Washington Educator to Be UC Santa Cruz Chancellor

Regents of the University of California on Tuesday named Denice Dee Denton, dean of engineering at the University of Washington, as the next chancellor of UC Santa Cruz.

Denton, 45, will be one of the youngest leaders of a UC campus in recent memory, a university spokesman said. Officials said Denton, who lives with her partner of seven years, Gretchen Kalonji, also may be the UC system’s first openly gay chancellor.

She will assume her new job in February, succeeding M.R.C. Greenwood, who earlier this year became UC’s systemwide provost.

Denton is a former professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

In 1996, with her appointment at the University of Washington, she became the first woman in the nation to lead an engineering college at a major research university.

She holds four degrees in electrical engineering, including a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

UC President Robert C. Dynes praised Denton on Tuesday as an accomplished scholar and campus leader. She emerged as his top choice after a national search that produced more than 700 candidates.

Denton said she was excited at the prospect of leading the Santa Cruz campus and returning to the Bay Area, where she worked in summer programs during her student years at MIT. She said she hopes Kalonji, a professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Washington, will find a position in the UC system.

As chancellor, Denton will earn an annual salary of $275,000.