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By C.D. (Dan) Mote Jr. I met Chang-Lin more than 40 years ago, when he came to Berkeley as an acting assistant professor of mechanical engineering and I was a beginning graduate student. He was only a year and a half older than I was, and everyone thought he, too, was a new graduate student. That marked the beginning of my tagging along after him. When I joined the mechanical engineering faculty as an assistant professor in 1967, he was already a senior faculty member. In 1976, as chair of the department, he asked me to serve as a vice chair; and, when he was chancellor, I again served him as one of his vice chancellors. In many ways we grew up together, in age, in our profession, and in service to the campus and beyond. But I was always behind him, learning from him. He was my mentor. Working with Chang-Lin over four decades was a great privilege and a tremendous learning experience. It was also a lot of fun. He was ever-optimistic, always growing, and he fully believed that a leader can never get tired, can never get down, and must always bring hope for better days ahead. What made him so fascinating to work with was his extraordinary personal dimension. His ability to connect with people was truly remarkable--it may have been his single most extraordinary trait. (It is a trait that people rarely associate with engineers.) We used to marvel at how all campus constituencies adored him and followed him wherever he wanted to go, even during difficult times. His fun-loving and straightforward personality made him easily approachable and drew people to him. He couldn't walk across campus without being mobbed. He also had a capacity for greatness in everything he touched. Not only could he do many things, he could do them all so brilliantly well, truly at the top level, and do them all at the same time--he was a phenom, there is no question about it. Born in 1935 in Wuhan, China, in 1949 Chang-Lin and his family fled the Communist regime for Taiwan. He completed his undergraduate education at National Taiwan University and then, in 1956, he arrived, penniless, in the United States. Within a year he had earned a master's degree from the University of Louisville. In 1959, he earned his doctorate in engineering at Princeton after two years of study, setting a Princeton doctoral speed record that stands to this day. At 24, he was the youngest appointee to the mechanical engineering department at Berkeley; at 26, he was the youngest winner of the campus's Distinguished Teaching Award; and, at 41, he was the youngest elected member of the National Academy of Engineering. His life was like that: faster, smarter, and better than everybody else. Intensely competitive, driven to achievement, and seeing absolutely no limit to where his talent could--and should--take him, he tended to judge other people, especially faculty, the same way. To an extraordinary degree, he thought people with talent could do anything, could overcome any handicap in qualification or lack of experience. He appointed me as vice chancellor when I had little idea what the job entailed. But he liked me and my ideas. He always focused on the person; to him everything was about the person. Chang-Lin saw himself first as a teacher and scholar. He loved his students--all of them. He would often stroll to Sproul Plaza to greet them, and he was famous for bringing cookies to those studying late in the library. He also sought to lead in his profession. In 1959, he came to Berkeley to work with Professor Ralph Seban, a wonderful mentor to Chang-Lin and a truly distinguished scholar himself. Chang-Lin quickly rose to the top ranks on campus and on the national scene and, remarkably, he preserved his academic reputation at the highest levels throughout his extraordinary administrative service. His expertise in thermal science was often called upon by governments around the world--he helped solve problems with the Space Shuttle's insulating tiles and with the nuclear reactor meltdown at Three Mile Island; his work on "superinsulation" was used in the design of magnetically levitated trains in Japan. Being a distinguished scholar and teacher while serving as chancellor was a role that was both satisfying and essential to him. Chang-Lin always knew where he was going and the steps required to take him there--he was the complete strategist. He understood completely the effect of everything he did, every step he took, and every comment he made. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, random about him. He was careful, highly efficient, and took measured risks. He had an uncanny capacity to attack problems at their very root cause, and he had extraordinary political instincts.  Let me give one example: When Chang-Lin returned to Berkeley as chancellor in 1990, after two years as executive vice chancellor at UC Irvine, he knew athletics was going to be an issue. He knew that people would be wondering if this short, unknown Chinese guy with renowned academic qualifications would support Cal athletics. This anxiety was amplified by a feeling, accurate or not, that the previous administration and the campus faculty generally did not support athletics. So when Chang-Lin came out more strongly supportive of athletics than any chancellor since Glenn Seaborg, he shocked the entire University community. He adopted a most visible and active presence across the entire athletic spectrum that was greater than the most ardent Bear Backer. This silenced and stunned his would-be critics and secured his alliances among the Cal faithful, much to the benefit of the University and his agenda. His declarations of "Go Bears!" rang from his every