Since 2002, Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef has awarded the campus’s highest honor — the UC Davis Medal — to a dozen deserving recipients. But on May 30, the 13th such medal was draped around Vanderhoef’s own neck in a surprise turnabout that presenter Bob Grey described as an act of “popular insurrection.”

“At the risk of incurring his disapproval, we are breaking precedent and awarding the UC Davis Medal to the chancellor. The reason is simple — there is no one more deserving of this recognition than Larry Vanderhoef,” said Grey, a longtime colleague of Vanderhoef’’s and a former UC Davis provost and executive vice chancellor.

The medal ceremony took place at an early evening tribute to Vanderhoef and his wife, Rosalie, during which an estimated 600 of the Vanderhoefs’ “most personal friends” gathered on the lawn north of Mrak Hall to toast the campus’s first couple and thank them for a quarter-century of service to UC Davis. (People paid $50 a plate to attend the dinner.)

After the dinner, many joined the Vanderhoefs at a special concert in their honor by Tony-award winning Broadway star Patti LuPone in Jackson Hall at the Mondavi Center.

But before the musical performance, Grey had a couple of other surprises to announce, too:

Upon Vanderhoef’s completion of his tenure as chancellor in mid-August, the Studio Theatre of the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts will be named the Larry and Rosalie Vanderhoef Studio Theatre, and

The lawn that sits between the Mondavi Center and the under-construction Graduate School of Management building will be named the Larry N. Vanderhoef Quad.

Both namings required UC President Mark Yudof to waive a normally required two-year waiting period. (The chancellor will step down on Aug. 17, after 25 years of service to UC Davis, the last 15 of them as chancellor. He is not retiring from UC Davis but, instead, will take a year-long sabbatical and then return to teaching. Meanwhile, Linda Katehi of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will take over the corner office on the fifth floor of Mrak Hall.)

Grey, reading from a plaque to be mounted on the Studio Theatre’s wall, said the theatre naming was meant as a tribute to “Chancellor Vanderhoef’s vision and steadfast leadership and Rosalie Vanderhoef’s deep commitment to arts education for both young people and adults.” Without the Vanderhoefs, the inscription reads, “the Mondavi Center would have remained an unfulfilled UC Davis dream.”

Indeed, Grey presented Rosalie Vanderhoef with her own honor — a Waterford crystal apple — in recognition of her dedication to introducing schoolchildren to the arts at the Mondavi Center.

But no less an arts advocate than Margrit Mondavi, in an earlier toast to the Vanderhoefs, said that the chancellor has brought to UC Davis so much more than only a world-class performing arts center.

“Much of the credit of UC Davis, the stature, just that friendly feeling, and becoming a leading university in the world, is owed to Larry Vanderhoef,” Mondavi said. “You have made an enduring mark in so many ways…and touched so many lives around the world.”

Several special guests took their turns to salute the Vanderhoefs. They included:

UC’s Yudof, who noted that Vanderhoef is the “dean” of UC’s 10 campus chancellors, and issued a warning of sorts: “I will call you Larry. I will hunt you down and I will ask for your counsel and advice.” He also praised Vanderhoef for being “deeply loyal to the University of California,” adding, “The land-grant mission burns very brightly and deeply in Larry Vanderhoef.”

UC Regent Joanne Corday Kozberg, who praised Vanderhoef as “one of the most selfless education leaders I have ever worked with…It’s never about Larry.”

Francisco Rodriguez, Jr., a UC Davis alumnus who is superintendent and president of MiraCosta College in Oceanside, Calif. Rodriguez said his alma mater’s “academic stature has soared” under Vanderhoef’s watch, and he saluted Vanderhoef’s “collaborative style and leadership ethos.

Grey also thanked those who have made gifts in Vanderhoef’s honor, particularly those who have helped endow the Larry N. Vanderhoef Scholarship Fund for Students and Staff, and those who have given to the annual fund in the chancellor’s honor. So far, the university has raised $169,088 in Vanderhoef’s honor.

‘His heart, his soul’

For their part, Larry and Rosalie Vanderhoef seemed genuinely moved by the size of the crowd and the honors they received. The chancellor cracked that he thought no more than 50 to 60 people would bother to show up for the tribute dinner.

“I’m amazed that so many of you saw fit to come here…I will remember this night forever and ever,” he told the crowd. “Thank you all very much for having me.”

Rosalie Vanderhoef said of her husband: “he has given you his heart, his soul and his time…but he could not have done that without the support of all of you.”

Make a gift in honor of Chancellor Vanderhoef: giving.ucdavis.edu/chancellor

All the UC Davis Medal recipients: dateline.ucdavis.edu/dl_detail.lasso?id=11562