Friday, March 7, 1997
By Mason Stockstill
Daily Bruin Contributor
Robert M. Berdahl, president of the University of Texas at
Austin, was appointed chancellor of the University of California’s
Berkeley campus by the UC Board of Regents in a special
teleconference Thursday.
Berdahl, 59, will assume the post held for the past seven years
by current Berkeley Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien.
Berdahl, like newly appointed UCLA Chancellor and Harvard
University Provost Albert Carnesale, eclipsed contenders from
within the university to gain the selection committee’s
approval.
"I am both honored and humbled to be extended this opportunity,"
Berdahl said in the conference. "To work at the flagship university
of the California system … is a wonderful challenge."
In response to queries about Berdahl’s status as an outsider,
California Lt. Gov. Gray Davis replied that he thought it would be
"advantageous" to have him at the helm of the university.
"It’ll be nice to have a fresh perspective, a breath of fresh
air," he continued.
Regents intimated that two of their primary concerns while
searching for Tien’s replacement were the candidate’s ability to
handle fund-raising and to create a diverse campus in the face of
laws banning race- and gender-based preferences.
UC Berkeley, like UCLA, is in the midst of a huge fund-raising
effort, having raised $780 million in the last seven years.
"It’s a new world," Davis said, "and chancellors have to act as
diplomats and ambassadors, and also have to be very good
fund-raisers."
While chancellor at the University of Texas, Berdahl was faced
with a Texas State Supreme Court decision that outlawed affirmative
action-type preferences.
Berdahl responded by re-allocating funds to scholarships
specifically designed for economically disadvantaged students and
restructuring the application process to include socioeconomic
factors on top of the standard grades and test scores.
"We must work hard to achieve the diversity that reflects the
population that we serve," Berdahl said in the conference.
Berdahl’s salary, as unanimously approved by the regents, will
be an annual $222,700. This is the same as Tien’s salary, which was
raised by the Board of Regents in 1995 after Berkeley was named the
top research institution in the nation by the National Research
Council.
The Associated Press
Robert Berdahl