Caltech Names Its Next President
Jean-Lou Chameau, a French-born civil engineer and the second-ranking official at Georgia Tech, was named the new president of Caltech on Friday. He will become the first foreign-born leader to head the celebrated Pasadena research university in its 115-year-history.
Chameau, 53, regarded as an advocate for research crossing traditional academic boundaries and for promoting the role of women in the sciences, will replace David Baltimore, 68, a Nobel laureate biologist who last fall announced his plans to step down. Chameau will begin by Sept. 1.
Educated first in France and later at Stanford, where he earned his engineering doctorate in 1981, Chameau until now has had no formal association with Caltech, and his appointment was somewhat surprising.
His selection will mark a departure from Baltimore, whose appointment nine years ago symbolized a stepped-up emphasis on biology-related research at Caltech.
Caltech Board of Trustees Chairman Kent Kresa said the incoming president’s “strong academic management background” and engineering education would be “very complementary” to the skills brought to the university by Baltimore, who will continue to teach and do research.
Chameau was introduced to Caltech faculty, students and campus staff in gatherings on the Pasadena campus throughout the day Friday.
He will be the 10th leader of Caltech, one of the nation’s leaders in an array of scientific and engineering fields. It has been home to 31 Nobel Prize-winning researchers.
Officials involved in the selection cited Chameau’s solid administrative background and his extensive research interests, which include earthquake engineering and sustainable technology, an area of growing interest that deals with environmental issues.
But some officials put even more emphasis on Chameau’s personal charm -- and signaled that they hoped he would be able to put that quality to work in extracting more money from contributors.
“Growing the endowment is very, very important,” Kresa said. “We want to be able to maintain and draw upon the best scientists and educators in the world so that they can continue to come here.”
Caltech’s endowment fund slumped, as did many other investments, after the collapse of high-tech stocks six years ago. In recent years the endowment has moved back up but, as of Sept. 30, it stood at $1.5 billion, down from $1.57 billion in 2000.
The university is in the midst of a five-year fundraising drive with a goal of collecting $1.4 billion by December 2007; so far, it has announced contributions totaling $1.1 billion.
David Stevenson, a professor of planetary science and head of the faculty search committee, told a crowd at a nearly full Beckman Auditorium that Chameau “impressed us with his intelligence, his vision, his personality and his extensive administrative and fundraising experience and success.”
Chameau was greeted warmly by the audience -- which largely consisted of students -- and received a standing ovation after giving a low-key, 10-minute talk in his heavily accented English. In an interview afterward, he emphasized his good relationships with faculty and students since starting in 1991 at Georgia Tech, where he held a series of administrative posts leading up to his job as provost.
“There is a realization that the research environment in the world is changing, new players are arriving, there are limited resources and high competition,” Chameau said. Caltech officials, he added, “feel I have a good understanding of those issues.”
At Georgia Tech, meanwhile, Chameau was praised -- and his imminent departure lamented -- by President G. Wayne Clough, along with faculty and student representatives.
Clough, who has been president of the Georgia institution since 1994, said he was happy that his school had managed to hang onto Chameau as long as it had. “Jean-Lou is a very, very smart person, creative and very strategic in his thinking,” Clough said in a phone interview. “He’s been a terrific asset for us and will be for Caltech.”
Of special note, Clough said, was Chameau’s key role in fostering the school’s many interdisciplinary initiatives -- bringing together teams of scholars with different academic backgrounds and approaches to focus on major societal issues.
Chameau, the president said, also created and promoted international study and research opportunities for students and faculty and helped to establish undergraduate research programs for Georgia Tech students.
In a relatively rare position for a provost or chief academic officer, Chameau also played a significant role in fundraising at the campus. “He knows how to tell a story and to explain strategically what the school’s needs are,” Clough said.
David Andersen, outgoing president of Georgia Tech’s student government, said Chameau “has a huge passion for education and for the students. He’s going to be deeply missed.”
Chameau, who has no children, is married to Carol Carmichael, director of the Institute for Sustainable Technology and Development at Georgia Tech and a 20-year employee of the university. He said she will be actively involved at Caltech, but details of her role have not been determined.
Among Chameau’s talents are tennis and cooking. While a graduate student at Stanford, he was part of a group that ran a French restaurant in the Bay Area.
His earliest link to Caltech came when he was a student in France and a Caltech graduate student gave a talk at his school. He said that inspired him to leave his country and attend graduate school in California.
Chameau said he chose the Bay Area because of the excitement of living there in the 1970s. But another reason may have been the admissions process. When asked if he was accepted by Caltech, he replied, “I don’t remember. I don’t think so.”
