From the Chancellor

‘We serve California extraordinarily well’

Chancellor Robert Birgeneau

Winter 2007 | This fall Chancellor Robert Birgeneau completed his second year in office. He took the occasion to take stock of campus issues and progress toward his goals for Berkeley in a wide-ranging interview with the campus’s weekly newspaper, the Berkeleyan.

The chancellor addressed topics including attracting and retaining top professors, multidisciplinary research and teaching, the importance of the humanities, and efforts to ensure educational access for students from low-income families.

In speeches this past year, Birgeneau has repeated enthusiastically that he is “ambitious for Berkeley.” He says his fundamental goal “is very simply stated: to ensure that Berkeley retains its preeminence in research and teaching, but that simultaneously we fulfill our public mission” to educate students from all backgrounds and pursue research that has an impact on society.

Among the research challenges before Berkeley faculty and students, he said, are stem-cell advances, energy alternatives, and alleviation of global poverty. Berkeley is uniquely qualified to contribute in these areas, he said, “because of the commitment of our faculty to serving society” and “the unusual combination of breadth and depth that distinguishes us.”

He said Berkeley should be proud of its role in educating qualified students from low-income families — one-third of Berkeley undergraduates are from families earning less than $45,000 a year — but he said he is “extremely worried” about the debt these students will incur. He is looking at ways to boost resources for need-based financial aid, both through fundraising and by proposing that the state match private gifts for such aid in the form of permanent endowment.

To read more online, visit newscenter.berkeley.edu/goto/chancellorq&a.