From Aggie host to chief of police: Nader Oweis is taking another step up in his law enforcement career.

Only this time, he is leaving UC Davis — headed to UC Santa Cruz. He has been with the UC Davis department for 17 years, promoted to sergeant in 1999 and lieutenant in 2005.

“I am grateful and honored to have met and worked with such wonderful and talented people at UC Davis,” Oweis said. “I will miss working with them.

“But I have a great opportunity at UC Santa Cruz, and I am excited about being the chief there.”

Jean Marie Scott, associate vice chancellor for Risk and Safety Services at Santa Cruz, announced Oweis’ appointment on July 29. She noted that the campus had conducted a national search to replace Chief Michael Aluffi, who retired in March.

The Santa Cruz department comprises 40 employees, including sworn officers, dispatchers, kiosk guards and parking enforcement officers, serving a campus with about 16,000 undergraduates and graduate students.

Annette Spicuzza, UC Davis police chief, said Oweis deserved the job, “and we wish him all the best.”

She added: “He has always accepted challenges, and he has done well at handling them.”

Oweis becomes one of two UC Davis veterans to lead UC police departments. The other is Rita Spaur, who left in 2005 to become UC Merced’s first police chief.

Oweis graduated from UC Davis with a Bachelor of Science degree in agriculture and managerial economics in 1992. As an undergraduate, he served as a member of the Police Department’s Aggie Host Security Program.

He joined the Police Department two years after graduation and most recently has been the officer in charge of the department’s Sacramento operations, in and around the UC Davis Health System, including the medical center.

In 2006, he received the Police Department’s Distinguished Service Medal and the campus’s Calvin E. Handy Leadership Award, named after the police chief emeritus.

Oweis, the son of Palestinian immigrants, also earned high praise as a liaison between law enforcement and the Arab-American community.

He served on the FBI’s Sacramento Joint Terrorism Task Force and received an FBI award for his role in developing the Northern California Hospital Cyberterrorism Seminar. He received another FBI award for his work on a threat assessment for the California National Primate Research Center at UC Davis.

He credited his many associates with whom he has worked on his many projects over the years. “I didn’t do all of this by myself,” he said.

In addition to his police work, he attended graduate school as a part-time student, earning a Master of Science degree in higher education from Drexel University in 2010.

“I believe that my experiences on the Sacramento and Davis campuses, coupled with my education, have prepared me well to become a police chief, particularly at a university.”

Oweis’ swearing-in ceremony is scheduled for 11 a.m. Tuesday, Aug. 9, on the McHenry Library lawn, with Chancellor George Blumenthal due to administer the oath of office. A reception is planned afterward; people planning to attend are asked to RSVP with the Police Department’s Elisabet Hiatt by 5 p.m. Friday (Aug. 5), by telephone, (831) 459-2897, or e-mail, lazo@ucsc.edu.

Earlier coverage: "Police lieutenant overlooks stereotypes, even of himself," Dateline UC Davis (June 23, 2006)