A message from UC Merced Chancellor Juan Sánchez Muñoz, Ph.D.
Dear colleagues,
After a robust nationwide search, I am pleased to announce that Dr. Kurt Schnier has been selected as UC Merced’s permanent Vice Chancellor for the Division of Finance and Administration (DFA) and Chief Financial Officer. His appointment is effective as of Dec. 1, 2023.
Dr. Schnier has served as interim Chief Financial Officer since October 2020 and interim Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration since spring 2021, helping UC Merced manage our overall budget and establish important priorities and sustainable protocols for more than three years. Central to this was his focus on increasing fiscal transparency and awareness to promote a campus-wide dialogue on our fiscal future.
As interim VC/CFO, he helped to establish our formal annual budget call process and worked with me to secure additional funding from the Office of the President under our Memorandum of Understanding and our Accelerate Campus’ Evolution (ACE) initiative. The ACE initiative is investing in faculty efforts to develop new academic programs and hire the staff to support such programs in an effort to expand our campus’ enrollment and strengthen our financial foundation.
Under his interim leadership, Dr. Schnier has helped rebuild the DFA leadership team and spearheaded the division’s reorganization, which has supported the campus through the redesign of our financial system and the stabilization of campus procurement processes. Additionally, Dr. Schnier and his team have enhanced campus budgeting processes, made improvements in centralized service agreements, supported students and faculty through our transition back to campus, and increased efficiencies in administrative processes and the delivery of campus financial trainings.
As professor of economics and a former deartment chair and Senate chair, he served as the Associate Executive Vice Chancellor/Provost for Academic Planning and Budget from 2019 to 2020.
Raised in Sonoma, Calif., he earned his Ph.D. at the University of Arizona and previously taught at the University of Rhode Island and Georgia State University.
In addition to filling the VC/CFO permanent role, we are well underway in our search for the Executive Vice Chancellor/Provost, and I expect to announce a decision for Chief Campus Counsel early in 2024.
Please join me in congratulating Dr. Schnier and wishing him well as he takes on this critical role at UC Merced.
