July 15, 2025

To the Campus Community:

I appreciate the trust and confidence of UC President Michael Drake in asking me to serve as Interim Chancellor. While we await our new Chancellor, I know that I can count on the dedication of our outstanding staff, students, and faculty, a strong culture of shared governance, and an excellent leadership team. We will work together to prepare for this important transition to new campus leadership.

The new chancellor will find a vibrant community eager to plan for the future and build on our distinctive strengths and our collaborative and interdisciplinary culture—ready to both pursue and create new opportunities. At the same time, there are challenges that require our immediate attention. As you know from Chancellor Yang’s March 31, 2025, memo to the campus, because of ongoing shortfalls in the campus budget, Vice Chancellors and deans were asked to plan for significant, permanent budget reductions. Chancellor Yang subsequently accepted the budget reduction recommendations made by a joint Administration-Senate Committee, which include the creation of new revenue streams and a review of organizational options that could leverage resources across units.

This multi-year process will set us on a path to attaining financial stability. It will require creativity and a willingness to make choices, set priorities, and think beyond the status quo, but it will ensure the success and sustainability of our academic mission. Our Finance and Communications colleagues are creating a Financial Stability website to improve transparency about the campus’s fiscal health, provide updates on budget management efforts, and outline the principles guiding reduction and allocation decisions.

We are proud of our mission as a public research university, serving society by promoting innovation, invention, and the transmission of knowledge, educating graduate students, and preparing the workforce that California needs in the 21st century. Like other research universities, we face uncertainty about the federal funding that has been crucial to our research enterprise, and we are working with the UC Office of the President and other research universities across the country to protect that mission. Campus discussions have begun about how to diversify our funding sources in the future, as we prepare for more immediate contingencies.

We also must be ready to define and defend our principles as a public university dedicated to access, equal opportunity, inclusive excellence, freedom of expression, and academic freedom. I reaffirm the Principles of Community that guide our commitments to these values and to our mutual responsibility to each other to maintain a safe and welcoming environment for the diversity of perspectives, origins, and identities that constitute our campus community.

In this time of transition, we welcome both new colleagues and long-time colleagues in new roles. Joining our leadership team are Kerry Bierman, Interim Vice Chancellor and Chief Financial Officer; Michael Miller, Interim Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs; Rachel Segalman, Vice Chancellor for Research;  Shelly Gable, Susan and Bruce Worster Dean of Mathematical, Life, and Physical Sciences; Todd Grappone, University Librarian; Janine Jones, Associate Vice Chancellor for Graduate Affairs and Ann and Michael Towbes Dean of the Graduate Division; Jill Sharkey, Interim Jules Zimmer Dean of the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education; and (effective September 1st) Sarah Anderson, Interim Dean of the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management.

In addition, while I am serving as Interim Chancellor, Associate Vice Chancellor Dana Mastro will serve as Acting Executive Vice Chancellor; and Professor Omar Saleh, Professor of Materials and Physics, and former chair of the Committee on Academic Personnel, will serve as Acting Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Personnel. We have continuity and experience, as well as new perspectives, on this leadership team, which also includes Vice Chancellors Mac Pherson, Longbrake, and Stewart, our Chief Campus Counsel Nancy Hamill, and Deans Berry, Hale, Miller, Mishra, and Sherwood. I look forward to working with them all, as well as our Academic Senate Chair Rita Raley and the rest of our Senate leadership. We all look forward to welcoming our new chancellor.

The collaborative and entrepreneurial culture that has defined our campus for decades will allow us to work together with cohesion and energy as we focus on matters that demand our attention, pursue excellence strategically and ambitiously, and plan for the future. We reiterate our gratitude to Chancellor Yang. We are all stewards of his remarkable legacy, as well as the extraordinary academic culture and community that students, faculty, staff, and alumni have created together. Together we will ensure that our new chancellor will find a campus ready to meet the responsibilities and opportunities on its horizon.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

David Marshall
Interim Chancellor