Winston C. Doby

Winston Doby is perhaps one of the most memorable and highly respected of UCLA’s vice chancellors. He was vice chancellor of student affairs for 20 years, thus giving him the distinction of having been the longest-serving vice chancellor in UCLA history, and then served as the vice president of student affairs for the UC system.

Early life

His history with UCLA began in the 1950s when he was a track and field city champion from Fremont High with plans to attend Compton College. However, his track coach, Bill Thayer, was a UCLA alumnus thought differently. Thayer, aware of Doby's athletic talent and academic prowess, drove him to UCLA during the last week of school, urging the coaches to award him a scholarship.Nearly a lifetime of service later, Doby has made an indelible impression at the institution and is one of the highest-ranking African Americans in the entire UC system.

He received three degrees from UCLA: a bachelor’s in mathematics, a master’s in education and a doctorate in higher education administration. Then in return, he gave back to the school that helped him. He was the driving force behind building the Arthur Ashe Student Health and Wellness Center, the Tom Bradley International Hall and the renovation of the John Wooden Center.

Teaching

After graduating from UCLA with a degree in mathematics, Doby fulfilled a commitment to his high school mentor by returning to his alma mater, Fremont High School in Los Angeles, as a mathematics teacher. In 1968, Doby returned to UCLA to pursue graduate studies. After a one-year stint as Assistant Track Coach, he joined the administration full time and held a variety of positions while completing work on his master's degree in education, with a focus on measurement and statistics, and his doctorate in higher education administration at UCLA.

Helping Others

Over the years, Doby has chaired numerous task groups including one charged with developing a plan for addressing the impacts of Proposition 209. He currently serves as co-chair of the UCLA outreach steering committee in addition to leading systemwide task forces focused on the delivery of student services in the next decade and on enhancing the synergy between UC admissions and outreach policies.

Doby has also been an active "UCLA ambassador" in the larger community, particularly in the area of K-12 education. For more than a decade, he served as an external member of the Los Angeles Unified School District's Evaluation Planning Team, with a special focus on issues of student achievement, school desegregation, busing, and overcrowding. During the past year, he conducted multiple interviews at 12 elementary schools in LAUSD as part of a comprehensive evaluation of its Ten Schools Program.

Doby co-founded the community-based Young Black Scholars Program, which has helped to prepare thousands of young students for college in its 14-year history. In the early '90s, he founded the Black Male Achievement Project at Ralph Bunche Elementary School and launched the Los Angeles Sports Academy, designed to promote academic achievement through sport. He also founded a charter school for high school dropouts and was a key contributor to a middle school pilot program developed to improve mathematics competency.