UC Regents voted unanimously on Thursday in San Francisco to approve Carol Christ as chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley. Christ was nominated by UC President Janet Napolitano earlier in the week.
The 72-year-old scholar was given a standing ovation for being the first female chancellor in UC Berkeley's 149-year history. She is set to officially take over as chancellor on July 1st.
Christ has worked for Berkeley for more than three decades from being a professor and chair of the English department to dean. She also served as Smith College's president from 2002 to 2013 before she returned to Berkeley as the provost and interim executive vice chancellor.
UC Regents voted unanimously on Thursday in San Francisco to approve Carol Christ as chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley. Christ was nominated by UC President Janet Napolitano earlier in the week.
The 72-year-old scholar was given a standing ovation for being the first female chancellor in UC Berkeley's 149-year history. She is set to officially take over as chancellor on July 1st.
Christ has worked for Berkeley for more than three decades from being a professor and chair of the English department to dean. She also served as Smith College's president from 2002 to 2013 before she returned to Berkeley as the provost and interim executive vice chancellor.
Among Christ's biggest challenges is to ensure that UC Berkeley maintains being the top public institution in the country while also dealing with a decline in funding from the state. She believes that it's time to re-imagine the school's financial model. The university relies on two block grants, tuition dollars and state funding.
The ABC 7 News reported, Christ said that they would certainly need to increase the importance of philanthropy revenue. Christ said the Regents are expected to approve a cap on the number of higher paying out-of-state students in order to allow more California students to enroll.
The cap would be 20 percent at most UC's, and 24 percent at Cal, UC San Diego and UCLA. The UC system will receive $18.5 million from the state in exchange. Cal will celebrating its 150th anniversary next year.
One of her top priorities would be to address the campus' critical shortage of student housing. Christ said that she intends to diversify the revenue stream at UC Berkeley through more fundraising.
Aside from of focusing on elevating the campus profile, Christ believes that Berkeley is as much about the community-college transfer student from Modesto and Fremont as it is about its Nobel Prize winners. Christ will earn the same $531,939 base salary that of the previous chancellor and will live in a university-owned house according to The SF Gate.