address and from his every correspondence. Often seen pacing the sidelines at Memorial Stadium, he sent a clear message of support for athletics; he showed up frequently at minor sports events, too. Richard Goldman '41 once told me how surprised he was to meet Chang-Lin at a track meet--on what is now Goldman Field! Chang-Lin's academic distinction gave him a solid platform to enthuse about athletics, and his message that success in athletics and in academics can, and should, go hand in hand resonated with many. That message pulled the University and its potential support base together. Frankly, I must admit that many of his campus friends had never seen this side of him before he became chancellor. His extraordinary understanding of the importance of raising the institution as a whole, and not partitioning support and creating opposition, was a critical lesson for me. In 1991, the Golden Bear football team went to the Citrus Bowl in Orlando, Florida to play Clemson. I was asked to introduce Chang-Lin at a banquet for hundreds of avid fans the night before the game. Not having been to one of these events before, I attended a coach's luncheon that day to learn how to introduce him properly. At the luncheon the players of both teams were introduced something like this: right tackle, Jim Jones, height 6'7", weight 315 pounds, bench press 425 pounds. Right guard, Al Philips, height 6'8", weight 305 pounds, bench press 450 pounds, and so on. So that night I introduced him like this: "Chancellor, Chang-Lin Tien, height 5'5", weight 145 pounds, bench press--the Berkeley campus and the city of Berkeley to boot!" Everyone roared. And when he took the microphone his first words were: "I'm 5'6"!" Once again setting me straight.  Chang-Lin was an ardent supporter of the University and was instrumental in maintaining its pre-eminence, despite huge budget cuts in the early 1990s. In 1996, he used his immense popularity to launch an ambitious fundraising drive that I led, the Campaign for the New Century, which ultimately raised $1.44 billion. Chang-Lin's position as chancellor and his personal ties with prominent leaders in Asia made him a particularly powerful informal ambassador, especially to Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China. As a trusted and respected leader himself, he was one of the few people who could move across political boundaries and carry messages between governments across the Taiwan Strait. Especially during the latter years of his tenure, he used his personal prestige to broker peace and to take stands for democratic reforms and economic development in the region. The government of Hong Kong awarded Tien its highest award, the Grand Bauhunia Medal, for service to the territory. (This was just one of many honors he would receive, including the UC Presidential Medal and the Berkeley Citation.) When we walked down the street in Taipei, it was like walking down a street in Chicago with Michael Jordan. People ran out of shops and restaurants to greet him. Hotels offered their suites to get him to stay there because of his star power. In 1992, on my first day with him in Taipei, he was on television three times, once with President Lee. On the mainland, Chinese astronomers named a newly discovered asteroid "Tienchanglin" in his honor. Chang-Lin felt deeply responsible for the Asian-American community. As the first Asian chief executive officer of a major U.S. university, as a member of the Chinese-American "Committee of 100," as a forceful advocate for diversity at Berkeley and elsewhere, Chang-Lin carried the burden of using his personal achievement to facilitate progress for Asian Americans. He would painfully recount stories of his own experiences with housing discrimination in Berkeley, of Asian admission quotas on campus, and of the absence of Asian Americans in the highest levels of government. At the same time he loved America and the American Dream. A poor kid from Taiwan, whose parents had lost everything, who arrived in this country with nothing but a bus ticket to Louisville, and who wound up as chancellor of the greatest university in the land-he was the personification of the American Dream. He started with nothing, knew nobody, and had no advantages intrinsic to his race, ethnicity, language, ancestry, or anything else. He was just faster, smarter, and better than everybody else, and in the American Dream that is enough.
But, frankly, very few people understood Chang-Lin completely, including me. He was a complex and enigmatic genius with boundless energy, an intense personal drive, a self-confidence well beyond any normal expectation, and a capacity for leadership greater than any other I have seen. Chang-Lin was blessed with a beautiful family: a loving and remarkable wife and partner in Di-Hwa, who worked with him every step of the way; three beautiful children in Norman, Christine, and Phyllis; and four grandchildren. He will live on through the Chang-Lin Tien Center for East Asian Studies, a fitting tribute to the genius and spirit he brought to Berkeley. Chang-Lin Tien died on October 29, two years after he was diagnosed with a brain tumor and after later suffering a debilitating stroke. With an enormous sense of loss and sadness, we all now have to accept that Chang-Lin Tien has once again left too early, and long before his time was up. C. D. (Dan) Mote Jr. '59, M.S. '60, Ph.D. '63, was on the faculty at Berkeley for 31 years and served as vice chancellor from 1991 to 1998. Since then he has been president of the University of Maryland and Glenn L. Martin Institute Professor of Engineering. |
 Chang-Lin Tien Photo by Peg Skorpinski
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