Contact: Bruce Conley, Associate Director of College Relations
Phone: (605) 274-5526
Fax: (605) 274-4903
www.augie.edu

January 23, 2006

Berdahl President of Association of American Universities

SIOUX FALLS – Augustana alumnus Robert Berdahl, who grew up in Sioux Falls, has been appointed president of The Association of American Universities (AAU).

Berdahl, 68, is the former chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley, and former president of the University of Texas at Austin. He received the Augustana Alumni Achievement Award in 1993.

The AAU is an association of 60 U.S. and two Canadian research universities organized to develop and implement effective national and institutional policies supporting research and scholarship, graduate and professional education, undergraduate education, and public service in research universities.

Martin Jischke, AAU’s current chair and president of Purdue University, said that Berdahl “has a long and distinguished academic career as both a scholar and an administrator at AAU universities. Moreover, he shares AAU’s mission to strengthen the nation’s research university system and educate a new generation of scientists, engineers, and scholars.”

Berdahl will take his new position in the spring, upon completion of a teaching commitment at Berkeley.

“The partnership between the federal government and our nation’s research universities that has resulted in such extraordinary advances in knowledge is threatened by stagnant federal investment in research and intensifying competition from abroad,” Berdahl said. “This partnership has been essential to national security and economic growth for more than half a century. I look forward to directing AAU’s efforts to reaffirm and strengthen this partnership.”

Berdahl served as chancellor at Berkeley from 1997 to 2004, and as president at Texas from 1993 to 1997. During his tenure at Berkeley, he served one year as chair of AAU.

Prior to his position at Texas, Berdahl was Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1986 to 1993. From 1967 to 1986 he was a member of the history faculty at the University of Oregon, and he served from 1981 to 1986 as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Oregon.

Berdahl majored in history at Augustana, graduating in 1959 with cum laude distinction. He served as president of Blue Key, and was one of Clara Chilson Lee’s most decorated debaters. During the 1957-1958 school year he and teammate Paul Rogness went undefeated at the Rocky Mountain Invitational and the University of Nebraska tournament. He was a charter member of the honorary history club, Phi Alpha Theta, and was elected to the Student Council.

He received his M.A. degree from the University of Illinois, and his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. He and his wife, Margaret, are the parents of three married daughters and six grandchildren.