At 9:06 A.M. today, UC Berkeley’s first female and current Chancellor Carol Christ sent out an email to the campus community about her enthusiasm for the upcoming school year. A former English professor, Christ demonstrated her talent with story-telling, language, and poise, painting us a picture of the road she has traveled and the journey to come. Christ expresses her compassion for the university, writing, “I still vividly remember the first journey I took to California—across the country by car, the first time I had been west of Philadelphia—to begin my faculty appointment here. It was then, in those first months of teaching, that I fell in love with Berkeley—a love that still animates me now.” When she writes of her connection with Berkeley, Christ is genuine and warm, showing us that she sincerely cares about the future of Cal, its students, and faculty.
Christ also reminds us that there is much work to do in fixing issues of funding and tuition hikes, resolving concerns raised in the Donald Trump election and Milos Yiannopolous protest, and in presenting to Californian taxpayers the enormous benefits of public education. She writes,“There are many challenges before us—solving our financial problems, presenting to the people of California an authentic and compelling case for how our university contributes to the public good, assuring that we provide the best possible education for our increasing numbers of undergraduates, better supporting our graduate students, creating a more shared understanding of free speech –, but we also have extraordinary opportunities.”
Christ presents herself as optimistic, dedicated, and profoundly humble. She ends her message with resounding unity,“This is our Berkeley—a remarkable community of faculty, students and staff; I am honored to be its leader.”
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