SANTA CRUZ
UC chancellor remembered as 'unstoppable'
Colleagues baffled, grief-stricken at news of her suicide

Colleagues and longtime friends of UC Santa Cruz Chancellor Denice Denton were struggling on Sunday to make sense of her apparent suicide jump off the roof of a 42-story San Francisco apartment building, describing a woman who had been having a difficult time in recent months but who was known to be resilient in the face of adversity.

"It's really hard to believe Denice is gone because she was like a force of nature -- a hurricane, unstoppable," said Vicki Bier, a professor of industrial and systems engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where Denton taught from 1987 to 1996. "I've heard from people that she did not sound good (recently). She sounded upset or despondent, not her usual self. But I don't think anyone expected this."

David Notkin, a computer science and engineering professor at the University of Washington, where Denton served as a dean for nine years before moving to Santa Cruz last year, said he had planned to meet with Denton last Thursday because he was in the Bay Area on business. Denton, though, did not return e-mails Notkin sent to confirm the meeting.

"I figured something had come up, and indeed I was right," Notkin said. "I wish I wasn't."

Denton's maternal uncle, Gilbert Drab, of Gun Barrel City, Texas, said he had not yet been able to reach her mother, Carolyn Mabee, who police said was in the apartment building at the time of Denton's suicide on Saturday morning. Mabee, who declined interview requests on Sunday, told authorities that her daughter was "very depressed" about her professional and personal life.

"It's a real tragedy. That's what happens when you get really bright people -- too much on their mind," said Drab. He said his niece had been treated for cancer in past years but did not think it had anything to do with the suicide. "She was a very, very kind person," he said, "that wanted to help women progress in their field."

Denton, an MIT-trained electrical engineer, was due back today from a medical leave that began June 15, during which she missed the UC Santa Cruz commencement exercises. Campus spokeswoman Elizabeth Irwin declined to say why Denton went on leave, saying: "Any medical information is considered private."

Denton, 46, jumped from the Paramount apartment building at Mission and Third streets and landed on the roof of a parking structure below, police said. Her partner, Gretchen Kalonji, director of international strategy development for the UC system, has a residence in the building. A UC spokesman said she was in Washington, D.C., on university business, at the time of the suicide.

After assuming office in February 2005, Denton had been named this spring in a series of articles examining UC management compensation. She had been criticized for $600,000 in university-funded renovations on her campus home -- though it is not clear how many of the improvements were at her request -- and for obtaining the job for Kalonji, a move that prompted protests from UC unions.

Stephen Thorsett, the dean of the Division of Physical and Biological Sciences at UC Santa Cruz, said the timing of Denton's death was "a shock." She had been frustrated by the heavy attention her compensation had received, he said, and felt it was a distraction from more important matters. And she felt threatened when someone put a piece of concrete through a window at her campus home, he said.

However, Thorsett said, "it seemed like now was the time when she was ready to begin on her own track" after settling in her new university post. He said he spent time with her two weeks ago at a board meeting for UC Santa Cruz's foundation. "She seemed to be very comfortable and showed a good spark of humor," he said. "My sense was that things were going well."

"This certainly wasn't the first time in her life that she encountered opposition or obstacles," said Bier. At the University of Wisconsin, Bier said, Denton once clashed with a senior faculty member who ultimately locked her out of her lab.

"Most people would have left," Bier said. "She was really just determined not to back down to difficulties -- which makes this that much more surprising."

Denton's friends and colleagues said they were talking about ways to memorialize someone who they said was a decisive, private and trailblazing woman with a relentless commitment to social diversity.

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.

"She was a woman of great energy and passion for improving higher education and access to higher education," said William Ladusaw, a linguistics professor and the dean for undergraduate education at UC Santa Cruz.

"The particularly tragic thing for me," said Ed Lazowska, a computer science and engineering professor at the University of Washington, "is that she faced adversity everywhere she's been, and each time she triumphed and emerged a winner. Somehow the situation down there got the better of her, and that's a shame. I can't imagine what was monumental enough to cause this to happen."

Memorial services have not yet been planned, said Irwin, the campus spokeswoman. Though the campus' 15,000 students are on a break between the spring and summer quarters, she said, grief counseling is being offered.