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UBC President Santa Ono has been named the 15th President of the University of Michigan
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July 13, 2022 • 8 hours ago • 4 minutes of reading • 9 comments Apparently, UBC President Santa Ono will be leaving to become President of the University of Michigan. Photo of NICK PROCAYLO / PNG
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Santa Ono, the outgoing president of the UBC, made the university a more inclusive position in his six years at the helm, the school board chairman said Wednesday.
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Ono was named president of the University of Michigan before that day. He takes charge on October 13th
“Santa has been an incredible leader for the UBC, he has delivered results at all levels, he has built strong relationships with students, faculty and the wider community in the province, and I think the UBC has been very fortunate to have had it in the last six years, “said Nancy McKenzie, chair of the board since 2020 and governor since 2017.
“We are very excited about the opportunity he will have and wish him well in his future endeavors there.”
His legacy began, he said, with the development of UBC’s strategic plan when Ono first arrived at BC University.
“And from that, it has made significant strides toward equity, inclusion and diversity in our practices and in our workforce, and it has really worked to build a very inclusive culture.”
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Advancing reconciliation with indigenous peoples and replacing the number of teachers were two of Ono’s most important achievements, he said.
“And he did an amazing capital campaign to raise scholarship money for students, over $ 200 million.”
Ono, who was born in Vancouver and learned to ride a bike through the tree-lined Main Mall on the Point Gray campus where his father taught in the 1960s, became president of the UBC in 2016 after Dr. Arvind Gupta abruptly resigned as president in 2015, just one year in a five-year term, following fractures with the governing board.
Ono had been president at the University of Cincinnati before coming to UBC.
He and his wife were in Michigan for the announcement and could not be contacted, but in an open farewell letter, Ono thanked faculty, students and staff for helping make UBC “a better university for our cities, our country and the world beyond our borders. ”
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“My position is limited to one term at UBC. Other than that, there are only a handful of universities that I would be interested in leading after UBC.
“Michigan, as one of the best and most research-intensive public universities in the world, presents a unique opportunity in life.”
Michigan is also closer to Baltimore, where Ono’s older parents live, and Halifax, where his wife Wendy Yip’s mother lives.
“All three need us more and more and we can’t offer that support from across the continent,” Ono said. “After several decades of caring for us, it’s up to us to take care of them.”
Ono holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Chicago and a doctorate in experimental medicine from McGill University, where he met Yip, now an immunologist and lawyer. Ono’s research focus was the immune system, eye inflammation, and age-related macular degeneration.
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An excellent cellist to begin with, Ono was approved by a unanimous vote of Michigan’s eight-member regent board and received a standing ovation from attendees, The Associated Press reported.
The University of Michigan was shaken by the scandal earlier this year when emails emerged detailing an alleged inappropriate sexual relationship between then-President Mark Schlissel and a subordinate.
Michigan has also been outraged by allegations that emerged in 2020 of hundreds of men who said they were sexually assaulted by the late Robert Anderson, a campus doctor who spent nearly 40 years in Michigan. He died in 2008. In January, the school announced a $ 490 million deal with Anderson’s accusers.
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And the university paid $ 9.25 million to eight women who reported emotional or sexual abuse by Martin Philbert, who for more than 25 years went from professor to rector, Michigan’s top academic official. He was fired in 2020.
“I have a lot of direct experience in the damage that these kinds of things, sexual assault and harassment, have on young men and women,” Ono told AP. “It’s unacceptable.”
With 47,000 students on its main campus in Ann Arbor and thousands more on regional campuses in Dearborn and Flint, the University of Michigan is slightly smaller than UBC.
The Washington Post reported that Ono will receive a base salary of US $ 975,000. His salary at UBC was more than $ 600,000.
When he was in Cincinnati, Ono had made a name for himself by revoking his annual bonus and an increase in his base salary. The year before he joined UBC, he gave his $ 200,000 bonus to 14 organizations and scholarships, including an on-campus LGBTQ center, a Cincinnati high school focused on science and technology, and a student program first generation college students.
Ono, 59, will work with the UBC board until October when he begins looking for a replacement. The research that eventually led to his hiring at UBC lasted a year.
The next step in the UBC will be for the governing council to form a search committee. Once the different UBC communities are established and consulted, a job description can be issued, McKenzie said.
An interim president will be appointed when Ono leaves in October.
With archives by Cheryl Chan, David Carrigg, The Associated Press and The Washington Post
gordmcintyre@postmedia.com
twitter.com/gordmcintyre
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