In Apparent Suicide, Chancellor Dies in a Fall

Santa Cruz leader faced attacks that were harsh — and sometimes personal

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By PAUL FAIN

Denice D. Denton came under fire immediately and often during her 16-month tenure as chancellor of the University of California at Santa Cruz, which ended with her apparent suicide late last month when she fell to her death from the roof of a San Francisco building.

In addition to the harsh criticism, which came from the typical antagonists of public-university leaders — student activists, employee unions, alumni, state lawmakers — the chancellor was a pariah to some conservative bloggers as well.

Ironically, Ms. Denton, 46, an accomplished electrical engineer and champion of women in science who had made diversity in academics a focus of her career, was also harangued recently by student protesters decrying "institutional racism and sexism."

The denunciations were often deeply personal. Critics, angry over student-fee increases and lower-paid staff members' wages, attacked Ms. Denton's own compensation package and the creation of a job in the president's office of the University of California system for Gretchen Kalonji, Ms. Denton's partner of eight years. Ms. Kalonji, who like Ms. Denton came to California from the University of Washington, earns $192,000 a year as faculty associate to the provost and director of international strategy development.

One element of the chancellor's compensation — a $30,000 dog run that was part of improvements made at her residence on the campus — made Ms. Denton a punch line and a symbol of excess in the systemwide compensation scandal that has unfolded since last fall.

Ms. Denton had begun to fear for her safety, according to news reports. On several occasions last year, groups of protesting students had tried to spend the night on her property, requiring Ms. Denton to "negotiate intensely" before they would leave, said David S. Kliger, the provost. A window in her office was broken last year. And at 3 a.m. one night in June 2005, a parking barricade was used to break her bedroom window.

During a campus protest on June 6 over staff wages and faculty diversity, students surrounded Ms. Denton in her car, sat on the trunk and hood, and struck it with placards, said Elizabeth M. Irwin, a university spokeswoman. The students also performed a skit about racism.

"The atmosphere," said Ms. Irwin, "was intimidating and disrespectful."

Medical Leave

The pressure of the job apparently contributed to depression that overwhelmed Ms. Denton, who police said fell to her death on June 24 from the roof of a 400-foot-tall San Francisco apartment building. Ms. Kalonji lived in the building, and Ms. Denton's mother, Carolyn Mabee, was in the complex at the time of the chancellor's death. Ms. Mabee told the San Francisco Chronicle that her daughter had been "very depressed" about her professional and personal life.

Ms. Denton had been on medical leave since June 15 and missed the university's commencement exercises but was expected to return to work last week.

While in her 20s, Ms. Denton had her cancerous thyroid removed, according to news reports, and since arriving at Santa Cruz, she had been treated for an "acute thyroid condition" and other medical problems, including the removal of a benign ovarian cyst, said Ms. Irwin, in comments authorized by Ms. Mabee. (Medical research has linked thyroid problems to depression.)

The circumstances of Ms. Denton's death, which is apparently the only suicide of a university chief executive in recent decades, generated headlines around the world and scores of blog entries. Although the majority of the chatter has been respectful, Ms. Denton received criticism even after her death.

On the blog http://www.moonbattery.com, named after a slang term for liberals, a post titled "Death of a Moonbat" alleged that Ms. Denton "celebrated Gay Pride weekend by taking a leap" off the building. The Web site also said Ms. Denton used the "corrupt and opaque University of California system to finance the lifestyle of a degenerate czarina, courtesy of California students and taxpayers."

Josh Sonnenfeld, a senior at Santa Cruz who is active with campus groups such as Students Against War, said Ms. Denton was often a target of criticism over staff pay, student fees, and a planned campus expansion. Although the groups' invective was not intended as a personal attack on Ms. Denton, he said, "she was put on the defensive" as soon as she arrived at Santa Cruz.

"She was representing the corruption, and she wasn't usually criticizing it," said Mr. Sonnefeld. "We've been having protests at UCSC for a long time. The chancellor, she didn't know what she was walking into."

Up From Microchips

Ms. Denton seemed like an ideal candidate to lead Santa Cruz when she arrived on the campus, in February 2005. After growing up with two siblings and a single mother in rural Texas, she earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research was in microelectromechanical systems and computer-chip design. She later became dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Washington.

As chancellor, Ms. Denton said, she hoped to build on Santa Cruz's renowned programs in space and the physical sciences while bolstering its international programs.

Weeks after her arrival, Ms. Denton told The Chronicle that scientists and engineers were well-suited to run research universities, particularly given their experience running high-tech laboratories. "I think now it's more like a CEO gig," she said of the role of chancellor.

