The good news about UC Merced's new chancellor is she's an intellectual who lays tile and who has reinvented her roles on whatever campus she has landed.
Besides being an expert on the existentialist school of philosophy, she has established women's resource programs, promoted studies of Latina culture and made best use of scarce resources to create islands of social grace near her campuses. And she has reached out to the broader community wherever she has been a professor or a president.
The better news is she likes basketball, and if she has "a bad day" in her new third-floor office, "I'll just go out and talk to the students -- they are what it's all about."
Dorothy Leland comes to us with a thick résumé of academic scholarship, administrative leadership and both feet planted squarely in common sense, hard work and getting along.
Take her hero -- her father. He was an auto mechanic in Fillmore, a small town in Ventura County that became the home of Sun-Kist. But he had a dream to grow oranges. He bought 60 acres on a rocky hillside. His children, including Dorothy, earned a dime for each tree they wrapped so deer wouldn't eat the bark -- with a $10 bonus for whoever finished a row first. She told the Board of Regents about this childhood experience to show "the grit and imagination often required to realize a dream or accomplish something of great importance."
She, like many UC Merced students, is a first-generation college graduate. Her mom was from Mexico. She's not fluent in Spanish but can sing 30 to 40 Spanish-language songs. "My son and grandkids speak better Spanish than I do," she says.
Married at 19, she went to Purdue with her husband, both on scholarships and fellowships. She stayed and earned a B.A., M.A. and Ph.D.
In 1975, she wrote a chapter in a book, "The Existentialists: Critical Essays on Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Sartre." In it, "The Sartrean Cogito," she clarified several of the French philosopher's ideas. Her editor said her essay "illuminates consciousness and other mysterious phrases in Sartre's writing."
Why would a young woman from rural California try to "clarify" the thoughts of one of the 20th century's intellectual giants?
"I was just trying to understand it," she explains, "based on the evidence. I was seeking a sort of clarity in a very messy world."
That essay has been republished two more times, showing how influential it has been.
One of the main influences in her life was a teacher who now lives in Stockton, a Faulkner scholar. That teacher and the Nobel Prize-winning novelist "set me on the path," she recalls.
Kierkegaard, a 19th century Danish philosopher-theologian, got her thinking about the relationship between religion and morality. The Bible story of Abraham being told by God to sacrifice his son Isaac led her to conclude he was "repelled by the thought," but was going to proceed when God stopped him.
That's an insight that may help explain her later career. She saw the duality in human beings and tried to define and balance sometimes conflicting ideas and behavior.
Some would call that simply an intellectual exercise, and it is. But it also shows an awareness of competing points of view that a leader, especially in academia, must deal with and reconcile every day.
Someone once said the reason academic debates are so vicious is because the stakes are so small. Not for Dorothy Leland. For her, those debates always involve real human consequences.
During a decade at the Boca Raton campus of Florida Atlantic University, she helped create the school's first building certified by the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design system; UC Merced boasts at least seven LEED-certified buildings, signifying environmentally responsible design, construction and operation. She was also a key member of the team that established a successful football program.
"Intercollegiate athletics is the front porch of a university," she says. "The university and community are connected at a level of recreation."
She cites the educational value of team sports: "Time management; the value of teamwork; how to perform in difficult situations; how to handle victory gracefully; how to deal with defeat."
As UC Merced embarks on its first intercollegiate athletic program under the auspices of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, players and coaches will know they have a fan in the stands.
The orange-grower's daughter still uses her hands. She paints acrylic canvases. And, although it took a year, she recently replaced all the tile and cabinets in her home. "The sanding job was bigger than I thought," she recalls. But she got 'er done.
"I'm dedicated to being at UC Merced and in the community," she says near the end of an interview. "There's a lot of important loyalty and history to this region and this community. That's powerful."
Jean-Paul Sartre once wrote: "It is only in our decisions that we are important."
Dorothy Leland has made dozens of decisions that ultimately brought her here. We wish her well on her decision to come to UC Merced -- and to all us Mercedians.
Go Bobcats!
Executive Editor Mike Tharp can be reached at (209) 385-2456 or mtharp@mercedsunstar.com.
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