Following more than a decade of exceptional service to the university, it is bittersweet for me to share the news that Vice Chancellor and Dean Margaret Leinen will be stepping down from her role as Vice Chancellor for Marine Sciences, Dean for the School of Marine Sciences and Director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, effective June 30, 2025.
During the past 11 years, Vice Chancellor Leinen helmed one of the foremost centers for global earth science research and education in the world. Her ambitious and transformative leadership advanced the university’s research endeavor to understand and protect the planet and to help find solutions to our greatest environmental challenges.
Leinen was appointed as Vice Chancellor and Dean, and the eleventh Director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography on October 1, 2013. She became Scripps’ first female director since the institution’s founding in 1903. Under her leadership, Scripps Oceanography drove immense growth in degree programs and student enrollment, doubled sponsored research and philanthropic funding and elevated UC San Diego research on the global stage, influencing environmental and climate policy and protection at the local, national and international level.
As director, Leinen championed initiatives to increase diversity, equity and inclusion at Scripps and in geosciences, including hiring the department’s first director of diversity initiatives in 2017, and elevating the position of Faculty Equity Advisor to Associate Dean for Faculty Equity and Inclusion. She aided in securing funding to build and expand programs with the goal of advancing the recruitment and retention of underrepresented minority students. Scripps Oceanography has been in the top four undergraduate departments at UC San Diego for underrepresented minority first-year and transfer admits since 2018, and recent doctoral and master’s cohorts have increased from an average of 13% underrepresented minority students to an average of 22% underrepresented minority students over the last four years.
Leinen also shepherded the growth of the Scripps Oceanography faculty, which increased 33% percent from 83 faculty to 110 faculty, as well as its diversity. Fifty percent of more than 50 of the faculty hired since she became vice chancellor were women, and nearly 20 percent identified as underrepresented minorities.
Leinen’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion at Scripps extended beyond the efforts to increase and include faculty. She worked closely with me and Executive Vice Chancellor Elizabeth Simmons to form a working group to assess gender disparities in research space allocation at Scripps and then led a change management committee to implement the recommendations of the working group to build lasting equity in all space allocation at Scripps.
Degree programs and student enrollment at Scripps flourished during Leinen’s tenure, going from 110 undergraduate students across two majors in 2013 to 881 students in three majors and the Environmental Systems program in 2023, a 700% increase. Broad undergraduate education in Scripps-led courses for non-majors at UC San Diego also expanded significantly, more than doubling the number of undergraduate students enrolled in Scripps courses. Undergraduate student participation in seagoing class cruises and independent research also tripled during her tenure.
Philanthropic giving more than doubled during Leinen’s tenure, from $9.5 million in FY 2013/2014 to more than $30 million for FY 2023/2024. This includes funding for key research endeavors such as the formation of the Center for Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation, major gifts for capital improvements to science facilities and to Birch Aquarium, programs to increase diversity in geosciences and scientific diving and increases in student fellowship support.
Along with philanthropic growth, Leinen oversaw the expansion of sponsored research funding by 100% – from $154 million in FY 2013/2014 to a notable $307 million in FY 2023/2024 – and its diversification to include major increases in state funding and private non-profit funding. This included sustained, increased and new state and federal funding for critical ocean, atmosphere and earth observing programs managed by Scripps.
Under her leadership, Scripps has increasingly led science in the public interest, including legislative support for projects critical to California. This includes enhanced coastal monitoring to understand the timing of bluff failures; research to develop models to forecast the presence of pathogens in San Diego coastal waters and to investigate the aerosolization of pollutants; state-wide support for the expansion of the ALERTCalifornia wildfire- and hazard-detecting cameras; the growth of efforts to use advanced forecasting of atmospheric rivers to more efficiently manage water levels in California reservoirs to increase water reliability; and support for interdisciplinary research to understand the extent and ecological impact the DDT dumpsite off the coast of Southern California.
Leinen not only elevated the national reputation of Scripps, but also the international reputation of UC San Diego. From 2016 to 2018, she served as a Science Envoy for the U.S. State Department focusing on ocean science in Latin America, East Asia and the Pacific. She led the University of California delegation to the United Nations climate change conferences known as COPs. She championed student participation and, with other ocean science leaders, successfully fought for inclusion of ocean issues in climate negotiation texts. With Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, she launched the Ocean Pavilion at COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, and COP28 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates that served as a center for ocean-related science and policy discussions at the COPs.
For the research fleet at Scripps Oceanography, Leinen oversaw the commissioning of Research Vessel (R/V) Sally Ride, the midlife refit of R/V Roger Revelle, and the fundraising and acquisition of R/V Bob and Betty Beyster. She fostered the development of a new hydrogen-hybrid California Coastal Research Vessel, a first-of-its-kind vessel with a hydrogen-hybrid propulsion system capable of zero-emissions operations, leading the way on maritime decarbonization and which will be essential to California’s climate adaptation goals.
The transformation of the Scripps portion of the UC San Diego campus under Leinen’s leadership included the complete reconstruction of the Charles and Beano Scripps Coastal Services Center and Ted and Jean Scripps Marine Conservation and Technology Facility. It also included the re-purposing of the Hydraulics Laboratory building to provide a home for the Scripps Ocean Atmosphere Research Simulator (SOARS) and Scripps Sandbox Makerspace classroom and laboratory. The renovation of Eckart Hall provided new facilities for the growing student population, including new classrooms and new student study areas.
An advocate for the ocean-powered Blue Economy, Leinen fostered a new industry engagement and entrepreneurship program with revenue from corporate affiliates programs, grants and gifts. The startBlue ocean accelerator program, initiated in 2021 and managed by Scripps and the Rady School of Management, has supported 22 ocean-focused startups, 50% of which are female-founded, that have collectively raised $10.1 million.
Please join me in congratulating Vice Chancellor Leinen and in thanking her for her many exemplary and enduring contributions to UC San Diego and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. In particular, she should be commended for her efforts to advance university’s interdisciplinary research around understanding and mitigating climate change – the defining challenge of our time – and in her leadership in training the next generation of scientific, environmental and policy leaders who will continue advancing climate science and identifying solutions for the climate crisis.
A national search will commence shortly for the next vice chancellor and dean for the School of Marine Sciences and director of Scripps Oceanography. Additional announcements will be made in the coming months relative to the search.
