The Dean McHenry Award for Distinguished Leadership in the Academic Senate is awarded every two years in conjunction with the UCSC nomination of a Senate member for the systemwide Oliver Johnson Award for Distinguished Leadership in the Academic Senate. After wide consultation, COC selected Joseph Bunnett, Professor of Chemistry for the Dean McHenry Award and as nominee for the Oliver Johnson Award.

Virtually from the day he joined the UCSC faculty in 1966, Professor Joseph Frederick Bunnett has had an enormous impact on this University for the good, serving as a builder of his department and division and as a tireless and effective leader in the Academic Senate, while maintaining and expanding an exceptionally distinguished academic career. It is therefore with great pleasure and pride I nominate Professor Bunnett for the Oliver Johnson Award for Distinguished Leadership in the Academic Senate.

Professor Bunnett was a founding member of our campus, arriving in 1966, after having taught at Reed College, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Brown University during the previous twenty years. The campus at Santa Cruz had been founded only one year before. Establishing a new campus puts enormous strains on the time and energy of all early faculty members. Service in institution-building is expected and required, yet the faculty most likely to be effective in recruiting high-quality new faculty must themselves be prominent and maintain an active program of research. In addition to those obvious demands, our campus was organized not only by departments but also into residential Colleges with serious academic obligations until 1979 (when most academic programs were transferred to departments and divisions). Excellent undergraduate teaching was expected, as it still is, by senior research faculty. As well as those demands, the system of shared governance at the University of California, with faculty organized by each Divisional Academic Senate, places particularly high demands on small campuses. Each Academic Senate has approximately the same number of committees with similar functions, yet smaller campuses have a much smaller faculty pool from which to fill positions. Shared governance as a structure is built into the University of California; but it functions best when faculty members of the highest caliber, ethical standards, intellectual energy and social responsibility participate actively and thoughtfully. In all these realms--department-building, teaching and related concerns with undergraduates, prominence in his profession, service to the Senate and the larger community-- Professor Bunnett succeeded brilliantly. Because these elements are necessarily intertwined, it is worth reviewing his activities and service not only in the Senate but in other parts of the campus and to his profession.

Professor Bunnett’s first project at UCSC was to chair and build the Chemistry Department, which had just survived its first year of operation with only two faculty members. He was the determining force in laying the foundation of this very strong department, and his success in attracting first-rate faculty was undoubtedly due to his extremely high professional standing as one of the best physical organic chemists in the United States and the world. He began Senate service the year after he arrived. His service and commitment to Shared Governance has continued unabated not only during his years as a full-time faculty member but also during his "retirement." Indeed, during some twenty-five year as a faculty member and nine as an emeritus faculty member, only a handful of years have not seen

Professor Bunnett as a Senate committee member, chair of committee, or officer of the Academic Senate. He has served as Chair of the Academic Senate, and several times as its Parliamentarian. He

has chaired two of the Senate's most important committees, Academic Personnel and Faculty Welfare. He has been a member of many of the other major committees--including Rules Jurisdictions and Elections, Planning and Budget, Privilege and Tenure, and Committee on Committees. He has also served as Chair of the committee that selects the annual Faculty Research Lecturer. He has a total of eleven years of Systemwide service and on the Academic Assembly.

Hi service to the campus in other capacities has also been more than exemplary. Only two years after the campus opened, the Chemistry Department instituted a graduate program--one of the very first at UCSC and, to date, one of our largest and most successful. Professor Bunnett went on to build and strengthen his department (serving as Chair for five years), his division (serving as Acting Dean in the Division of Natural Sciences during his first year here), and his college, Crown (whose theme is the Natural Sciences). At Crown he instituted a core-course for first year students on the History of Technology and served as Provost (the head of the college) for a year in the mid 1970s.

Professor Bunnett has consistently been elected or appointed to Academic Senate positions. He was an effective institution builder for his department and for the campus, partly because he is known for his passionately committed and involved but meticulous work--whether on committees or in chemistry--and partly because he is himself so respected and distinguished as an intellect and as a researcher. Soon after he began his first teaching job at Reed College, he received Fulbright and Guggenheim Fellowships. In 1959 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and subsequently has been elected to honorary membership in honorary scientific societies of Italy, Japan, and Argentina. In 1974 Professor Bunnett was chosen as the Senate’s Faculty Research Lecturer. Most recently, he was awarded the James Flack Norris Award in Physical Organic Chemistry (1992), one of the highest honors a physical organic chemist can receive from the American Chemical Society.

Professor Bunnett's extensive service to the university did not come at the expense of his teaching, which has been called "charismatic." His ability to articulate ideas clearly and logically has served him and his students well. Nor has his service to the university come at the expense of service to the scientific community at large. Early in his career at UCSC he was a founding editor of Accounts of Chemical Research, a major journal of the American Chemical Society, and he held the position as editor-in-chief for over twenty years.

Professor Bunnett "retired" in 1991, which seems to have liberated him to do even more service and more scientific work. He continues an active program of research, coming to his office "only" five days a week, as he puts it. He immediately took on service not just to the scientific community but to the world at large in a very significant capacity: upon retiring he became Chairman of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemists’ Task Force on Scientific Aspects of the Destruction of Chemical Warfare Agents. In 1995 he became, and continues to serve as, Chairman of the IUPAC's corresponding Committee on Chemical Weapons Destruction. And, significantly, he continued to serve the Academic Senate faculty by being Chair of the Committee on Emeriti Relations until this year. As the faculty of UCSC, many of whom were relatively young when the campus was founded, "come of age," they are increasing concerned with emeriti issues. Once again, the Senate looks to Joe Bunnett for leadership.

Professor Joseph Bunnett has been a driving force in the invention of the Santa Cruz campus. Much of his influence in shaping our campus institutions has been exercised through his Senate service. With his deep knowledge of the bylaws and parliamentary procedure he has enhanced the effectiveness of the Santa Cruz Senate and encouraged a generation of faculty to participate in the work of the Academic Senate. I urge you to recognize Professor Bunnett’s exceptional service with the Oliver Johnson Award.

May 17, 2000