Robert M. Berdahl took office in July of 1997 as UC Berkeley's eighth Chancellor. He came to UC Berkeley from the University of Texas at Austin where he had served as President since January 1993. Before assuming his post at UT, Berdahl served as Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1986 to 1993. Berdahl served as a member of the history faculty at the University of Oregon from 1967 until 1986. From 1981 to 1986, he was Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Oregon. He received his B.A. degree from Augustana College, Sioux Falls, South Dakota; M.A. degree from the University of Illinois; and Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1965.

Chancellor Berdahl faces many challenges on assuming leadership of the Berkeley campus. One problem facing the Chancellor is the recruitment of a diverse student body in view of the passage by the voters of the widely publicized proposition eliminating affirmative action as a criterion for admission to public colleges and universities. Another challenge derives from less state and federal funding for higher education, necessitating the completion of "The Promise of Berkeley&emdash;Campaign for the New Century." The $1.1 billion goal is among the largest campaign goals of any public university. Only the University of Michigan and UCLA can compare, having mounted $1 billion and $1.2 billion campaigns respectively. After a successful quiet phase, UC Berkeley kicked off the Campaign for the New Century in September 1996. The Campaign is now past the halfway mark with more than $600 million raised.

In addition to the campaign, many individual departments are soliciting gifts. Our Evans Hall neighbor, the mathematics department, has several substantial funds. Some are for the support of graduate students; the Julia Robinson Fellowship is supported by a gift and a bequest from Professor Raphael Robinson. The Charles B. Morrey Award for graduate students was established by Mrs. Frances Morrey to honor her late husband.

The most interesting source of funding in the math department is the Shiing-Shen Chern Visiting Professorship, established by his student Dr. Robert Uomini after winning the California State Lottery in 1995. One can only hope that he studied probability with one of our faculty, but if so, he might have, unfortunately, had more sense than to play the lottery.

The Statistics department has two existing funds: the Loève and Neyman Funds. In addition to those, a fund to help graduate students was established in November to honor Professor Erich Lehmann at the celebration of his 80th birthday. Let me encourage alumni to use the enclosed envelope to make contributions to this fund or to the department in general.

As one of the handful who has been a member of both Statistics departments, I am happy to report that the joint Berkeley-Stanford seminar is alive and well, if perhaps not as central as it was in the early days when the total statistical community was much smaller. The fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Stanford Department was January 17-18, 1998, and included a dedication of a new Seqouia Hall as the old one was demolished a few years ago. Our program in Berkeley is older, having started in 1938 when Neyman came to Berkeley, but separate departmental status was not achieved until 1955.

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