Too Much, Too Fast

Denice Denton made a rapid rise to become a university chancellor. Then she leapt to her death. Why?

It was the middle of the night, and Denice D. Denton was aimlessly driving her mother all over San Francisco. Ms. Denton believed the police were following her. The previous day, she had been discharged from a psychiatric hospital after a six-day stay.

Her mother, Carolyn Mabee, had picked her up at the hospital on June 23. Ms. Denton, 46, who had been on medical leave from her job as chancellor of the University of California at Santa Cruz since June 15, was due back at work in two days.

But Ms. Mabee says they planned to drive straight to Ms. Denton’s native Texas so she could attempt to recover from a severe bout of depression. “She just needed to rest,” her mother says.

At 2 a.m., Ms. Denton arrived at the Paramount, a luxury high rise at Third and Mission Streets, near the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, in the city’s SoMa neighborhood. Ms. Denton rented an apartment in the building with her longtime partner, Gretchen L. Kalonji, who works in the Oakland office of the University of California system president.

Ms. Kalonji was out of town, but, according to a report by the city and county medical examiner’s office, Ms. Denton wanted to retrieve her purse from the apartment, which was on the building’s 41st floor.

After picking up the purse, Ms. Denton and her mother walked to the elevator, and a confusing discussion ensued, according to the report. At the elevator her mother pressed the down button while Ms. Denton pressed the up button. Ms. Denton ran down the hallway, opened a door to the stairway, and disappeared. After searching for her daughter for some time, Ms. Mabee gave up and returned to the car.

“She broke loose and that was it,” says Ms. Mabee.

Ms. Denton was well known for her larger-than-life personality. She would break into song when the mood struck her, and had recently been on an Elvis kick. She was creative, aggressive, and unerringly self-assured. Although her talents at times intimidated colleagues, she was also skilled at boosting the confidence of those who worked with her. Many say she was a master at tackling problems pragmatically and with good humor.

An engineer by training, she had built her reputation on firsts: the first female dean of an engineering school at a major research university, the first openly lesbian chancellor in the University of California system.

The 16 months Ms. Denton had spent as chancellor at Santa Cruz, however, had shaken her deeply, with confidence-rattling criticism coming from all directions on everything from her commitment to diversity to her personal appearance. Her ebullient personality went into remission. Ms. Denton had even begun to fear for her safety. Some of her friends wonder if she had a thick enough skin to withstand such an onslaught, given her rapid rise in higher education as an administrator, in which she skipped several traditional steps.

But the job stress was not the only problem plaguing Ms. Denton last summer. Her relationship with Ms. Kalonji was on the rocks. She was also suffering from health problems related to an ovarian cyst that had recently been removed, a thyroid condition, and the onset of menopause.

Thyroid dysfunction may contribute to depression, but Ms. Mabee believes the biggest contributor to Ms. Denton’s deteriorating mental health was Zoloft, an antidepressant that had been prescribed for her daughter. She was also taking the sleeping aid Ambien. The antidepressant Effexor was also found in Ms. Denton’s system, although it’s unclear whether she had been prescribed that drug. Both antidepressants are among those that the Food and Drug Administration has warned may increase suicidal thoughts and behavior, particularly in the first few months of treatment.

“That was not Denice; that was the medication,” says Ms. Mabee, of her daughter’s actions that night in June.

Ms. Denton generally shied away from discussing her personal problems, even with close friends and family. So no one can say with certainty what motivated her on June 24 to scale two flights of stairs to the 43rd floor and walk onto the roof. But sometime in the early morning hours, she climbed onto a ledge and jumped to her death. It was not until 8:17 a.m. that a guest at a hotel across the street reported seeing her body, which was lying on a concrete 10th-floor terrace.

First Place Can Be Lonely

Denice Dee Denton was born in rural El Campo, Tex., but grew up mostly in the Houston suburbs. She was the oldest of four children, with two sisters and a brother, and her parents divorced when she was 8. A mathematics teacher, Ms. Mabee taught calculus in the Spring Branch Independent School District. Her daughter was one of her students.

