A highly regarded administrator, scholar, and champion of women’s issues and diversity, Carol Tecla Christ was confirmed in March as the campus’s 11th chancellor. Starting July 1, 2017, she became the first female chancellor in Berkeley’s 149-year history.
“Berkeley changed my life. It changed my sense of the world,” Christ said following her unanimous confirmation by the UC Board of Regents. Reflecting on the university’s transformational nature, she said there are few places in the United States where you feel that history is being made around you, and that “there’s no subject on the face of the earth that someone at Berkeley doesn’t know about and is not pushing the boundaries of our understanding even further.”
Recognizing that this may be the most challenging time at Berkeley since the 1960s, Christ told reporters that the campus must change its financial model without compromising its public mission. She cited undergraduate education as her top priority — “how you devote the right kinds of attention, care, teaching, and safety nets so that every student has the best chance not to survive, but to thrive.” She also wants to enhance faculty excellence. “The quality of our faculty is the quality of our university,” she said.
Christ (rhymes with “list”) joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1970 as an assistant professor of Victorian literature. Serving in a range of leadership roles over three decades, she rose from English department chair to executive vice chancellor and provost, the campus’s top academic officer. From 2002 to 2013 she was president of Smith College, where she supervised the development of the nation’s only accredited engineering program at a women’s college and expanded the college’s global reach. She returned to Berkeley in 2015 to direct the Center for Studies in Higher Education, then resumed her former role as second-in-command last May.
The university acknowledges the leadership of Nicholas Dirks, the 10th chancellor, who will return to teaching and research at Berkeley this summer. His legacy includes enhancing the undergraduate experience and launching initiatives in data science and arts and design. He has also worked to boost Berkeley’s global influence, increase support for cross-disciplinary research, and put the campus on a path toward greater financial sustainability.
Visit news.berkeley.edu/chancellor-christ for more on Berkeley’s new chancellor.
