SUBJECT:

Appointment of Associate Vice Chancellor for Faculty Equity

It is with great pleasure that I announce the appointment of Jeanne Ferrante, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering and Associate Dean of the Jacobs School of Engineering, as the first Associate Vice Chancellor for Faculty Equity (AVC-FE), effective July 1, 2008.

The new AVC-FE position was established in response to recommendations of the UCSD Workgroup on the Report of the UC President's Task Force on Faculty Diversity. The position will report directly to me and will provide academic leadership and direction in advancing the University's goal of achieving and sustaining faculty equity and diversity in pursuit of academic excellence. The AVC-FE will also oversee the establishment of faculty equity advisors, respected senior faculty who will work directly with their Deans, departments and search committees. As AVC-FE, Associate Dean Ferrante will pursue these goals collaboratively and innovatively with the campus administration, the Academic Senate, the campus Chief Diversity Officer, the Director of the Office of Academic Diversity and Equal Opportunity (OADEO), equity advisors, academic units and faculty. She will help to develop and enhance policies, programs and procedures to encourage excellence and diversity in faculty recruiting and retention, and facilitate an inclusive climate of advancement and growth for all faculty members.

We are fortunate that Associate Dean Ferrante has accepted this important role. She is known and respected system wide for her diversity efforts, and was honored as a UCSD Community Champion for Diversity in 2004. She received the 2007 Athena Educator Pinnacle Award for her leadership in support of women and her successful efforts to encourage women and other underrepresented groups to pursue careers in engineering. Associate Dean Ferrante chaired the organizing committee for the 2004 UCSD Gender Equity Summit which brought together over 60 senior administrators and faculty to discuss leadership, recruitment and retention, climate and pipeline issues. The Summit led to the development of the UCSD Women's Leadership Alliance, which Professor Ferrante co-founded to promote leadership development and recognition of women campus leaders.

Associate Dean Ferrante received her Ph.D. in mathematics from MIT in 1974 and taught at Tufts University before joining the Computer Science Department of IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center in 1978. She became a professor in UCSD's Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) department in 1994, and served as CSE Department Chair from 1996-1999, as Acting Dean of the Jacobs School of Engineering in Fall 2007, and as Associate Dean from 2002-present. As Associate Dean, she co-founded UCSD Teams In Engineering Service (TIES), which partners multidisciplinary teams of undergraduates with non-profit organizations to provide long-term technical solutions. She will continue to serve as the Associate Dean of the Jacobs School of Engineering while assuming her new duties as the Associate Vice Chancellor for Faculty Equity, each at 50% capacity. A distinguished researcher, Dr. Ferrante is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). Her work on Static Single Assignment form, a program representation that yields faster and more powerful optimizations, is used in many commercial compilers, and was recognized by the 2006 ACM Programming Language Achievement Award as a "significant and lasting contribution to the field."

Please join me in congratulating Associate Dean Ferrante on her appointment to this important new position for the campus.

Paul W. Drake Senior Vice Chancellor