UCSF chancellor pay set at $750,000; 3% raises to other UC execs

The UC regents on Thursday confirmed UC San Francisco’s medical school dean, Sam Hawgood, as chancellor of that health sciences campus and set his salary at $750,000, a 13.8% increase. The regents also approved 3% pay raises for the other UC chancellors and some top administrators.

Hawgood, an Australian-born expert in neonatal lung therapies, has served as interim chancellor of UC San Francisco since Susan Desmond-Hellmann left to become chief executive officer of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Desmond-Hellmann’s base salary as chancellor was $450,000, but as medical school dean Hawgood already was paid much more than his former boss. Under the regents’ new arrangement for Hawgood, $500,000 of his chancellor’s base salary will come from state funds and $250,000 from a newly endowed chair to be financed by donations from the campus foundation.

In other matters, the regents, meeting in San Francisco, gave 3% raises to the nine other UC chancellors and 11 other highly compensated executives, including some vice presidents and medical center directors. Many of them have not had salary increases for seven years, and regents said UC had become uncompetitive with rival institutions as it searched for top talent.

Faculty and nonunionized staff were given 3% raises this year, and many of the unionized employees received more, although all had to increase their contributions to pension funds.

The executive salary levels authorized on Thursday ranged from $319,300 a year for UC Merced Chancellor Dorothy Leland and UC Santa Cruz Chancellor George Blumenthal to $927,009 for UCLA hospital system executive David Feinberg and $963,050 for UC San Francisco Medical Center Chief Executive Mark Laret.

The new salaries for the other seven chancellors are: $324,450 for UC Santa Barbara’s Henry Yang; $364,620 for UC Riverside’s Kim Wilcox; $367,071 for UC Irvine’s interim chancellor Howard Gillman; $412,000 for UC Davis’ Linda Katehi; $423,417 for UC San Diego’s Pradeep Khosla; $428,480 for UCLA’s Gene Block; and $501,404 for UC Berkeley’s Nicholas Dirks.

The chancellors also receive housing or housing allowances, and medical center leaders are eligible for bonuses based on financial performance and health statistics at their hospitals.

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