Henry T. Yang
Based on 2 reviews
5.0
Henry T. Yang
Henry T. Yang is Chancellor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His salary in 2021 was $418,131.00.
He knows how things work
He knows how things work
I was a grad student at UCSB long ago, and while I never met him personally, I was aware of certain things about him. I knew that he taught a class and ran a research group. Now that I’m a professor, I understand how significant it is that he was at ground-level. Universities are full of a administrators who push idea that they got from workshops, and they never have to think about the downsides of those ideas because none of it will affect their work; the problems will all affect people lower on the food chain.
Chancellor Yang was in the trenches. If somebody came to him with some proposed new policy for undergraduate classes, he’d have to think about the actual on-the-ground effects of it. If somebody had an idea for a new way of handling whatever aspect of graduate programs, he’d have to think about his lab and his PhD students. He was in the game.
I don’t know if he is still doing that after all these years, but I know that he was in the early 2000’s, and now that I’m a prof dealing with administrators, I really appreciate the fact that he was connected to what’s going on. I think that’s part of why UCSB is such a great university, and why I got such a good education there. I wasn’t in his department, but I was a place where leaders understood reality.
Edit Save DeleteI never met him, but I heard things from other students. At least when I was a student (and, who knows, maybe now as well) he taught a regular undergraduate class and ran a research lab with PhD students. Now that I’m a prof at a place full of administrators disconnected from on-the-ground reality, I deeply appreciate Chancellor Yang. I wasn’t in his department, but I was studying at a place run by someone who was connected to how things work.
If some Deputy Vice Associate Whatever wanted to implement some new policy, Chancellor Yang would have to think “Wait, what will it mean if I have to run my lab according to this rule? Teach my class with this in place?” It must have kept things grounded. It’s probably why it was and is such an amazing university.