The retirement of UC Davis Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef
SACRAMENTO, CA – After 14 years at the helm of one of America’s premier teaching and research universities, the University of California, Davis, Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef announced today that he is stepping down in 2009.
Vanderhoef announced plans to take a sabbatical leave for one year starting in June of 2009 and indicated he would return to his duties as a professor of plant biology in 2010.
Two of the milestones achieved during Vanderhoef’s stint at the helm of UC Davis included an expansion of the student body to 30,000 from 22,000 and an increase in faculty size by 44 percent. In addition to the student and teacher growth, over 4 million square feet of classrooms, laboratories, clinical settings, and performance and office space were added including the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts.
One of the lesser known yet noteworthy activities, especially in terms of current US-Iranian relations, undertaken during the Chancellor’s time in office was an official university delegation trip to Iran to establish academic and cultural ties with the University of Tehran. Deans of the colleges of agricultural sciences and engineering traveled to Iran with the Chancellor in 2004. The prominent Sacramento real estate developer Mohammed Moe Mohanna, a native of Iran, led this delegation which became the most significant U.S. delegation to Iran since the Revolution of 1979.
Mohanna, a well-known international civic leader, is very involved in numerous philanthropic activities and serves on the board of the UC Davis Foundation. When asked about his thoughts on the retirement of Vanderhoef he commented, “Larry is really a remarkable human being. He is a very courageous and visionary leader with global understanding. Larry promotes the internationalization of education and turns nations into people. He has been a champion of crossing boundaries and building bridges. To me, Larry personifies the great American values that we all cherish.”
Vanderhoef faced considerable pressure from others when he agreed to be a part of the delegation and wrote at the time of the trip, “perhaps in the process, one small step can be taken toward a return to normalcy in the Middle East.”
The current president of the University of California, Robert Dynes said of Vanderhoef, “all the other chancellors [of the UC system] and I look to him for wisdom and experience.” UC president-designate Mark Yudof said, “I have, from afar, watched the UC Davis campus go from relative obscurity to the front ranks among the nation’s research universities.”
Tags: Larry Vanderhoef, Moe Mohanna