The University of California Board of Regents today approved Dr. Dennis Assanis as UC Santa Barbara’s sixth chancellor. He will assume his role on September 1.
In the University of California system, a chancellor is the equivalent to a college president.
Assanis comes to UC from the University of Delaware (UD), where he has served as president since 2016. He stepped down in June.
When announcing his departure, Assanis gave no indication at the time that he was seeking another post.
“Dr. Assanis is the right person to lead UC Santa Barbara into the future,” said UC President Michael V. Drake. “His deep understanding of the power of interdisciplinary work combined with his energy, insight and strategic vision will blend perfectly with the excellence of UC Santa Barbara students, faculty and staff as they address the world’s most urgent challenges.”
As president, Assanis oversaw the university’s annual operating budget of $1.35 billion, endowment assets of over $2 billion and a physical plant valued at $8 billion.
The UC campus - located at oceanside location in the north of Los Angeles - - has about 26,000 students, about 3,000 more than UD. Its endowment is less than a third of UD's figure.
The Santa Barbara area is also known for being the home of celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Tom Cruise, and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
Under Assanis, UD's STAR Campus, the former Chrysler Assembly plant, underwent a major expansion that included an office tower, the NIIMBL pharmaceutical manufacturing research center and the Chemours research and development center.
That clearly played into the regent's decision to select the former UD president.
“I am truly honored and thrilled to serve as the next chancellor of UC Santa Barbara,” said Assanis. “I am particularly excited about UC Santa Barbara’s exceptional academic reputation, amazing students and boundless potential to be recognized among the top public universities, building on the celebrated achievements of its distinguished faculty and dedicated staff. Fostering a culture of innovation, academic excellence and student success has been my core focus as a public university leader."
Before coming to UD, Assanis served as provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at New York’s Stony Brook University and vice president for Brookhaven National Laboratory Affairs. He previously taught and conducted research at the University of Michigan and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Assanis succeeds former UC Santa Barbara Chancellor Henry Yang.
The UC Regents approved Assanis’s salary at $880,000. His total compensation at UD was $1.5 million.
The University of California campus comes with a president's house. Under Assanis, the UD president's house underwent renovations with the president's office moving to the STAR Campus as renovations got underway on the administrative building.
The building boom under Assanis had been drawing criticism from professors at a time when the university was seeing a budget deficit at a time when older buildings were in need of upgrades.
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