UC Irvine’s 3rd chancellor, science educator Laurel Wilkening, has died at 74

Planetary scientist Laurel Wilkening, UC Irvine’s third chancellor and the third woman chancellor in UC system history, died June 4 in Arizona, where she moved after her 1998 retirement. She was 74.

Born in Washington state and raised in New Mexico, Wilkening also taught and held leadership posts at the University of Arizona and the University of Washington, according to a UCI news release.

A capable educator and administrator, “she loved the university environment,” said Sidney Golub, a UCI emeritus professor of microbiology and molecular genetics who was Wilkening’s executive vice chancellor.

During her tenure as chancellor from 1993 to 1998, she helped get the school invited to join the American Association of Universities, a prestigious and select group, but Golub said Wilkening found teaching to be the most gratifying part of her career.

The chancellor’s conference room in her time was decorated with models of the Solar System she and her students built when learning about the forces that hold the planets in place.

“That was her kind of teaching, where they got into it with their hands and minds,” Golub said.

Other highlights of Wilkening’s overall career include examining one of the first lunar rocks brought back by the Apollo 11 mission when she was a graduate student; seeing UCI scholars win the university’s first two Nobel prizes, in physics and chemistry in 1995; running the University of Arizona’s planetary lab; and having a newly discovered asteroid named for her in 2013.

“Laurel Wilkening will be remembered for her courage and integrity in the face of challenging times. She set the campus on an upward trajectory that is still benefiting us today,” UCI Chancellor Howard Gillman said in a statement.

After retiring in 1998, Wilkening returned to Arizona where her husband, Godfrey Sill, ran a vineyard near Tucson, according to UCI information. Sill died in 2007.

Wilkening is survived by a brother and sister-in-law, Wes and Mary Wilkening; and a niece and nephew, Whitney Wilkening and Ron Douglas.

A service is scheduled at 3 p.m. Wednesday, June 12, at Carrillo’s Mortuary, 204 S. Stone Ave., Tucson, Ariz.