UC Irvine Chooses Berkeley Teacher for Its No. 2 Post

Chang-Lin Tien, a distinguished administrator and mechanical engineering expert from UC Berkeley, is UC Irvine’s choice to become its next second-ranking administrator, UCI officials said Wednesday.

Kathy Jones, an assistant vice chancellor at UCI, said Tien will be recommended to the UC Board of Regents to succeed Executive Vice Chancellor William Lillyman on his retirement July 1. The executive vice chancellor is second only to Chancellor Jack Peltason in UCI’s administrative structure.

The regents are expected to act on the recommendation at their May meeting.

Tien, 52, is a nationally recognized expert in the field of heat-transfer research.

‘Campus at Critical Level’

He was UC Berkeley’s vice chancellor for research from 1983 to 1986, when he asked to return to full-time teaching and research on that campus.

“I am really excited about the opportunity” of the UCI position, Tien said Wednesday from his Berkeley office.

“UC Irvine has made tremendous progress for the last 20 years. It has expanded rapidly without sacrificing quality. It has actually increased the academic quality to a remarkable level.”

Tien added, “The campus is now at a critical level, where in the coming 10 years, it will become one of the leading institutions in the nation and in the world.”

Tien said that pending his approval by the Board of Regents, “it is too early to tell” when he and his wife, Di-Hwa, will move to Orange County. They have three grown children--a son and two daughters.

Doctorate From Princeton

Tien, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was born in Wuhan, China. He was raised in Shanghai and went through junior high school there, he said. In 1949, he and his family moved to Taiwan after the Communist regime came into power on the Chinese mainland.

“I graduated in 1951 from high school in Taiwan, and went into National Taiwan University, where I graduated in 1955 with my bachelor’s (degree) in mechanical engineering,” he said.

In 1956, Tien immigrated to the United States. He entered graduate school at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, earning a master’s degree in mechanical engineering there in 1957, he said.

He earned a second master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Princeton University in New Jersey, where he also received his doctorate degree in that discipline.

“I joined the Berkeley campus in 1959, and I’ve been here ever since,” Tien said.

Tien became chairman of the thermal systems division of the department of mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley in 1969, and he was named department chairman in 1974. In 1982, he became faculty assistant to the vice chancellor. The following year, he was appointed vice chancellor for research. Last year, UC Berkeley named him to the A. Martin Berlin endowed chair in mechanical engineering--a prestigious research position.

Tien’s professional honors include a 1952 distinguished teacher award at UC Berkeley, being named a Guggenheim Fellow in 1964, and West Germany’s Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s annual award in 1979 to “a senior U.S. scientist.”

Tien is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.