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Dr. Sung-Mo "Steve" Kang
Dr. Belle W. Y. Wei

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Archive of Reflections

Chang-Lin Tien: the Person

"I have a tremendous regard for him. He was a very honest, very forthright person. He had very high academic standards. He was just a wonderful human being. Just everything he did, you knew it was going to be forthright and honest."

Richard Atkinson
President, 1995-2003
University of California

"The main thing was him as a person, and the kind of energy and perspective and the values that he would bring. He was very impressive. He talked about coming to the United States from Taiwan and going to school in Kentucky and not knowing whether, in a segregated situation, he was considered white or colored in terms of where he should be on the bus. It represented a realness on his part in terms of the great scientist, the great human being, the very real person."

Horace Mitchell
President
California State University, Bakersfield

"Working with Chang-Lin over four decades was a great privilege and a tremendous learning experience. It was also a lot of fun. He was ever-optimistic, always growing, and he fully believed that a leader can never get tired, can never get down, and must always bring hope for better days ahead.

What made him so fascinating to work with was his extraordinary personal dimension. His ability to connect with people was truly remarkable--it may have been his single most extraordinary trait. We used to marvel at how all campus constituencies adored him and followed him wherever he wanted to go, even during difficult times. His fun-loving and straightforward personality made him easily approachable and drew people to him. He couldn't walk across campus without being mobbed.

He also had a capacity for greatness in everything he touched. Not only could he do many things, he could do them all so brilliantly well, truly at the top level, and do them all at the same time--he was a phenom, there is no question about it.

Intensely competitive, driven to achievement, and seeing absolutely no limit to where his talent could--and should--take him, he tended to judge other people, especially faculty, the same way. To an extraordinary degree, he thought people with talent could do anything, could overcome any handicap in qualification or lack of experience. He always focused on the person; to him everything was about the person.

Frankly, very few people understood Chang-Lin completely, including me. He was a complex and enigmatic genius with boundless energy, an intense personal drive, a self-confidence well beyond any normal expectation, and a capacity for leadership greater than any other I have seen."

C.D. "Dan" Mote Jr.
President
University of Maryland, College Park

"I was struck by his energy, and by his general smartness, quickness, incredible energy. He worked 24 hours a day. It was always very pleasant to work with him. He was very gracious."

Jack Peltason
President, 1992-1995
University of California

"He was magnetized with an almost ineffable quality that made people want to be with him, made one feel proud to be associated with him. As one colleague at Berkeley recently said to me: "When he was present, he managed to convey a sense that everything would somehow be all right."

Steeled in adversity during his younger life, his character became forged through his odyssey from China, to Taiwan and then on a lonely journey to school in Kentucky in the 1950s, when Asians were far less common in the heartland than now. And, through his experiences as an outsider who became an insider, he became utterly dedicated to the idea of public education, diversity and the upward mobility implicit in the American dream. For these causes, he was something of an evangelist. But he always advocated for them in the most decorous and civilized manner.

This is not to say that he was a man without ambition. What distinguished his considerable ambition was that it never manifested itself as naked self-interest. For him, the relevant point of reference was the commonweal, and he seemed to gauge his own progress as a human being and advancement as an educator as being firmly rooted in something larger than himself, or even his immediate family, which was extremely important to him."

Orville Schell
Dean, the Graduate School of Journalism
University of California, Berkeley

"What I admired most about Chang Lin was his ability to transcend all social and ethnic barriers. Without exception, everyone admired him --poor students, well-to-do students, super rich alumni, and business and political leaders on both sides of the aisle. Dr Tien was a living example of Confucianism. He had great and sincere respect for all the people he led.

Leslie Tang Schilling
Regent
University of California

"He was just such a wonderful person, so full of life, so joyous, with such a good sense of humor, which was sometimes not so easy. He was a strong academic. He had experience. His sense of humor was just a very prevalent part of his character. He was someone who was not taken by his self-importance. His humility was just something that was so pervasive.

He was easy to work with. He was a hard taskmaster, but gentle in terms of his approach. He had an understanding of what can be done, what can't be done, what can be done quickly, what's going to take a little time and understanding, that you lead people by example, and by use of a carrot rather than a stick.

He was willing to call a spade a spade and not mince words about it. He did it probably a little more diplomatically than I did.

One more characteristic: a will to win. He was a great competitor. When he got into something he was competing for, in everything, in sporting events, in anything he did, he was a great competitor."

Charles Young
Chancellor, 1968-1997
University of California, Los Angeles

Photo of Chang-Lin Tien by John Blaustein, courtesy UC Berkeley

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