Alumni and donors in Taiwan honor Chancellor Emeritus Larry Vanderhoef

UC Davis affiliates from Davis to Taipei, Taiwan, gathered virtually on March 5 to commemorate the late Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef, celebrate the profound impact he made on both continents, and honor donors who today are giving in his name.

Thanks to the UC Davis community in Taiwan, more than $1.5 million has been raised for the UC Davis-Taiwan campaign, the first fundraising effort of its kind to be led by alumni, parents and friends of the university outside the United States.

In addition to leading UC Davis as chancellor from 1994-2009, Vanderhoef built a tightknit community among scholars in Davis and Taiwan that still exists to this day. Over the span of 30 years, Vanderhoef, an expert in agriculture and plant biology, frequently visited researchers in Taiwan to help them improve methods for growing crops. 

“Larry would truly be humbled by your efforts to keeping his mission alive,” said his wife Rosalie Vanderhoef, speaking at the event. “Whether you knew Larry or not, we’ve all benefited from his academic diplomacy and the relationship he built between UC Davis and Taiwan for over 35 years.” 

Carrying on his legacy

The inspiration for the Taiwan campaign was the trailblazing work of Chancellor Vanderhoef, according to Professor Liu Fu-Tong, chair of the UC Davis-Taiwan Fundraising Committee.

“The generous contributions to our campaign have created a rich academic ecosystem for scholars, attracting graduates to return to Taiwan after studying abroad to become leaders and innovators in their fields,” he said.

Notable gifts and funds of the UCD – Taiwan campaign include:

• Over $505,000 to the UC Davis Taiwan Collaborative Research Fund in Memory of Larry Vanderhoef, an endowed fund that supports collaborative research projects that bring together the innovative minds of researchers from UC Davis and Taiwan 
• $500,000 from Sandy and Chris Yen to the Yen Chuang Fellows Program, which has supported twenty-four incoming Taiwanese graduate students at UC Davis 
• $110,000 from Yudi Wang and Douglas Chiang to the Full Speed Ahead Scholarship Endowment, which has supported four undergraduate students

Upon graduating from UC Davis, students from Taiwan come home to a comprehensive support system of fellow alumni, researchers and professionals. This robust Aggie network all started with Vanderhoef’s trips to Taiwan and the relationships he built there. 

The UC Davis Taiwan Campaign serves as an example of the global reach of UC Davis’s $2 billion universitywide fundraising campaign, “Expect Greater: From UC Davis, for the world.”

“The dedicated work that Larry Vanderhoef and his team had seeded in the 1990s and 2000s laid the foundation of the relationships, goodwill and lifelong memories for UC Davis in Taiwan,” said Marina Tan Harper, senior director of International Development. 

“It is truly heartwarming to see that these symbiotic relationships have matured to make possible named endowments by individuals, the Larry Vanderhoef Memorial Lectures by the Taiwan Ministry of Education, and—most touching—the pooled Larry Vanderhoef Collaborative Research Endowment Fund.”

Showing compassion from coast to coast

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Vanderhoef’s passion for worldwide collaboration set in motion a partnership that is still growing today. The UC Davis Alumni Taiwan Chapter has over 300 members and the bond between the Davis campus and scholars of Taiwan is as strong as ever. 

“The exchange of faculty and students has enriched the research enterprise so that today we have many collaborations between UC Davis and Taiwan,” said UC Davis chemistry professor Jacquelyn Gervay-Hague, a longtime colleague of Vanderhoef. “Larry took action to implement programs, and because of the deep-rooted leadership we have between our two countries, those programs have stayed in place.” 

Travelling to Taiwan more than 30 times over three decades, Vanderhoef was dedicated to more than the research he conducted—he cared about the people he met along the way, and created long-lasting ties with his Taiwanese colleagues. 

“Larry felt that the collaboration was about more than just research, it was about getting together to understand each other better,” said Rosalie Vanderhoef, who accompanied the chancellor on many of his trips to Taiwan. “He felt this was what he could do, as an educator and as chancellor of UC Davis, to help contribute to world peace.”