[SlugLUG] Denton Suicide

[Rohan Sheth]

Here ya go:

UC Santa Cruz Chancellor Denice Denton, apparently 
despondent over work and personal issues, died Saturday 
after she jumped from the roof of a 42-story San Francisco 
apartment building, police said. Denton's partner, 
Gretchen Kalonji, has an apartment in the building, 
property records show.

Denton, a well-regarded engineer, had been named this 
spring in a series of articles examining UC management 
compensation. She had been criticized for an expensive 
university-funded renovation on her campus home, and for 
obtaining a UC administrative job for Kalonji.

Denton, 46, died Saturday morning after jumping from the 
Paramount at Mission and Third streets, police said. The 
building is advertised as San Francisco's tallest luxury 
rental apartment building. A guest at the nearby Argent 
Hotel called authorities at 8:17 a.m. to report a body on 
the roof of a parking structure below the apartment 
building, police said. The medical examiner ruled her 
death a suicide.

Denton had been on medical leave from the university since 
June 15 and was expected to return to work this week, said 
UC Santa Cruz spokesman Jim Burns. She was absent from the 
university's commencement exercises last week because she 
was not feeling well, he said.

Denton's mother, Carolyn Mabee, was in the apartment 
building at the time of her death, police said. She told 
authorities that her daughter was "very depressed" about 
her professional and personal life.

In a statement issued Saturday evening, UC President 
Robert Dynes said Denton's death is "a tremendous loss for 
the entire University of California family."

"Denice was an accomplished and passionate scholar whose 
life and work demonstrated a deep commitment to public 
service and to improving opportunity for the disadvantaged 
and underrepresented," the statement said. "She was a 
person of enthusiasm, of big ideas, of tremendous energy, 
and of great promise. In a relatively short time at UC 
Santa Cruz, she began moving on ambitious plans for the 
campus and emerged as an important voice in national 
higher education issues."

Kalonji, who was hired as director of international 
strategy development in the UC Office of the President in 
Oakland as part of Denton's recruitment package, was 
returning this evening from Washington, D.C., where she 
had been on university business, UC spokesman Michael 
Reese said. Denton had been provided a 2,680-square-foot 
home on the UC Santa Cruz campus, the subject of a story 
in a Chronicle series this spring examining perks and pay 
in the UC system.

Before she moved into her university-provided house on 
campus in 2005, she asked for dozens of improvements -- 
everything from a new fence for her dogs to new wiring, 
speakers, amplifier and CD player for a built-in sound 
system, according to university documents. In all, a 
$600,000 upgrade was made to the home, though it is not 
clear how many of the improvements were at Denton's 
request. Denton's annual salary was $282,000.

As a result of that and other spending disclosed in the 
media, Dynes tightened rules for renovation projects at 
university-owned homes and the offices of top executives.

In 2005, UC unions protested the hiring of Kalonji, a 
former University of Washington professor of materials 
science, into a $192,000 UC management position. UC also 
provided Kalonji, then Denton's partner of seven years, a 
housing assistance allowance of up to $50,000.

Denton assumed office on Feb. 14, 2005. In addition to 
holding the top post at the 15,000-student campus, Denton 
was a professor of electrical engineering, according to 
the school's Web site.

Shortly before taking the Santa Cruz post, Denton made 
national news for confronting Harvard President Lawrence 
Summers after he insinuated in a talk that women might be 
less science-prone for genetic reasons. Denton was in the 
room when Summers made the controversial comment.

UC Santa Cruz Campus Provost David Kliger issued a 
statement Saturday evening calling Denton's death a 
"tremendous loss."

"During Chancellor Denton's tenure here, she devoted 
herself toward strengthening UC Santa Cruz," he wrote. 
"Those of us who worked closely with Denice valued her 
intelligence, humor, and commitment to the ideals of 
diversity and higher education. We are deeply saddened by 
her death."

Kliger said Denton was a woman who dedicated her life and 
career to helping young people, especially women and 
minorities, advance in the field of science.

"She led this campus with clear statements of the 
importance of education in transforming lives and in 
creating opportunities for all," Kliger wrote. "She 
herself had lived that experience, rising from modest 
means to achieve with distinction at every stage in her 
life."

Kliger will manage the campus operations in the wake of 
Denton's death until Dynes appoints a new chancellor, 
Reese said.

"But we are so not even thinking about that right now," 
Reese said.

A manager at the Paramount apartments, which sits directly 
across the street from the new Museum of the African 
Diaspora, declined to comment Saturday.

Residents of the building said units rent for $3,000 to 
$9,000 a month. On the top floor, residents have access to 
an open-air rooftop terrace. The parking structure where 
Denton's body was found can be seen below.

Denton previously was the dean of the College of 
Engineering and a professor of electrical engineering at 
the University of Washington. She was the first woman to 
hold such a position at a top research university, 
according to her biography on the UC Santa Cruz Web site.

News of Denton's death reached her former colleagues at 
the University of Washington on Saturday evening.

"I never expected this," said Mani Soma, acting dean of 
the school's college of engineering, which Denton 
previously ran. "She was an outstanding performer here, 
and we were extremely glad to have her."

Soma said Denton was known as a hard worker who had very 
high standards. Some former colleagues were in tears when 
they learned of her death through news reports, he said.

"I learned a lot from her," Soma said. "She expected 
people to perform, and she also worked like crazy. She 
really set an example."

Denton received a doctorate in electrical engineering from 
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She also held 
academic appointments at the University of Massachusetts, 
the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and 
the University of Wisconsin- Madison, the UC Santa Cruz 
Web site said.

She recently won a prestigious national prize called the 
Maria Mitchell Women in Science Award, which recognized 
her work in developing programs to encourage women and 
girls to study science.


Source: 
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/06/24/MNGM1JK1MI15.DTL

--Rohan