When Dr. Dorothy Leland returned to her native California in 2011, she was stepping into the unknown. While the state was familiar and she had experience running an institution of higher education before, she had not previously been part of developing a university from the ground up.
At the time when the UC Board of Regents named Leland chancellor of UC Merced, the university was just six years old. It was the first new UC campus in 40 years and the first research university built in the historically underserved San Joaquin Valley.
“How many people ever get an opportunity to build a new University of California campus and, even more importantly, to build a new university campus to serve the emerging and future demographics of the state of California,” says Leland, who recently stepped down from her post this summer. “Most of our students are low income, first-generation and underrepresented minorities. Helping to grow a campus as a future star research university serving the students that we do was something I couldn’t resist.”
Leland, who spent seven years as president of Georgia College & State University, describes her eight years at UC Merced as the most extraordinary of her career. In crafting the institutional identity, Leland worked with faculty, staff and students.
“Community is very important to [the students] and they have helped build the UC Merced campus with a real community feel,” Leland says.
As she settled in, Leland’s long-term vision for the university took shape as she explored the greatest needs. There was a recession and she faced resistance from skeptics who questioned whether such an institution was even necessary.
Undaunted, Leland recruited “extraordinary faculty” from top research universities — 134 to date — and she saw to it that students were engaged in undergraduate research. In 2016, UC Merced was designated R2, the second-highest classification for American research universities.
