Chancellor Henry Yang’s many years of service will always be remembered as a time of impressive growth of UC Santa Barbara — membership in the Association of American Universities, six Nobel laureates (Walter Kohn, Chemistry, 1998; Alan Heeger, Chemistry, 2000; Herbert Kroemer, Physics, 2000; David Gross, Physics, 2004; Finn Kydland, Economics, 2004; Shuji Nakamura, Physics, 2014).
The list goes on: acquisition of significant property adjacent to west campus (especially the former Ocean Meadows Golf Course), acquisition of the 1,800 acre Las Varas Ranch on the Gaviota coast; a much more diverse student body and faculty, expansion of undergraduate and graduate programs, establishment of the Isla Vista Community Services District (which grew out of a UC Santa Barbara Foundation study), and greatly increased contributions to UCSB. It is hard to imagine a more successful tenure.
One particular area of success of Chancellor Yang within the UC system was “rebenching,” which is the term used to describe the effort to put funding into campuses on a roughly equal basis after many decades of heavily favoring Berkeley and UCLA. This will be of much benefit to UCSB and will create a stronger, entire University of California system.