challenges and pursuing the opportunities of this new era. Because [Greenwood] is exactly the right person to join me and the rest of the UC system in this exciting endeavor, I made every effort to convince her to accept this position.”
Under Greenwood’s leadership, UC Santa Cruz has increased the number of academic programs by 52 percent, from 63 to 96, including a 41-percent increase in graduate programs; created its first professional school, the Baskin School of Engineering; established two new residential colleges; more than doubled extramural research support; expanded total student enrollment by approximately 54 percent, with a nearly 50-percent increase in graduate enrollment; hired 250 new faculty members; constructed nearly one million assignable square feet in academic buildings and housing, including 2,800 spaces in new student housing; acquired 50 acres of oceanfront property to expand research opportunities at Long Marine Laboratory; and raised more private donations than the previous total for the campus’s entire history.
In October, Greenwood unveiled an historic UC/NASA partnership to create a world-class educational R&D campus focusing on innovation and scientific discovery at the proposed NASA Research Park in the heart of Silicon Valley.
“I dearly love the Santa Cruz campus, and I had not planned on leaving it so soon,” said Greenwood. “But President Dynes is a very persuasive man, and he convinced me that I can better serve the university in this new role.
“The University of California delivers tremendous value to its students and, through its research, to the public at large,” Greenwood added. “I am honored to be called on to help further work that is so critical for California.”
Greenwood, 60, replaces C. Judson King as provost of the UC system. King, who is retiring after eight years in the position, will return to Berkeley to become director of the Center for Studies in Higher Education.
An impressive pair of firsts
Greenwood will become the highest-ranking woman holding a systemwide post at the University of California, as well as the first woman appointed to the systemwide position of provost. In that role she will oversee academic planning, research, and academic policies for the 10-campus UC system. Other units under her supervision will include the Continuing Education of the Bar, Education Abroad Program, educational outreach, UC Press, UC Extension, the California Policy Research Center, and the Washington, D.C., Center.
Greenwood, a nationally recognized expert in a range of science- and higher-education-policy issues, has testified at numerous legislative hearings in Sacramento and Wash-ington, D.C., on issues ranging from faculty gender equity to national security. Her salary of $380,000 a year falls between the averages paid to provosts of comparable public and private institutions.
Greenwood received her A.B., summa cum laude, from Vassar College in 1968, and her Ph.D. from Rockefeller University in 1973. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, where she served as president in 1998 and chair in 1999. She has delivered major policy addresses throughout California and in Washington, D.C., and internationally in London, New Delhi, Bangalore, and Seoul. She serves as a board member of leading national professional organizations and has been appointed to a variety of high-level positions advising state and federal government in the areas of science and higher-education policy.
Before taking the reins at UC Santa Cruz, Greenwood served as dean of graduate studies, vice provost for academic outreach, and professor of biology and internal medicine at UC Davis. Prior to that she taught at Vassar College, where she was chair of the department of biology and director of the Undergraduate Research Summer Institute. Previously, she was on the faculty of Columbia University’s medical school.
From November 1993 to May 1995, while she was on leave from UC Davis, Greenwood served as associate director for science at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Clinton administration.
An announcement regarding an acting chancellor for UC Santa Cruz will be made soon. Dynes also will launch as quickly as possible a national search for a permanent replacement for Greenwood and expects to have a new chancellor at Santa Cruz by no later than the beginning of the next academic year.