Berkeleyan

A warm welcome from Chancellor Berdahl

27 July 2003

It gives me enormous pleasure to welcome Bob Birgeneau to the campus as its ninth chancellor. I am confident that Bob will provide superb and distinguished leadership to Berkeley.

During the past four years, through various meetings of the Association of American Universities, as well as visits to the University of Toronto, where we have a daughter and son-in-law on the faculty, Peg and I have come to know Bob and Mary Catherine and to count them as friends. They are warm and wonderful people. They represent the kind of values that are characteristic of Berkeley — excellence in all that we undertake, a dedication to public higher education, a spirit of openness, and a commitment to improving the world in which we live.

Bob is a distinguished physicist who moved to MIT after a very successful career at Bell Labs. As Dean of Science, he led the effort there to address issues of gender inequality. As president of the University of Toronto, Bob has led the campus through a set of academic plans aimed at making Toronto not merely the leading university in Canada, but one of the finest in all of North America.
Mary Catherine has been an active voice in her community on behalf of social justice and a forceful advocate for higher education and the University of Toronto.

Peg and I are thrilled that Bob and Mary Catherine are coming to Berkeley. We know that all of you will join us in welcoming them and in supporting them.

Sincerely,

Robert M. Berdahl
Chancellor