Denice was a quiet girl. In fact she was so reserved that though she was a straight-A student, she might have gone unnoticed, her mother says.

One summer Denice attended a camp in math and engineering at Rice University. The camp stoked her interest in engineering, and, with the encouragement of a high-school guidance counselor, she was soon drawing attention from universities that were eager to enroll her. Ms. Mabee says Rutgers University pursued Ms. Denton with particular zeal. She enrolled instead at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she completed bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering.

Karl S. Pister, a former dean of engineering at the University of California at Berkeley and former chancellor of Santa Cruz, first met Ms. Denton while she was at MIT. Mr. Pister, who was at Berkeley at the time, was attending an engineering conference in Washington. He says the attendees were mostly deans, and exclusively “white male, except Denice.” He spotted her at a dinner. “Nobody talked to Denice,” he says, who was “sitting over there in the corner.”

The research she began at MIT was in microelectromechanical systems, with a focus on life-sciences applications. She eventually held three patents. But, her friends and colleagues say, her professional interests extended well beyond the lab. At MIT, for example, she fought to improve conditions for female engineering students. The university later appointed her to an advisory board that sought to diversify the faculty.

“The quality of Denice Denton’s research won her wide acclaim, and she could have had a place in academic history just based on her contributions to her discipline,” said Alice M. Agogino, a professor of engineering at Berkeley, during her remarks at a memorial service for Ms. Denton. “But Denice had much more to offer.”

Ms. Agogino first met Ms. Denton in 1987 at a ceremony to mark Ms. Denton’s being named a recipient of National Science Foundation’s Young Investigator Award. Ms. Agogino had won the prestigious award a few years earlier, as had Ms. Denton’s future partner, Ms. Kalonji. (Ms. Kalonji did not respond to a request for an interview for this article.)

That year, Ms. Denton went to the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where she became the only female faculty member in the department of electrical and computer engineering.

At Wisconsin, Ms. Denton built a solid reputation as both a researcher and a teacher. She won a teaching award every year she was there. Susan B. Millar, a senior scientist with the university’s Wisconsin Center for Education Research, says her colleague and friend had an uncanny ear for picking up fresh ways to communicate about her work, whether by using clever witticisms, such as “been there and got the T-shirt” or, for example, being the first among her colleagues to use the term “nano.”

Later in her stint in Wisconsin, Ms. Denton collaborated with Ms. Millar to pitch an idea for a project to evaluate educational programs at the university and beyond. Ms. Millar says Ms. Denton sold university administrators in the first meeting.

“I didn’t know where she learned to do this,” Ms. Millar says of her young colleague’s flair for administrative tasks.

When Ms. Denton left Wisconsin in 1996 to become dean of the University of Washington’s College of Engineering, she was the first female engineering dean of a major U.S. research university. At 37, she was Washington’s youngest dean.

She was popular at Washington, too, and was known for being straightforward and lighthearted. Eve A. Riskin, associate dean of academic affairs at Washington’s College of Engineering, says Ms. Denton had “great emotional intelligence.” She was able to keep people on task during meetings while also acknowledging their contributions.

“She was always looking for people with great ideas,” Ms. Riskin says.

Obstacles and Open Doors

Reza Ghodssi was a student of Ms. Denton’s at Wisconsin. Mr. Ghodssi, now an associate professor of engineering at the University of Maryland at College Park, says an undergraduate class Ms. Denton taught, in which she used real-life examples to explain abstract material, persuaded him to stay at Wisconsin for graduate school. Ms. Denton became his mentor and, Mr. Ghodssi says, his closest friend.

“It was obvious to people around Denice that she was quicker, smarter,” and more people-savvy than those around her, Mr. Ghodssi says, noting that her colleagues realized she was on the fast track to becoming a university leader. Ms. Denton’s talent and confidence threatened some senior faculty members, her former peers say.

Ms. Denton earned plenty of plaudits in her high-octane academic career, but she also faced roadblocks. Her former colleagues say one such episode at the University of Wisconsin has become a legend.

