Outgoing Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef held his last brown bag chats this week and last, concluding a 171⁄2 -year tradition the same way he started it — with dismal budget news.

But, in a May 15 talk on the Sacramento campus and a May 18 talk on the Davis campus, he also talked about the many good things the university is doing, in such areas as health care, transportation, energy research and the environment.

And he recalled with good humor the time he took a pie in the face at the conclusion of a brown bag chat in Davis. It happened Nov. 23, 1998 — the same day someone hurled a pie at a dean on the Berkeley campus.

“They missed him,” Vanderhoef said. “They didn’t miss me.”

A group calling itself the Biotic Baking Brigade claimed responsibility for both incidents. At Berkeley, the brigade was protesting the campus’s signing of a $25 million research agreement with Swiss biotechnology company Novartis.

One pie-thrower targeted Dean Gordon Rausser of the College of Natural Resources. He ducked, and the pumpkin pie hit a blackboard. A second pie left “only a few pumpkin smudges” on the Novartis president, according to The Associated Press.

The brigade described the Davis pie-throwing as a protest against a completed deal for a strategic alliance between Davis and Monsanto Co.

In fact, while Davis had been in talks with Monsanto, there was no deal pending, as Vanderhoef had assured his brown bag audience. He added that, if a relationship were pursued, it would recognize the university’s obligations as a public institution, according to Dateline’s coverage of the meeting.

Nevertheless, the chancellor took a banana cream pie full in the face — and he joked later that he might wear a welder’s mask to his next brown bag. Instead of a welder’s mask, he brought banana cream pie for everyone to eat.

Vanderhoef was provost and executive vice chancellor when he started his brown bag chats in 1992, during the UC system’s first big budget crisis, when the university lost 25 percent of its base funding.

The early brown bag chats filled Main Theatre. “It was a matter of denial,” Vanderhoef recalled. “Nobody could believe it.”

Now, as the campus goes through yet another round of cuts, the problem is not denial, but coming up with a long-term fix for what seems to be a perpetual budget dilemma. Five committees are now striving for solutions.

The Sacramento campus

In his talk in Sacramento, Vanderhoef cited the evolution of the UC Davis Health System as the biggest development during his 25 years at UC Davis.

“Nothing matches what’s happened at the Sacramento campus over the years,” Vanderhoef said. “Everyone who works here has a right to be proud.”

He came to UC Davis in 1984 as executive vice chancellor — a position that constitutes the medical center’s one-person governing board. Back then, he said, the medical center still had a reputation as the former Sacramento County Hospital.

He recalled the often sensitive and challenging discussions that ensued over the transition to today’s expansive medical center. “So what happened in the meantime?” Vanderhoef asked.

He noted these highlights: development of the UC Davis Medical Group, a primary care network; the Telehealth Program, which brings the health system’s expertise to rural communities of Northern California, via live video links; the MIND Institute, which studies autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders; and the Cancer Center, a National Cancer Institute-designated facility, recognized for scientific excellence and extensive resources.

Vanderhoef also spoke of the School of Medicine’s growing stature and the recent establishment of the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing.

Leave the pies at home

On the Davis campus, Vanderhoef addressed UC Davis’ central mission of teaching and research — and maintained his usual optimism that the university would survive its latest budget challenge.

“Yes, we have to worry,” he said. “But we’re going to figure out how to do what we do in the best possible way.”

He said his successor, Linda Katehi, who now serves as provost and executive vice chancellor of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, brings “lots of credibility” to UC Davis.

He said she will be working 12- to 14-hour days, and she will be doing it six or seven days a week.

“If there’s anybody who can do this job well, it’s Linda Katehi,” he said. “And it’s not just because of her, but because of the dedicated people who work here. … It’s that dedication that is really going to get us through this — and I have no doubt we will get through it.”

He reminded his audience of an open house at the Chancellor’s Residence the afternoon of June 5. And he added: “Leave the pies at home!”

Senior public information officer David Ong of the UC Davis Health System contributed to this report.