With what one colleague called “her campus” now off
to a strong start, UC Merced Chancellor Carol Tomlinson-Keasey
announced Wednesday that she will step down from her post, leaving
before the newest branch of the University of California sees its
second class of students.
Tomlinson-Keasey has overseen the building of UC Merced, which
opened fall 2005, since the idea to create the new campus first
circulated nine years ago.
Now that the idea for the campus has been realized, she will
hand over the helm and return to the campus as a faculty
member.
“The last seven years as chancellor have been
extraordinarily intense and demanding, but also enormously
rewarding,” Tomlinson-Keasey wrote in a letter to the campus
community shortly after she announced her departure. “I hope
I will continue to be able to contribute to the campus in my
faculty role.”
The knowledge that UC Merced is doing well in its first year and
has the foundation to continue being strong is part of the reason
Tomlinson-Keasey felt she was able to leave, said Patti Istas, a UC
Merced spokeswoman.
“She knows the campus is up and running. We’ve been
successful with our inaugural class, with our founding
faculty,” Istas said. “The campus is well
underway.”
Tomlinson-Keasey, a developmental psychologist and longtime UC
faculty member, spent two years as the UC president’s special
assistant for what was then called the 10th campus, and was
appointed founding chancellor in 1999.
“Over the last nine years, I have dedicated my life to the
University of California, Merced,” she wrote in the
letter.
“Together we have founded a university that will
endure,” she wrote, referring to the colleagues she worked
with during the process of building the campus.
The university will begin the search for a new chancellor
“as promptly as possible,” in time to appoint a
replacement before Tomlinson-Keasey’s Aug. 31 departure date,
Istas said, but she did not indicate a definite timeline.
As with all chancellor searches, the UC Office of the President
will compile a search committee of regents, faculty, staff and
students, headed by UC President Robert Dynes.
After such close involvement through the planning and
development of the newest UC branch, Tomlinson-Keasey’s
“fingerprints are felt all over the campus,” Istas
said. “UC Merced is all Chancellor Carol
Tomlinson-Keasey.”
But the challenges of bringing a new UC campus into existence
have been formidable, Tomlinson-Keasey wrote in her letter.
The chancellor’s assistant, Katie Unruh, emphasized that
though Tomlinson-Keasey has been the leader of the active
university campus for less than a year, she has truly been its
chancellor for much longer than that.
“She’s worked very long and hard on this,”
said Unruh, who has worked with Tomlinson-Keasey for six years.
Colleagues said without Tomlinson-Keasey’s hand in shaping
the campus, the final product would have been very different, as
she gave her own special flavor to the project.
“She definitely helped make this what it is. I’m not
sure anyone else could have done it,” Unruh said.