With mixed feelings, we write to inform you that the UC Board of Regents today appointed UCSC Engineering Dean Sung-Mo (Steve) Kang as the next chancellor of UC Merced. We are sorry to lose Dean Kang, who has led the Baskin School of Engineering with distinction since 2001, but we are thrilled about his appointment as a UC chancellor.
Kang is expected to assume his new position on or about March 1.
To see the UC Office of the President press release about Dean Kang's new appointment, please go to:
www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/2007/jan17.html.
During his tenure, Dean Kang has significantly increased the national visibility of our engineering school and secured resources that doubled the faculty size and quadrupled sponsored research funding.
Before coming to UCSC, Kang was head of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and a foreign member of the National Academy of Engineering of Korea. He has served as president of the Silicon Valley Engineering Council and president of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society, and he was the founding editor-in-chief of the IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Systems.
Just this week, the Asian Pacific Fund announced that Dean Kang was one of the recipients of its first annual Chang-Lin Tien Education Leadership Awards, recognizing his professional accomplishments and leadership qualities.
We are in the process of consulting with members of the engineering community, Academic Senate leadership, and others about the appointment of an acting dean to succeed Steve Kang. We will make a formal announcement as soon as that process is completed.
Please join us in congratulating Dean Kang on this most prestigious appointment.
