August 30, 2022

Dear Members of Our Campus Community,

In my campus memo of June 21, I shared with you the news that our College of Creative Studies Dean Gerardo Aldana decided to return to teaching and research. We are grateful for his dedicated leadership and service, especially during the challenges of the pandemic. We also announced that our former long-term Dean Bruce Tiffney graciously agreed to return from retirement to serve as the immediate Interim Dean this summer. We are grateful for his timely leadership to help CCS and our campus with this important transition.

Following suggestions and advice after consultation with our CCS faculty, CCS staff, Academic Senate Chair, Executive Vice Chancellor, Academic Deans, and administrative and faculty colleagues, and with their strong recommendation, I am pleased to announce that Professor Timothy Sherwood has graciously agreed to serve as Interim Dean of the College of Creative Studies, effective September 6, 2022.

A member of our faculty since 2003, Dr. Sherwood is a Professor of Computer Science, an affiliate of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and a member of our Institute for Energy Efficiency, specializing in the development of low-power and high-security microprocessors.

In the nearly two decades Professor Sherwood has been at UC Santa Barbara, he has established an outstanding record of service to his department, to our Academic Senate, and most recently to our entire campus through his term as Associate Vice Chancellor for Research. As an example of his many service contributions to our campus, he co-founded and co-leads our Student Engagement and Enrichment in Data Science Program with Professor Sharon Tettegah. He has served as Graduate Advisor and Vice Chair of Computer Science, as Chair of the Academic Senate Council on Research and Instructional Resources (CRIR), as Co-Chair of the Academic Senate Faculty Grants Committee, and as a member of the Information Technology Council.  

Professor Sherwood is a recipient of UC Santa Barbara’s 2012 Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award, and the 2021 Academic Senate Outstanding Graduate Mentor Award. In 2016, he received the prestigious Maurice Wilkes Award for “contributions to novel program analysis advancing architectural modeling and security” from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). He is a Distinguished Scientist of the ACM, a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and his collaborations have won 17 paper awards for UC Santa Barbara. Professor Sherwood holds a B.S. in computer science and engineering from UC Davis, and a M.S. and Ph.D. in computer science from UC San Diego.

We are grateful for Professor Sherwood’s willingness to serve our campus in this important leadership position. I will consult and form a search advisory committee for our next Dean of the College of Creative Studies.

Please join us in extending our sincere thanks to Professor Tiffney for his timely leadership during this transition over the summer, and a warm welcome to Professor Sherwood as our Interim Dean. 

Sincerely,

Henry T. Yang
Chancellor