Tuesday was a special day for the University of California, Merced as an inauguration ceremony was held for Steve Kang, the second chancellor in the university’s history.
Kang, the first Korean-American to lead a major research university, has been chancellor since March 1 of this year.
Kang is an electrical engineer and previously served as the dean of the Baskin School of Engineering at UC Santa Cruz for six years.
UC Merced opened in 2005 as the first American research institution of the 21st century and the 10th and youngest UC campus.
“UC Merced is just stepping into its new phase, which, as an engineer, I would call, “˜UC Merced 2.0,'” Kang said in his inauguration speech.
In attendance were students and faculty from the UC Merced campus as well as representatives from the academic senate and regents.
UC President Robert Dynes gave a speech at the inauguration detailing Kang’s past experiences and his hopes for the future of UC Merced.
“Chancellor Steve Kang will lead UC Merced into a new era of ascendancy and distinction,” Dynes said according to a transcript of his speech. “It will be my privilege and my joy to watch him do it.”
Ana Shaw, a spokesperson for UC Merced, said ceremony and tradition surrounded the inauguration.
“At UC Merced it was combined with some innovative music and a kind of a personal feeling of ceremony,” she said. “It’s very appropriate for a small campus looking toward the future.”
The keynote speaker was Arno Penzias, a Nobel laureate in physics, who was Kang’s colleague at AT&T Bell Laboratories.
Chancellors from various UC campuses were also in attendance, including UCLA’s Chancellor Gene Block, UC Irvine’s Chancellor Michael Drake and UC Davis’s Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef.
“If you’re looking for what to expect in an inauguration, it’s an important part of pomp and ceremony for all these official delegates to offer congratulations,” Shaw said.
Prior to his experiences as dean, Kang was a professor and department head in electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
He earned his doctorate degree in electrical engineering from UC Berkeley.
Tracy Larrabee, a professor of computer engineering at UCSC who worked with Kang during his tenure as dean of the engineering school, said she believes Kang is a good fit for UC Merced.
“He was always really good at looking at the big picture,” she said. “It’s an opportunity for him to make a big difference, to set the tone of the place from the ground up.”
Larrabee said she believes the school of engineering at UCSC grew tremendously while he was the dean.
“He was really good at giving us a long-term plan to emphasize what he saw as the important things ““ to allow us to become really good in certain selective areas,” she said.
Larrabee said Kang put an emphasis on expanding the fields which UC Santa Cruz is well-known for.
“Right now in the field of biomolecular engineering and human genome research, UC Santa Cruz is really famous and those were the areas he really pushed while he was here,” she said.
Larrabee said Kang was also committed to increasing diversity in engineering and was supportive of the Society of Women Engineers, Society of Black Engineers, and the Society for Hispanic Professional Engineering.
Kang was very responsive to student concerns at UCSC, Larrabee said.
“He had weekly meetings with student advisory committees and he also had drop-in student hours for students to come in and talk, which is unusual for someone at his level of organization,” she said.
Kang is replacing Acting Chancellor Roderic Park, who was an interim chancellor after UC Merced’s first chancellor, Carol Tomlinson-Keasey, resigned in spring of 2006 after seven years in office.
The inauguration festivities for the chancellor are set to continue this week and include a scholarship fundraiser luncheon, receptions, and a symposium with Kang and faculty from the engineering department.