But she also quickly made clear that she hoped her influence would extend well beyond the laboratory and university finances, to national issues, and that she would help advance Santa Cruz's profile and longstanding reputation for activism. That reputation had recently been enhanced when an April 2005 protest against military recruiting on the campus showed up on a Pentagon watch list of "suspicious incidents."

Ms. Denton told The Chronicle in January that she knew the university was perceived as a party school and a bastion of liberalism. She said she hoped to replace that image with one as a top-notch research university.

A month before becoming chancellor, Ms. Denton had landed in many newspaper articles for criticizing statements made by Harvard University's president, Lawrence H. Summers, in which he questioned women's abilities in math and science. Ms. Denton had attended the scholarly meeting where Mr. Summers (who stepped down last week) made those remarks.

Her role in that debate earned her the widespread ire of conservative commentators, with Brian Maloney, a blogger and former talk-radio host, arguing in a Web posting that Ms. Denton lacked credibility because of her "sleazy" hiring deal with Ms. Kalonji, which "reeks of nepotism and special rights."

The outspoken chancellor traveled with a folder of material she used to counter Mr. Summers's points. She also carried a small copy of the U.S. Constitution, which she used as a prop while describing her outrage at the Defense Department's labeling of the military-recruiting protest as a "credible threat" to national security.

Ms. Denton asked members of Congress to investigate the incident's inclusion on the watch list, a database managed by the Pentagon's Counterintelligence Field Agency. The protest was subsequently removed from the list.

But a similar protest this past April, in which students forced the departures of Army and National Guard recruiters at a career fair, brought more scrutiny to the campus.

Michelle Malkin, a conservative blogger and pundit, expressed outrage at Santa Cruz's handling of the protest, writing on her blog a post titled "UC Santa Cruz Hates Our Troops." She encouraged readers to contact the "capitulationist chancellor" and posted Ms. Denton's office address and her assistant's phone number.

Two days after the protest, Ms. Denton apologized to the recruiters on behalf of the campus and condemned the actions of some of the demonstrators.

Compensation Controversy

Her apology, in a written message, may have dulled criticism of the military-recruiting protest. But Ms. Denton could say nothing to stem hostility over her role in the University of California's compensation scandal. Triggered last fall by an investigative report in the San Francisco Chronicle, several audits have detailed $334-million in largely unreported pay and perks to university employees in the 2004-5 fiscal year.

Ms. Denton, the audits found, had received benefits that went beyond university policies and standard practices, including pay for work before she was hired, extra vacation days, sabbatical credits from a previous job, participation in a severance-pay plan, and early eligibility for retirement health benefits.

The portion of her compensation that rankled critics most, however, was the $600,000 in university-financed improvements at the university home in which she lived. Among those expenses was the now-notorious dog run, which was $23,000 over budget, according to Robert C. Dynes, the university system's president. The dog run was widely mocked and drew angry questions from state lawmakers. It was sometimes the first expense cited in news articles about the scandal.

If Ms. Denton was personally shaken by the furor, it was not apparent during a late-January visit she made to The Chronicle. In a freewheeling and upbeat discussion with reporters and editors, she said her response to the outrage over hidden or unreported compensation was "Message received." She added, however, that the news-media coverage had become a distraction from more important university business.

Ms. Denton, whose total compensation in 2005 was $366,366, also defended the university's efforts to use salary and perks to hire top administrative and faculty talent.

"When you want to be the best in the world," she said, "there's a lot of things you've got to do."

New Perils at the Top

Experts on university leadership said the stresses on Ms. Denton in her 16 months as chancellor were extreme examples of the anxiety-causing problems that many public-university leaders face. They also said a presidency under fire can be a lonely place.

Robert B. Glidden, president of Ohio University from 1994 to 2004, said the life of a university president has gotten much more exhausting and isolating in recent years. Some presidents, he said, struggle with internalizing criticism.

"It's a time in our nation when it's the thing to do to bash leadership," said Mr. Glidden.

A university president's job is "infinitely more complex today" because of the expectations of "vastly different constituencies," said Ann J. Duffield, a co-founder of the Presidential Practice, a company that provides advice to university presidents. "These have almost become undoable positions."

Rita Bornstein, president emerita of Rollins College, which she led for 14 years, said the California system's Board of Regents probably should have offered more guidance to Ms. Denton, who was hired into an already volatile situation. Ms. Bornstein said governing boards "are notorious for being absent when presidents get in trouble."

Mr. Glidden, who once received hundreds of angry e-mail messages from alumni and others over a politically charged controversy at Ohio, said it is important for a college leader to learn not to take criticism personally. He said, however, that many supporters remain quiet when the chief, like Ms. Denton, is taking flak.

"The negative voices drown them out," said Mr. Glidden. "She probably didn't know how many people were out there who did support her."