Margaret "Peg" Berdahl, wife of Chancellor Robert M. Berdahl and the mother of three daughters, has a history of active participation and volunteerism in the university towns where her family has lived.
At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where her husband taught and served as vice chancellor, Peg Berdahl chaired the scholarship committee of the Urban League. At Urbana High School, she worked as a home instruction teacher tutoring pregnant girls who could not attend class. She also instituted a teen pregnancy prevention program that targeted the sisters of young mothers.
In 1993, when Robert Berdahl became president of the University of Texas at Austin, she quickly became involved with the scholarship committee for Austin's Urban League, served in a resale store that raises funds for AIDS services and joined the local board of the national Believe in Me program, which exposes disadvantaged children to dance and music. She also gave support to campus outreach projects such as Neighborhood Longhorns and helped host many special campus events.
Since moving to Berkeley, Peg Berdahl has become a member of the University YWCA Board. She continues her support of a number of campus programs, serving also on the board of the Young Musicians Program. She works with the Tang Center's breast health committee to coordinate programs and support for the campus's community of breast cancer survivors, and in planning October awareness month activities. She's a board member of the Early Childhood Education Program and is involved there in planning campus and community childcare programs. Since her arrival, Peg has actively supported the recognition and expansion of university-community partnerships.
Peg Berdahl, was born in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where she and her husband both grew up. She received a B.A. in history from Augustana College. She went on to teach high school English and German. The couple went on to the University of Illinois and the University of Minnesota, where Robert Berdahl earned his graduate degrees, and then to Germany where he worked on his dissertation on a Fulbright Fellowship. Their daughter Daphne was born there. After two years in Boston, where daughter Jennifer was born, in 1967 the Berdahls moved to Eugene, Oregon, where Robert Berdahl had taken a faculty position at the University of Oregon. Barbara was added to the family.
Today, Daphne is a member of the anthropology faculty at the University of Minnesota. Jennifer is a faculty member at the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. Barbara is living in St. Paul and is at home with her young daughter. All three daughters are married. The Berdahls have four grandchildren.