Phillip R. Certain is the retired dean of the College of Letters and Science at Wisconsin. He was associate vice chancellor when Ms. Denton came to the university, and handled faculty personnel matters. He says Ms. Denton was sharing a laboratory with a senior faculty member, now deceased, when she came to him with a surprising complaint: Her colleague had changed the locks on the lab.

“This was sort of new to me,” says Mr. Certain, who helped Ms. Denton push back her tenure clock because the situation had delayed her research.

Asked what might have led to such an extreme action, Mr. Certain says, “Denice was a brash young woman, and she didn’t suffer fools lightly.” Perhaps even more importantly, he says, she did not meet the expectation that a recently hired assistant professor “didn’t rock the boat.”

Ms. Denton’s status as a rare accomplished female engineer opened doors, enabling her to skip several rungs in her climb to chancellor. Some of her close former colleagues wonder if she might have been better prepared for the daunting task had she taken more time in her rise to the top.

S.M. (Steve) Kang, dean of engineering at Santa Cruz, says Ms. Denton was widely known to have been successful as dean of the engineering college at Washington, which had an annual budget of $155-million in 2005.

He says Ms. Denton’s engineering experience was significant. But he says she became an administrator “before she really bloomed in her field.”

Mr. Ghodssi says the resistance she often faced as a woman in her field, such as being locked out of her lab, was a “horrible experience for her.” But Ms. Denton relished challenges, which spurred her to take on leadership roles and, ironically, helped her to find great opportunities as a female administrator and champion of diversity.

“If she had not had those kinds of obstacles,” Mr. Ghodssi says, perhaps she would have become a “more engaged researcher.”

Nonetheless, because Ms. Denton’s research talents were not always fully appreciated, he says, she had little choice but to “immediately become a rising star in the higher-education community.”

The Perfect Candidate

Santa Cruz announced in December 2004 that Ms. Denton had been selected as chancellor from a field of 700 candidates. Hopes were high for Ms. Denton, who had that year been one of nine scholars to receive a Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring.

University officials publicly stated their hopes that Ms. Denton would strengthen campus ties with the nearby tech Mecca of Silicon Valley. At an institution that was touting its strength in science and engineering, with top-ranked programs in space and physical sciences, a fiery female engineer seemed to be the perfect choice as chancellor. Furthermore, Ms. Denton generated excitement for being the youngest chancellor in the 10-campus University of California system.

Mr. Kang says the campus search committee that met with Ms. Denton was particularly impressed with her calm confidence. He was excited to have an engineer as chancellor.

Despite the praise lavished on Ms. Denton upon her hiring, she was entering a volatile situation. The university was still reeling from a state budget crunch that had resulted in decreased state contributions, increased student fees, and painful cuts, such as the decision in 2003 to eliminate the journalism-and-communications program.

“She came here at a time when all of UC was under real scrutiny,” says David S. Kliger, the Santa Cruz provost and executive vice chancellor.

And Santa Cruz, both the university and the small city, can be tough on a chancellor, says Mr. Pister, who held the position from 1991 to 1996. He says that although Santa Cruz has a reputation for being liberal, it can be intolerant of outsiders, a view echoed by many on the campus.

“It’s very unforgiving,” Mr. Pister says.

Ms. Denton had considered a job at the university in the past, coming to the campus to interview for the post of vice chancellor for research. Mr. Pister says he told her not to take the job, saying it was not a good “next step” for her. So he was a bit surprised when she called to talk about the chancellor job, noting that he “immediately had questions about the advisability of her going there.” In particular, Mr. Pister worried that a deanship — even one in which Ms. Denton had been a successful manager and fund raiser — would not have adequately prepared her for the stress of being chancellor at Santa Cruz.

Money Problems

Mr. Pister himself had made the jump from dean — at Berkeley — to chancellor, and says the adjustment was enormously challenging. As a dean, Mr. Pister says he dealt mostly with a “well-defined public” with whom he was well acquainted. That was not the case at Santa Cruz, where the chancellor is a virtual celebrity in the tight knit town and regularly interacts with a bewildering array of constituencies.

