UC San Diego Appoints Two Vice Chancellors

UC San Diego has announced the appointment of two leadership positions: Department of Communication faculty member Carol Padden has agreed to serve as interim vice chancellor for equity, diversity and inclusion, effective Jan. 6, to ensure a smooth transition of EDI leadership. Steve Gamer, a fundraising trailblazer from UCLA, has been appointed vice chancellor - advancement with responsibility for leading campus fundraising efforts and alumni relations, as well as serving as president of the UC San Diego Foundation, effective Jan. 13.

“UC San Diego’s leadership team is strengthened by the addition of Carol Padden and Steve Gamer,” said Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla. “We are deeply appreciative that Dr. Padden has agreed to serve as interim vice chancellor. And thanks to his remarkable accomplishments at UCLA, Steve will bring expertise and insight to UC San Diego’s current development efforts and our upcoming capital campaign, which is expected to be launched in 2014.”

Photos by Erik Jepsen/UC San Diego Publications

Interim Vice Chancellor Carol Padden

A member of the Department of Communication faculty since 1983, Padden is an affiliate member of the Center for Research in Language and a doctoral graduate of the Linguistics Department at UC San Diego. She has served as associate dean and faculty equity advisor in the Division of Social Sciences since 2008. Padden’s main areas of research are sign language structure, culture and community and evolution of language. In 2010, she was named a MacArthur Fellow by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and holds the Sanford I. Berman Chair in Language and Human Communication in the Division of Social Sciences.

Padden has made significant contributions to promoting diversity and inclusion at UC San Diego both in her scholarship and administrative duties. She plays a central role in promoting research on sign languages around the world and in shaping policy and practices that will promote the full participation of deaf people in their communities. She is also integral to the university’s efforts to promote diversity in her role as associate dean and faculty equity advisor in the Division of Social Sciences.

“I'm looking forward to continuing the work that former Vice Chancellor Linda S. Greene began,” said Padden. “With the assistance of the excellent staff in the VC-EDI office, we will continue to play a role in UC San Diego’s efforts to be an engine of opportunity for our community.”

Vice Chancellor Steve Gamer

Gamer has more than 20 years of experience identifying, cultivating and soliciting individual donors, corporations and foundations with a tailored approach to philanthropic giving. His senior leadership career includes the planning and execution of major fundraising campaigns, including UCLA’s upcoming multi-billion dollar Centennial Campaign and the successful Campaign UCLA, which raised more than $3 billion.

He joined the UCLA development program in 2002 and served as the director of development and external affairs for the International Institute until 2006. Subsequently, Gamer became the executive director for individual giving, overseeing the campus’s annual, major and planned giving efforts. From 2009-11, he served as executive director for campuswide initiatives, responsible for managing a broad array of fundraising programs. In 2009, he was also appointed the executive director of The UCLA Foundation. In 2011, Gamer stepped up to lead UCLA’s development program. Under his leadership, the campus expanded its fundraising capacity in multiple areas while growing the organization to include special focus on donor relations and stewardship, scholarship fundraising, online giving and championing the conversion of a database gift accounting system to a constituent relationship management system. The collective result of these and many other leadership efforts, large and small, resulted in a record-setting fundraising year of $512 million in gifts and pledges in fiscal year 2012-13.

Gamer said, “I am excited to join UC San Diego to partner with the academic leadership, alumni, friends and staff as we work together to enhance philanthropy at this amazing campus. I look forward to helping UC San Diego—one of the top 15 research universities in the world—secure the funding needed to continue its excellence in all areas, from the sciences to engineering, international relations to the humanities.”