<p>Also posted in UCSC forum:</p>
<p>Chancellor's death linked to job stress
Apparent suicide came amid controversies at UC Santa Cruz</p>
<p>wonderful mentor for the students in her school..grr.</p>
<p>Suicides are always tragedies. </p>
<p>However, parts of the article are also telling about the frailty of the oversight of our schools and the apparent difficulty finding honest people, or finding people who will remain honest once in charge. Zero tolerance of financial shenanigans by school officials would be a good start. </p>
<p>"She was criticized for demanding $600,000 in renovations to her campus home and for helping secure a $192,000-a-year job for Kalonji as director of international strategy development.</p>
<p>Denton was also ensnared in the controversy that erupted last fall over revelations that UC executives were granted millions of dollars in bonuses, housing allowances and other perks without proper approval.</p>
<p>An independent audit released in April found that Denton received a series of benefits in violation of UC policy, including a $21,000 moving allowance and a $16,000 signing bonus."</p>
<p>I think the method indicates a level of despair we cannot fathom. She started her career at Wisconsin and won many teaching and research awards. It is rare for an UW ex faculty to receive such a write-up.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.news.wisc.edu/12679.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.news.wisc.edu/12679.html</a></p>
<p>This is so sad, and it is even sadder when you read barrons' link to her accomplishments. NSF young researcher, first female head of an engineering college...
She had been a target of investigation, and I don't know all of the rights and wrongs of it, but it needs to be put into the context of a series of articles in the Chronicle on the deals that UC has made in order to compete for top faculty and administrators in a university system that has seen a dramatic decrease in state funding and a rise in student fees. The crux is that some of these deals were made in the course of job recruitment without approval by the Regents, and sometimes contrary to their rules.</p>
<p>From the articles I've read, it is not clear that she did demand $600,000 in rennovations to her home, though she did demand some. It should be noted that $600,000 is about the median home price in Santa Cruz these days. She took the most heat for the deal that secured a job for her partner. I have not read anything about whether or not her partner was doing a good job for the university or not, but I do wonder whether Denton saw this as a gay rights issue. I don't think it's uncommon for people sought after by universities to bargain for positions for their spouses, or at least the university's help in finding a position.
In any case, what a loss.</p>
<p>I agree with Sac. It is very common for colleges which seek to hire faculty or top administrators to engage in what is called spousal hires. Colleges in fact have deans who spend most of their time dealing with such issues as well as housing, child care and advice on school systems. One of the most common reasons for turning down job offers are usually a spouse's career, the inability or the unwillingness of the recruiting college to hire the spouse/partner.
It may be that Denton felt the flak she received for getting her partner onto the payroll was undeserved since such spousal hires are so common.</p>
<p>she was also a dean at the UW ( Seattle)
this is her obit inthe Seattle Times
<a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003085966_denton26m.html%5B/url%5D">http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003085966_denton26m.html</a></p>
<p>The $600000 renovations she wanted also included a $30000 dog run. While it is not uncommon to offer spousal-hire in other colleges, one has to remember that this is a public university, not a private corporation. Any money offered in terms of wages or perks has to come from the public or student fees. And basically, that's what the outcry is about.</p>
<p>perhaps she was thinking of the former UW president when had his house remodeled
<a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002159787_uwmansion25m.html%5B/url%5D">http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002159787_uwmansion25m.html</a></p>
<p>To help pay for the work on the president's mansion, the university's Board of Regents tapped $370,000 from the Walker-Ames Fund, an endowment created for "scientific and educational purposes," according to the bequest. The rest of the tab was paid out of the university's building-renewal fund.</p>
<p>"Any money offered in terms of wages or perks has to come from the public or student fees. And basically, that's what the outcry is about."</p>
<p>This just isn't true at many of the best public universities where student fees and public funds account for less than 20% of the university's annual budget (as is the case at the University of Washington). In fact, if one were to look at the so-called rankings of so-called "public" universities, one quickly finds that rankings are often inversely related to the percentage of the budget that comes from state governments.</p>
<p>Where do you think the major sources of funding of state public universities come from ?</p>
<p>UCSC 2005-2006 revenue according to their website:</p>
<p>State of Ca: 160M (36%)
Student Tuition and fees: 105.5M (23%)
Extramural (Fed, State, Private): 105.3M
Self-Suporting activities: 68M
Other: 13.6M</p>
<p>Most of the funds at UW come from patents on medical and communications technology, research dollars brought in from private corporations (and from state and federal agencies). The university charges 40% overhead (read: profit) for every research grant a professor brings in, and then either shares or outright owns the patents for new technologies/medicines/applications developed. Indeed, professors are often judged like lawyers, assessed as to how effective they are as "rainmakers".</p>
<p>UCSC is not like that - yet. Denton was probably brought in for the specific purpose of increasing rainmaking activity.</p>
<p>When some complain that being a big research school hurts teaching they usually have no clue how much "profit" the school makes from that. The top research schools are bringing in nearly 1 BILLION in research a year. That's $400 million for the kitty which is about as much as a big state school gets in tuition or from the state funding. Or that's like having an endowment of about $8 Billion. That's a nice number.</p>
<p>I am sure her history at two of the top 10 research schools in the US was major reason she got the job at UCSC.
She should have told the critics to ****off and that she would bring in the money she spent on the renovations on one good day.</p>
<p>"wonderful mentor for the students in her school..grr."</p>
<p>What a lack of compassion your post demonstrates.</p>
<p>Anyone who is so desperate as to commit suicide is so depressed or otherwise troubled that the last thing the person would be thinking about would be mentoring students. A person who kills themself can't even take care of themselves.</p>
<p>I feel very sorry for her, her partner and the campus where she was chancellor.</p>
<p>I fail to understand why alot of people think she kind of deserve it. First of all the 600k is part of her contract...which means it is her money. The school board had a right to refuse but they didnt. Second of all spousal hires are not exactly unheard of. Plus it is not as if her partner is unqualified.</p>
<p>That's just it. Her contract did not contain the $600k for renovations, nor did it include the hire of her partner. These were not disclosed and in violations of university hiring guidelines. There are speculations on how much the board knew about the extra perks.
The critics who physically confonted her were the UCSC students themselves.......after years of student fees increases and therefore not sympathetic to these excesses. Her partner was not hired to fill a vacancy...they created a position for her.</p>
<p>"Her partner was not hired to fill a vacancy...they created a position for her."</p>
<p>This happens a lot when top executive hires are made. The only way that corporations and universities may be able to get a favored candidate is by finding or creating a job for the person's spouse or partner -- a job that is commensurate with the spouse/partner's experience and skills.</p>
<p>I wonder if the backlash over the hire was due to the president's sexual orientation. Was she gay or transgender?</p>
<p>Her sexual orientation would not be unusual in Santa Cruz.</p>
<p>CBreeze, it is quite common for a position to be created for the spouse of an incoming high-level hire. I am tangentially involved with a candidate for such a position at UCLA right now.</p>
<p>The accounting of what's cricket and what's not is a bit more arcane...let's say Byzantine...than what you might gather from reading the popular press. </p>
<p>Some creative packaging of perks is a virtual necessity because some of the formal pay scales are ridiculous. E.g., the formal scale for the director of a UC medical center might be $250K...when you routinely have top surgeons making $400K. Good luck finding anyone competent to manage such a large technical entity at $250K.</p>
<p>NSM, it's come to me from an observer with some reasonable connections to "Kremlin watching" at the Board of Regents level that it's a fair take that animus directed at Denton would have been close to insignficant if her partner had been a formally married spouse.</p>