Aug 30, 2019
Dear colleagues,
On behalf of Chancellor Gillman, we are pleased to announce that Oladele "Dele" Ogunseitan, professor and founding chair of the Department of Population Health & Disease Prevention, has been selected as the University of California Presidential Chair at UCI. During his five-year nonrenewable term, he will help advance campuswide goals of encouraging new or interdisciplinary program development and enhancing the quality of existing academic programs.
Professor Ogunseitan is a global scholar with an impressive record of leadership in his field and at UCI, where he led the creation of one of the largest undergraduate public health programs in the U.S. – with one-third of its students being underrepresented minorities. He has also established innovative graduate and professional degree programs, including a highly ranked Master of Public Health degree and the first Ph.D. in Public Health in the UC.
At UCI, Professor Ogunseitan has collaborated with colleagues to develop dual degree programs in the School of Medicine and the School of Law. He also helped recruit a faculty member split with the Department of Chicano/Latino Studies in the School of Social Sciences to address health disparities in underserved populations. As part of the UC Global Health Institute, he leads an interdisciplinary effort to promote the implementation of global health minors and to create courses that are open for cross-campus enrollment at all 10 UC sites.
Professor Ogunseitan is a U.S. Department of State Jefferson Science Fellow and has been honored with UCI’s Excellence in Teaching Award, an Outstanding Mentoring Award from the American Society for Microbiology Board of Underrepresented Members, and a Leadership Excellence Award from the Open Education Consortium.
We are grateful to the selection committee and its co-chairs, Bryant Garth, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of law, and Judith Treas, Distinguished Professor of sociology, for their commitment and contributions to the appointment process.
Please join us in congratulating Professor Ogunseitan on this exceptional achievement.
Sincerely,
Enrique J. Lavernia, Ph.D.
Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor
Distinguished Professor, Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Steven A.N. Goldstein, M.A., M.D., Ph.D., FAAP
Vice Chancellor of Health Affairs
Distinguished Professor, Pediatrics and Physiology & Biophysics