University of Cincinnati president Santa J. Ono is expected to be named the new president of the University of British Columbia on Monday.
Ono checked into a downtown Vancouver hotel on Saturday. He did not return calls to his hotel room on Sunday evening.
The University of B.C.’s announcement, set for 10 a.m. Monday morning, comes after a long search following the sudden resignation of former president Dr. Arvind Gupta last summer. Gupta was supposed to serve a five-year term, but only stayed one after rifts with the university’s board of governors.
In Cincinnati, speculation has been growing about the possible departure of Ono.
He is well known for his avid use of Twitter, with more than 72,000 followers. The website Cincinnati Vs Everyone was the first to post that Ono had recently started following more than 25 University of B.C.-related Twitter accounts.
The Vancouver Sun confirmed with another downtown Vancouver hotel that Ono and his wife, Gwendolyn (Wendy) Yip, were in Vancouver about two weeks ago.
Ono was born in Vancouver when his father, Takashi Ono, did a short stint as a mathematics professor at UBC in the early 1960s. He grew up around academia, attending high school in Maryland when his father, who was born in Japan, moved to Johns Hopkins University after a stint at the University of Pennsylvania.
Santa Ono has been a high-profile president of the University of Cincinnati since 2012. In 2015, he was named by Washington, D.C.-based website Inside Higher Ed as the nation’s most notable college president. Across the U.S., there are very few Asian-American university presidents. He was known as the first Asian-American president at the university and in the state of Ohio.
Previously, he had been the school’s provost and senior vice-president for academic affairs.
He gained notoriety at the University of Cincinnati for turning down his annual bonus and a raise in his base salary. Last year, he divided his US$200,000 bonus between 14 different organizations and scholarships, according to WCPO. These included a campus LGBTQ centre, a local science and technology-focused high school and a program for first-generation college students.
At the time, he also gave $10,000 from the bonus money to the family of Sunny Kim, a police officer killed in a shootout, according to Cincinnati.com. When he went on Twitter to offer full tuition to the university to the fallen officer’s three sons, one user tried to call him out by saying that state law requires this gesture. Ono replied: “yes. We will add on top of that 100% to be used for room + board, books, study abroad and at their discretion.”
Ono is known for being open with his past challenges with depression and suicide, working to break down stigmas about mental illness. In Cincinnati, he recently widened student access to mental health services by offering each one five counselling visits at no charge.
According to the University of Cincinnati’s website, Ono is a “highly accomplished researcher in eye disease.” His early career involved a “variety of teaching, research and administrative positions at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Harvard Medical School and the Schepens Eye Research Institute, University College London (UCL) and Moorfields Eye Hospital in London.”
“Since his appointment as the university’s 28th president, Dr. Ono has also brought greater diversity to the President’s Cabinet, appointed the university’s first full-time Chief Diversity Officer, increased investments in diversity and inclusion, and spearheaded a restructuring of the UC Foundation.
“He has served on the Medical Research Council’s Medical Advisory Board and College of Experts and the immunological sciences (IMS) and hypersensitivity, autoimmune and immune-mediated (HAI) diseases study sections of the National Institutes of Health. He has consulted widely for companies such as GSK, Cambridge Antibody Technologies plc (now part of Astra Zeneca), Johnson & Johnson, Santen Inc. and Oxagen plc.”
Ono’s parents and his older brother “were able to leave a very poor, post World War II Japan, because (his father) Takashi Ono was a noted mathematician who had published some internationally important papers. His work caught the attention of famed physicist Robert Oppenheimer, who invited Takashi to be a visiting member of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, NJ, “according to UC Magazine, a University of Cincinnati publication.
“Once working in the U.S., job offers from American universities soon followed, but the family’s green card was nearing expiration. They had to leave the country for a period before they could re-enter. That led to his father to take a position at the University of British Columbia, where in 1962, they had their second son, Santa — named after Santaro, a Japanese folk story character.”
“I don’t think they knew what they were setting me up for by naming me Santa, especially around Christmas time,” Ono told UC Magazine in 2012. “People teased me about it as a boy, but I have no problem being called Santa. It’s a very happy name. And it’s a great ice breaker at parties.”
Ono and his brothers grew up with a love of music from their father, who was a mathematician and a pianist. Santa is an accomplished cellist as well as vocalist, said UC Magazine.
The publication said that with his research interest in eye inflammation and age-related macular degeneration, Ono was involved with a biotechnology company in Vancouver called iCoTherapeutics, which is traded on the TSE Venture Exchange. The company’s press releases in 2008 name him as chief scientific officer.
A UBC spokesperson declined to comment when asked to confirm Ono’s appointment on Sunday evening.