“Everything you do, everything you say, every place you go, you’re watched,” says Mr. Pister.

In 1996 California passed Proposition 209, which banned racial preferences in hiring and admissions. Mr. Pister had publicly opposed the ban. Yet he says “that didn’t stop students from banging on the door” to his home, sometimes late at night.

“They beat me up on that issue,” he says.

The criticism of Ms. Denton was often personal. Students and other critics mocked how Ms. Denton styled her bright shock of strawberry-blond hair, her colorful eyeglasses, and other aspects her of appearance, occasionally in cartoon form. Protesters regularly staked out her campus home, once breaking a window in the house late at night. And perhaps most threatening, some detractors took aim at her perceived failure to improve campus diversity and staff wages, calling her a hypocrite on issues that were essential to her identity.

At least Mr. Pister had had four years of experience as chancellor when the backlash against him erupted. Ms. Denton was embroiled in controversy even before her February 2005 arrival. In January the San Francisco Chronicle ran an article that detailed the position that had been created for Ms. Kalonji, Ms. Denton’s partner of seven years, who was hired to be faculty associate to the provost of the University of California system and director of international strategy.

The article quoted a university official as saying that key management hires often include positions for spouses and partners, but it also carried a lurid headline: “UC hires partner of chancellor; creates $192,000 post for Santa Cruz chief’s lesbian lover.”

Ms. Denton defended the hiring of her partner, saying in a March 2005 interview with the Santa Cruz Sentinel that other administrators in the university system had received similar job offers for their partners.

“It’s a typical practice in the corporate world or academia,” she said. “It’s not something new or different.”

The revelation, however, was ammunition for the university’s unions and other critics of executive pay. And that was far from the last negative publicity over Ms. Denton’s compensation.

In November 2005, the San Francisco Chronicle ran the first of scores of articles detailing abuses in the pay and perquisites doled out to employees of the 10-campus system. Subsequent outside audits found $334-million in often unreported and improper compensation in the 2004-5 fiscal year.

The pay scandal triggered an avalanche of bad publicity and outrage among state lawmakers. Ms. Denton was the focus of what became perhaps the most cited example of spending excess.

The university-owned chancellor’s residence in Santa Cruz is a modest-looking one-story ranch house that had not been renovated in decades. Upon Ms. Denton’s hiring, the university agreed to $600,000 in improvements for the house. One upgrade was the building of a dog run — an enclosure for Ms. Denton’s two dogs — that cost $30,000.

Ms. Denton’s compensation of $304,714 made her the lowest-paid chancellor in the system in 2004-5. It was well below the median for presidents of public research institutions. But the dog-run criticism was an albatross, and was often juxtaposed with causes such as staff wages and slashed university programs.

In a meeting with The Chronicle in January 2006, Ms. Denton acknowledged that the university had made mistakes, such as not publicly disclosing all aspects of pay packages. But she said the amount of attention the scandal was receiving was excessive, and had become a distraction, saying, “Message received.” She also defended what she saw as fair pay levels for university officials.

“When you want the best in the world,” she said, “there’s a lot of things you’ve got to do.”

Other problems followed for Ms. Denton, including student harassment of military recruiters, a divisive plan to expand the campus, and frequent student protests of university labor and hiring policies.

She was criticized by conservatives, most notably for her spirited rebuttal of comments made by Lawrence H. Summers, Harvard University’s former president, about female aptitude for science, and for the campus attacks on military recruiters. But complaints from liberal segments on the campus about her commitment to diversity, such as a student protest which harangued her at her home for “institutional racism and sexism,” must have stung, her colleagues say.

Angela Y. Davis, the onetime Black Panther who is now a professor of feminist studies at Santa Cruz, says there was a homophobic edge to attacks on Ms. Denton, which must have hurt her, “particularly when they came from the very circles from where she might have drawn support.”

Some of Ms. Denton’s efforts during her brief, turbulent time at Santa Cruz earned positive reviews. Her November 2005 inaugural speech was titled “Achieving Excellence Through Diversity.” In the address, during which she spoke in several languages, Ms. Denton unveiled popular priorities such as expanding campus connections with Silicon Valley firms, working with local government on low-cost housing and transportation, and increasing the national and international recognition for the university.

