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UC President Dynes To Step Down |
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Wednesday, 15 August 2007 |
INLAND EMPIRE
Championed Campus Diversity
By Chris Levister
University
of California President Robert C. Dynes,
whose tenure has been marked by budget woes and a compensation scandal, says
he'll leave by June 2008.
Praised by women and minority activists for his push to
diversify UC's 10 campus system and by associates for his "extraordinary
intellect," Dynes, 64, says he was not pressured to step down because of the
debate over executive pay that clouded the last year of his tenure.
 Departing University of California president Robert Dynes (l) talks with San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools Herbert R. Fischer during a May visit to San Gorgonio High School.
"Leaving is bittersweet. You never accomplish everything you
want to accomplish." Peppered with questions about the university's
compensation practices including quietly awarding millions of dollars in perks
to top UC executives without regents' approval, Dynes said he chose not to leave
in the middle of the scandal.
"With that resolved and behind me, I'm in love with my wife
and its time to spend some time with her before it's too late."
As president Dynes, a well known physicist, was an energetic
and enthusiastic advocate for a public university system hailed as one of the
world's best, with an enrollment of nearly 200,000 students.
He said he faced a series of difficult challenges, including
maintaining UC's quality with fewer state resources and expanding it's
diversity without the help of affirmative action.
"I believe deeply that every child who qualifies and works
hard should have access to the UC. We've
tried a variety of things, some of which worked, some didn't work. Looking at California's rapidly
changing demographics, my successor will have to work very hard on that," he
said.
In May Dynes told students at San Bernardino's San Gorgonio
High School he failed calculus during his freshman year, but as he put it, "got
his head screwed on straight" to become a first generation college graduate,
distinguished physicist and leader of a world class academic institution.
"If you keep your head screwed on straight, the world is
yours," Dynes told the students many of them from low-income families.
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