A new vice chancellor for student affairs will take office in
July following an announcement made Wednesday by the
chancellor’s office.
Janina Montero, vice president for campus life and student
services at Brown University, accepted the offer for the position
and will start at UCLA on July 1, pending the approval of the
University of California Regents.
Montero will be filling a position vacant since early January
2002, when former vice chancellor, Winston Doby, resigned to become
a vice president for the University of California.
In a campus release forwarded to the Daily Bruin by Academic
Personnel Office representative Rene Dennis, Chancellor Albert
Carnesale said “Montero brings to her new post impressive
qualifications and a strong commitment to enhancing the student
experience.”
“I am confident that she will be instrumental in ensuring
UCLA’s continued excellence in this crucial facet of
university life,” Carnesale wrote.
Montero will spend the next six months tying up loose ends at
her Brown University office while transitioning to her new role at
UCLA.
She already visited campus in mid-December and plans to make one
or two more trips in the interim to meet more of her future
colleagues.
Montero will work closely at first with interim Vice Chancellor
for Student Affairs Claudia Mitchell-Kernan, who balanced the
temporary role with her duties as vice chancellor of graduate
affairs for a whole year.
“Claudia has very graciously offered her help and
expertise to get me up to speed as quickly as possible,” she
said. “I am confident I will have lots of great colleagues to
point me in the right direction.”
Montero said she expects her biggest challenges in the near
future to be budget-related ““ whether it be implementing cuts
made late last year or figuring out the funding process for her
office.
“It will be necessary to maintain vitality and a
forward-looking approach in student affairs while taking into
account the impact of budget reductions,” she said.
Although she is a seasoned administrator with 30 years of
experience in higher education, the future vice chancellor is
breaking new ground with her first administrative role at a public
institution.
Montero worked at Princeton University for seven years, where
she served as the first dean of student life.
She also spent the last three years at Brown University
overseeing most aspects of student life from her post as vice
president of campus life and student affairs.
Montero said the transition from private to public higher
education systems might provide some challenges.
“I think I will need to understand the relationship
between the autonomous university and a state that checks on some
processes and reviews the implementation of certain issues,”
she said.
A native of Italy who grew up in South America, Montero also
worked for a 20-year tenure from 1973 to 1993 at Wesleyan
University in Connecticut, where she taught Romance languages
before moving onto her first administrative role as assistant dean
of the college.
Overall, she looks forward to getting started at UCLA.
“It will be good working with students, sitting at student
government meetings and building ambitious agendas,” she
said.
And although she will miss the people she has forged
relationships with all over the Northeast, Montero said there will
be some positives to the coast switch.
“I will not miss the snow,” she joked.
“It’s beautiful, but there is a lot to be said about
nice weather.”