Ms. Denton helped legitimize the work of the feminist-studies department, Ms. Davis says, and also had strong allies among gay and lesbian faculty members. Student groups praised her diversity programs, particularly the money she provided to outreach efforts for lower-income students.

But her successes were overshadowed by the controversies. Ms. Denton’s friends say she was almost immediately demoralized at her new job.

“I knew right away,” says Mr. Ghodssi. “She was not appreciated in the Santa Cruz community.”

Properly Prepared?

Alberto M. Pimentel, vice president of the education practice of Edward W. Kelley and Partners, is the consultant who ran the Santa Cruz chancellor search. He says Ms. Denton received more than the usual amount of briefing for a confidential search, estimating that she had 100 hours of conversations with faculty members and administrators on the campus, as well as with system officials and the search committee members.

Over the course of several months she heard about the challenges facing Santa Cruz and the system, including local resistance to campus expansion, tension over budgets, and pending openings for administrators.

“As much as one could be informed,” Mr. Pimentel says, “I think she was.”

As is often the case when a dean is considered for a chancellorship, the search committee was concerned that Ms. Denton was skipping the step of being a provost, he says. However, that worry “was mitigated by the fact that there was an overall sense that this was a perfect match.”

But Mr. Pimentel acknowledges that Ms. Denton was unprepared for the negative news coverage and the “level of activism” she encountered when she arrived on the campus.

Mr. Kliger, the university’s provost, says the stress was relentless for Ms. Denton.

“There were times when I thought she was in total control,” he says. “And there were other times when I thought she was overwhelmed.”

The Collapse

If Ms. Denton was in over her head at Santa Cruz, she did not have an adequate support system on which to lean, say her friends and Ms. Mabee, her mother. And asking for help did not come naturally for Ms. Denton.

“Denice was not the kind of person who would burden you with her problems,” her friend Mr. Ghodssi says.

The Santa Cruz campus is spectacularly serene. Set at an 800-foot elevation about two miles from the ocean, the 2,000-acre campus is covered by tall trees. Quiet paths crisscross the redwood forests, with many of the university’s structures blending into the natural surroundings. No building is taller than the tallest tree. It is often said that residing on the campus is like living in a national park.

The chancellor’s residence is particularly sylvan, nestled mostly out of sight on a small ridge.

“It was like a tomb in there,” says Ms. Mabee, adding that her daughter was alone in the house, with Ms. Kalonji living 75 miles away in San Francisco.

The environment would have been profoundly lonely, particularly without a confidante, says Mr. Pister, the former chancellor. “If I hadn’t had my wife there with me,” he says, “it would’ve been hell.”

Ms. Denton had company on the campus on June 6, when a crowd of students and staff members confronted her over staff wages and faculty diversity. The demonstrators surrounded Ms. Denton in her car, sat on the trunk and hood, and struck it with placards, according to a former university spokeswoman who was there that day.

That episode and others like it left Ms. Denton shaken, says Ms. Mabee. And Ms. Denton, who she says was sensitive to medication and who friends say often ran “hot and cold,” was also struggling with medical problems as well as stress over her faltering relationship.

Josh Sonnenfeld is a senior at Santa Cruz who participated in the June protest. He says he and other students do not feel that unrest at the university brought about Ms. Denton’s suicide.

“If she was really upset about the climate of the campus, she could’ve quit,” he says. But he adds that “just because we shouldn’t feel guilty doesn’t mean we don’t.”

The week of the protest, Ms. Denton cleared most of her appointments. She canceled a scheduled meeting with Mr. Pister, and her attendance at a June 8 meeting of the UC Santa Cruz Foundation was her last major commitment to the university. A week after that she went on medical leave and checked herself into the Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital at the University of California at San Francisco. A week later, she leapt to her death.

She had finally found a challenge she couldn’t manage.

http://chronicle.com Section: Money & Management Volume 53, Issue 20, Page A24