Asked why he would take on such a demanding job at age 72, Brentano answers cheerfully, "because I thought it would be interesting and enjoyable, because I'm curious, and because I've complained about what other chairs have done. I wanted to see if I could do better."

With a membership of 2,210 this year, Berkeley's Academic Senate includes all tenure-track and emeriti faculty, instructors, some lecturers and certain administrators.

With only a year to make his mark, Brentano says he has three major goals for the Academic Senate: to work more closely with the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC) Senate, to improve the state of the library, and to support the new admissions policy and outreach efforts.

Brentano and ASUC officers have initiated two collaborations: a Senates Saturday School for 60 tenth-graders who might not consider going to college, and monthly brown bag lunches for leaders of the Academic and ASUC senates. The two senates are also co-sponsoring forums of interest to both students and faculty, such as "Teaching Students with Disabilities."

Brentano says, "students and faculty have identical interests -- teaching and learning. It's silly not to know what each other is interested in doing."

Regarding the library, Brentano says that, "we need to increase staff and build the collections."

Brentano notes that "Prop. 209 made us think about admissions and outreach. I think our new admissions plan is very valuable. It allows us to look at applicants as individuals. We must find the most promising young people for our way of educating at Berkeley, which includes diversity."

One of Brentano's dreams is to establish a K-12 school on campus that would involve faculty in outreach and education for Berkeley children.

An ongoing concern of the Academic Senate, says Brentano, is the growing privatization of UC. "We have to measure and control how non-state funds are used," he says. For the first time this year, non-state funds are supplementing state-funded faculty salaries, he notes.

Senate business is done mainly in its 35 committees under the leadership of the Divisional Council. One of the most powerful is the Committee on Committees, which appoints faculty to all the other committees.

The Senate as a whole meets once a semester, unless there's a crisis or at least seven faculty request a meeting. At the fall meeting, Amanda Canning, ASUC Vice President for Academic Affairs, urged faculty to take students into account in their decision-making.

Brentano is a scholar of medieval English and Italian history with a BA from Swarthmore and a D.Phil. from Oxford. Despite his duties as chair of the Academic Senate, last semester he taught an undergraduate seminar on history and writing, comparing 13th- and 20th-century texts. This semester he's teaching a four-unit freshman seminar on England 1300-1500, and this fall he will teach two courses, one on English history 1066-1300.

Both Swarthmore and Emory University have tried to nab Brentano, but both times he came back to Berkeley because, "it became clear to me that I much preferred the undergraduate program here and, on balance, the undergraduates here," he recalls.

"This is the best possible place to be an undergraduate because it's a great research university," he says. "Authorities in every field bring their expertise into the classroom. It's a myth that this isn't a good place for undergraduates."

Brentano is the father of three and grandfather of five. His son, who transferred to Cal from Swarthmore, used to lecture on lighting design at Berkeley. Then he returned to UC Davis for a master's degree in computer science and now works for a software company.

Brentano's wife, Carroll Brentano, is the university history coordinator at Berkeley's Center for Studies in Higher Education.

-- Julia Sommer