www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2002/10/tien.html
Press Releases 10 Image Downloads 11 Contacts Chang-Lin Tien at the blackboard Chang-Lin Tien was a talented, tireless teacher and a favorite with students. Even in his years as chancellor at UC Berkeley, Tien made time to mentor graduate students and teach classes in his chosen field of mechanical engineering. In September 2000, Tien was diagnosed with a brain tumor and suffered a debilitating stroke during a diagnostic test. He never regained his health and retired from his many duties on June 30, 2001. He was the campus's seventh chancellor and the first Asian American to head a major research university in the United States. During the same time period, 27 percent of active faculty members took advantage of incentives to retire early and departed. Tien personally recruited top young professors, dedicated himself to retaining prominent faculty members and presided over consecutive years of record private fund-raising, vowing that UC Berkeley would stay on top. In 1995, for the third straight decade, the National Research Council identified UC Berkeley as one of the premier research universities in the nation. Overall, 97 percent of the UC Berkeley graduate programs assessed in the survey made its Top 10 list. To help reduce the impact of the state cuts on the university, Tien in 1996 launched an ambitious fund-raising drive, the largest of its kind at the time for a public university. Encouraged by Tien to strengthen ties with its alumni and friends worldwide, the campus raised more than $975 million under his leadership. The Tien family requests that donations in memory of the former chancellor be made to a project he championed and which will be named in his honor, the 22 Chang-Lin Tien Center for East Asian Studies. Bridge builder Both in the United States and overseas, Tien's expertise -- in thermal science and engineering, as an educator and humanitarian -- was called upon by engineers, scholars and government officials alike. He marked out new high-impact areas, he did seminal work in those areas, and then he led everybody to the next area," said Richard O. Buckius, a former student of Tien's who is professor and head of the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Thermal radiation, thermal insulation and, most recently, microscale thermal phenomena were among the fields carved out by Tien, the campus's first NEC Distinguished Professor of Engineering. He also made important contributions to fluid flow, phase-change energy transfer, heat pipes, reactor safety, cryogenics and fire phenomena. He helped solve problems with the Space Shuttle's insulating tiles and with the nuclear reactor meltdown at Three Mile Island in the late 1970s. In Hong Kong, he was chair of the Chief Executive's Commission on Innovation and Technology. The government there recently gave Tien its highest award, the Grand Bauhinia Medal, for service to the territory. In Japan, his basic formulas for "superinsulation" are used in the design of magnetic levitation trains. In 1999, Tien received from the UC Regents the prestigious title of University Professor for his groundbreaking research and service to the university. The post allowed him to be a "professor-at-large" on all 10 UC campuses. He helped found the Committee of 100, a nonpartisan group of prominent Chinese Americans that promotes dialogue and understanding between the United States and China. Last year, the committee presented Tien with its Inspiration Award. With his family, he fled China's Communist regime for Taiwan in 1949. After completing his undergraduate education at National Taiwan University, Tien arrived penniless in the United States in 1956 to study at the University of Louisville. Supported by scholarships, he earned his master's degree there in 1957 and then a second master's degree and his PhD in mechanical engineering at Princeton University in 1959. He joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1959 as an assistant professor of mechanical engineering. In 1962, when he was 26 years old, Tien became the youngest professor to receive UC Berkeley's Distinguished Teaching Award, an award for which he was enduringly proud. Rising through the ranks, he became a full professor in 1968, later served as chair for seven years of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and, for two years, 1983-85, was UC Berkeley's vice chancellor for research. In 1988, Tien left UC Berkeley -- for his first and only time -- when he was appointed executive vice chancellor at UC Irvine. A man of great personal integrity and a fighter for justice and equal opportunity, Tien said his values and ideals were shaped, in part, by the racism and discrimination he encountered in America. To explain his support for affirmative action as a tool to level the playing field in college admissions, he often told the story of how, as a new immigrant, he confronted a South still divided along color lines. I didn't know where I belonged, so for a long time I stood near the driver," Tien would recall. These experiences made him sensitive not only to victims of racism, he said, but to all people who suffer disadvantage or pain. Defender of affirmative action In a 1996 essay in The New York Times, Tien made his case for the use of affirmative action in university admissions, in direct opposition to the UC Regents' decision in 1995 to abolish its use. Tien wrote that America had come a long way since the days of Jim Crow segregation, but that equal opportunity for everyone was not yet a reality. When he became chancellor, he declined the suggestion from well-meaning supporters that he seek coaching to speak with less of an accent. On his office wall hung the Chinese character for crisis, but Tien explained how it actually represents two ideas - danger and opportunity. He said he preferred to see most crises as opportunities. In addition to successfully battling years of devastating state budget cuts on campus, Tien developed ways to counter the impact of the UC Regents' ban on affirmative action. In 1995, for example, he launched the Berkeley Pledge, a partnership between UC Berkeley and California's K-12 public schools that now is called School/University Partnerships. Designed to improve the academic performance of hundreds of students in the Berkeley, Oakland, West Contra Costa and San Francisco unified school districts, the program was a model for Education Secretary Riley in creating a national program that today is active in almost every state in America. Unabashed cheerleader for Cal As chancellor, Tien was beloved as a champion of students. If he returned to UC Berkeley at night after a long trip, he'd frequently visit the campus to check in with students working in his lab before heading home. A great sports fan, Tien found time to cheer on UC Berkeley's teams, often doing so while running onto the field with the players at the start of football games. As an undergraduate in Taiwan, Tien had aspired to play professional basketball, turning to academic pursuits only after reluctantly acknowledging that, at 5'6" tall, a professional career was unlikely. He also launched a "Smooth Transition" program for incoming UC Berkeley students, special small-class seminars to bring freshmen and sophomores in closer touch with top faculty members, and other initiatives that helped undergraduate retention rates continue to rise. Tien raised the profile of women in leadership at UC Berkeley, appointing the first woman vice chancellor and provost -- the second-in-command on campus -- and the first woman chief of the campus police department. He also brought more ethnic diversity to the leadership of the university administration. An asteroid, an oil tanker and other honors During his career, Tien's many honors included, in 1976, becoming one of the youngest members of the National Academy of Engineering, which awarded its highest honor to him, the NAE Founders Award, in September 2001. He also was elected a fellow of the Academia Sinica of Taiwan, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Institute of Aeronauti...
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