Introduction of President Robert C. Dynes
UC Berkeley Foundation Board Meeting
Clark Kerr Campus
February 12, 2004
Robert C. Dynes
18th President of the University of California
By Robert M. Berdahl
Chancellor,
University of California, Berkeley
Today it is my very great pleasure to formally introduce Robert C. Dynes, who became the 18th President of the University of California in October.
As a scholar, physicist and expert on semiconductors and superconductors, President Dynes has a long record of winning great respect from his peers and colleagues.
He comes to the presidency after serving since 1996 as a most distinguished chancellor of the UC San Diego campus. As chancellor, he presided over a remarkable 25 percent increase in enrollment and increased spending on research more than 35 percent. He also greatly expanded outreach to K-12 schools, and showed remarkable success in fundraising and in encouraging the campus to see itself as an innovator in many areas.
President Dynes also has been chairman of San Diego's physics department and senior vice chancellor for academic affairs. Prior to joining the faculty at UC San Diego in 1991, he had a 22-year career at AT&T Bell Labs marked by numerous leadership positions.
His many scientific honors include election to the National Academy of Sciences and the top honor in his field of low-temperature physics, the Fritz London Award.
He also has a distinguished record of UC and national service as vice-chair of the University of California President's Council on the National Laboratories, a member of the National Security Panel, and Councilor of the National Academy of Sciences.
Now, just for this audience, a few insider things you may not know about our new President. He was born in Canada and loved ice hockey so much he almost made a career of it.
When he did decide to go to college, he was the first in his family to graduate. Raymond Jeanloz, a physics professor here at Berkeley, said President Dynes' life is "sort of like the American dream - except it started in Canada."
In his State of the Campus address at UC San Diego last spring, President Dynes told a laughing audience, "Asking me whether I want to be the president of the University of California is like putting a hockey puck in front of a hockey player." The challenge can't be resisted.
President Dynes, on behalf of the Berkeley campus and everyone in the Berkeley community, let me say how deeply pleased and enormously proud we are to have you leading the University of California.