That Pister was chosen to head a 30- member panel to oversee reconstruction and upgrading of Boalt Hall School of Law, the Haas School of Business, 82-year-old Memorial Stadium, and their common areas—the most ambitious campus project in decades— surprises no one, because the plan combines gargantuan engineering challenges with the need for skillful political diplomacy. Building durable structures and building political constituencies from competing interests are Pister's hallmarks.

He is eminently cordial and composed, his focus direct, his sentences structured and circumspect with a measured precision. He balances himself on a low center of gravity, something engineers strive for in tall buildings, particularly ones erected in seismic areas. He is the silver-haired sort you would send into challenging situations—say rebuilding New Orleans or Iraq.

From 1978–80 Pister served as vice chairman and chairman of the nine-campus Academic Council and Assembly of the Academic Senate while also serving as faculty representative to the Board of Regents. From 1980–90, despite initially asking that his name be removed from the list of prospects to be dean of the College of Engineering and after being overridden, he served as dean for 10 years. During his tenure, the school emerged as one of the highest-regarded programs in the nation. In 1990 UC President David Gardner asked him to serve as interim chancellor of UC Santa Cruz, a campus that Gardner described as being in such chaos that a permanent chancellor could not be recruited.

Pister can still recall his first impression of the 2,000-acre forested campus with 10,000 students. "There's no Campanile. There's no tower. Where's the campus? There's no there there."

What was there in the spring of 1991, when Pister and his wife, Rita, arrived, was seething turmoil. A civil war was brewing. Budget cuts were causing retrenchments, and battle lines were forming over prioritizing teaching over research. Within the woodsy surroundings, townsfolk and members of the campus community were also seething over what they believed were ad hoc plans to expand the university from eight colleges to 10.

"This meant cutting down 150 trees in an area known as 'Elf Land,'" says Pister, referring to a secluded, forested acre favored by students, townsfolk, and ramblers practicing "alternative behaviors," as Pister would be prone to say. "We had intruders who got in the way of logging. Forty-four people ended up being arrested. It was an uncomfortable affair."

The local press treated him skeptically. His own faculty verbally assaulted him. His wife was falsely accused of recklessly spending $10,000 on tableware. Garbage was dumped on his campus household doorstep. Even his life was threatened. He had to have a security escort wherever he went on campus.

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