CCST Board Chair Karl Pister Receives Kerr Award

CCST Board Chair Karl Pister was presented with the Clark Kerr Award for Distinguished Leadership in Higher Education by the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate, in a campus ceremony on Thursday, Oct. 25.

The award recognizes extraordinary and distinguished contributions to the advancement of higher education. The Berkeley Division established the award in 1968 as a tribute to Kerr, a former Berkeley chancellor and UC president.

“I know of no one within the UC Community who is more deserving of this award,” said CCST Council Chair Lawrence Papay, CEO and Principal of PQR, LLC. “He has spent a lifetime devoted to education, including many years shaping and guiding CCST’s own education related research.”

Pister is the former UC Vice President of Educational Outreach, and Chancellor Emeritus of the University of California, Santa Cruz. Prior to retirement he completed five decades of service to higher education, beginning his career in higher education as Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at UC Berkeley. He served as Chairman of the Division of Structural Engineering and Structural Mechanics before his appointment as Dean of the College of Engineering in 1980, a position he held for ten years. From 1985 to 1990 he was the first holder of the Roy W. Carlson Chair in Engineering. In addition to chairing CCST’s Board of Directors, he is a member of the Board of Directors of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning, and the Board of Trustees of the American University of Armenia.

He has received numerous awards throughout his career, but Pister says the Kerr Award ranks as one of the two most significant honors he has received.

“In 1980, I was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, an honor that reflected the judgment of my engineering peers,” he said. “In the same way, the Kerr Award reflects the judgment of my Berkeley colleagues, so I’m tremendously honored by it.”