Embattled college chancellor dies in fall; suicide suspected

SAN FRANCISCO — A University of California chancellor who once headed the University of Washington's College of Engineering died Saturday in an apparent suicide jump from a 43-story apartment building, authorities said.

Denice Dee Denton, 46, the chancellor of the Santa Cruz campus, apparently jumped from the Paramount apartment building around 8 a.m. and landed on a parking garage, police and university officials said.

The Medical Examiner's office and a university spokesman confirmed her death, though the cause was still under investigation.

Denton was appointed chancellor in 2004 after serving as the dean of the College of Engineering at the UW. When she went to Washington in 1996, she became the first woman to lead an engineering college at a major U.S. research university.

"Those of us who worked closely with Denice valued her intelligence, humor, and commitment to the ideals of diversity and higher education," UC Santa Cruz Campus Provost David Kliger said in a statement. "We are deeply saddened by her death."

Denton came under fire the past two years after university employees complained about a pricey remodel to her home on the university campus and a high-paying university position created for her longtime partner, Gretchen Kalonji.

In March, she defended $600,000 worth of renovations to her campus home that she had demanded during contract negotiations before being hired. Campus employees criticized the expenditures as lavish while the university raised fees and cut budgets.

In 2005, an employee union criticized the university's creation of a $192,000-a-year job for Kalonji, a former professor of materials science at the UW.

University officials defended the hiring, saying Kalonji's experience would be an asset in her role as director of international strategy development.

At the UW, Denton earned praise for pushing faculty to improve teaching and to focus on practical information relevant to the workplace, according to a 1997 profile in The Seattle Times. She also restructured the College of Engineering, and strengthened programs to recruit women and ethnic minorities as students and faculty.

The UW president at the time, Richard McCormick, praised how Denton took the time to know her professors and students. "She's great to work with ... her energy is enormous," McCormick said in the 1997 story.

Denton earned four electrical-engineering degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, including a Ph.D.

Kalonji was returning to the Bay Area on Saturday after being away on a business trip.

Seattle Times reporter Ken Armstrong contributed to this report.