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Karl S. Pister

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Karl S. Pister
Receiving the Berkeley Medal, 1996
Born27 June 1925
Stockton, California
Died14 May 2022(2022-05-14) (aged 96)
Berkeley, California
NationalityUnited States
CitizenshipUnited States
Alma mater
Occupation
  • Professor
Years active1952 - 2012
Known forAcademic leadership
TitleProfessor, Dean, Chancellor
Signature

Karl Stark Pister (1925-2022) was an American academic in engineering. He held various leadership positions at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz, including Dean of the College of Engineering and Chancellor.

Biography

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Early life, education, military service

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Karl Stark Pister was born June 27, 1925, in Stockton, California.[1] He graduated from Stockton High School as class valedictorian in 1942,[2] and from UC Berkeley with a BS in Civil Engineering in 1945. After a short stint in the Naval Reserve and an assignment to Okinawa, Japan, during World War II, he commenced studies at Berkeley during the fall of 1946, and graduated with an MS in Civil Engineering in 1948. This was followed by a PhD in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1952.[3][4]

Research at UC Berkeley

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When Pister was hired at UC Berkeley in 1952, he initially conducted research on material properties of Portland Cement Concrete and the behavior of torpedo nets. For this early research work, he received the Wason Medal for Research, awarded by the American Concrete Institute.[a] During the late 1950s he also began a multi-decade association with Lawrence Livermore National Labs.[4] Over the next two decades, he served as Vice-chair of the Civil Engineering Department (1964–65), Chairman of the Division of Structural Engineering and Structural Mechanics (1970–71), Chairman of Committee on Educational Policy at Berkeley (1972–73), Senate Policy chair and Academic Senate, Berkeley Division, vice chair (1976–78), and Vice chairman and chairman of the nine-campus Academic Council and Assembly of the Academic Senate (1978–1980).[4]

University of Illinois

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A distinguished alumnus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,[3] Pister was appointed 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.[6] From 1991–1996 he served as Chancellor, UC Santa Cruz. He then returned to Berkeley to work as Vice President for Educational Outreach in the UC Office of the President (1999–2000) and to chair the task force on upgrading California Memorial Stadium (2004–2012). Pister was committed to promote social justice.[4]

UC Santa Cruz

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A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, elected in 1994 while being the Chancellor of the University of California at Santa Cruz, in the area of "Mathematical and Physical Sciences" with specialty "Engineering and Technology,"[b] Pister was the recipient of the Berkeley Medal (1996)[c] and the Presidential Medal of the University of California (2000). In 2006, The California Alumni Association named him Cal Alumnus of the Year.[4]

Awards and recognition

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The American Society for Engineering Education presented him with the Vincent Bendix Award for Minorities in Engineering, and the ASEE Lamme Medal (from the American Society of Engineering Education), which is "bestowed upon a distinguished engineering educator for contributions to the art of teaching, contributions to research and technical literature and achievements that contribute to the advancement of the profession of engineering college administration." He is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Mechanics, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and an Honorary Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences.[4]

Pister was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1980 for his "Contributions in the use of advanced principles of mechanics in understanding the behavior of engineering materials."[6]

Personal life

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Karl Pister married Rita Olsen in 1950. They have four daughters and two sons.[4]

CMES Special Issue[7]

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Celebrating the 95th birthday of Professor Karl S. Pister
❝On the occasion of Professor Karl S. Pister’s 95th birthday[8] and his long academic career–-in research, teaching, and university leadership and administration–-we gathered together former students, friends and colleagues to contribute to this CMES Special Issue, Vol.129, No.3, 2021 Nov 25, which is composed of three parts.

Part 1 consists of eighteen items, a biography of Professor Pister followed by seventeen individual tributes to Professor Pister. Part 2 consists of fourteen technical papers dedicated to Professor Pister, followed by Part 3, a memory-lane with photos of the participants from way back when, particularly around the time of their closest interaction with Professor Pister, either through research or through administration.

Dr. Sheila Humphreys, 1987

Specifically, we intentionally arranged Part 1 to reflect a certain balance of diversity that Professor Pister sought for much of his later career as a university administrator, as described in detail in the long tribute by Dr. Sheila Humphreys titled “Karl S. Pister and the Foundation of Diversity in Engineering”. It is with regret that the same extent of the balance in Part 1 could not be replicated in Part 2.

We pay particular attention to the permanence of Web resources cited in this special issue. For example, the University of Maryland Office of the President (umd.edu), which would show different UMD presidents depending on when this webpage is accessed many years in the future, is accompanied by the archived, permanent webpage Internet archived on 2021.06.05, which will always display the photo and leadership of UMD President Darryll Pines, an alumnus from the University of California at Berkeley, and a contributor to this special issue. A website could have its address changed, or removed completely in the future, but its Internet archived version remains permanent.

Darryll J. Pines 2021, President of University of Maryland, College Park

Similarly, as Wikipedia articles constantly continue to evolve, with new information added and errors corrected by many editors (and are sometimes vandalized, but almost always quickly reverted to the previous good version), the version of any Wikipedia article at the time of access in this special issue, such as the article ‘Cesar Chavez’ in connection with the tribute by Ms. Lola Martin-Atilano, is immediately followed by the archived, fixed version closest to the time of writing for this special issue, such as Wikipedia version 19:58, 19 May 2021.

We are well aware of the birthdate of Professor Pister. This special issue was started in 2020 when we underestimated the time it took to put it together with a quality level where it is now. Since many participants were informed of the special issue title, we keep it the same, as the (late) birthday present, and the effort expanded into creating it, would mean more than the actual age in the title. In addition, a mid-decade celebration seems to resonate well.

So Happy Birthday Karl. We wish you continued good health and good spirit.

With our appreciation, gratitude, respect, and very best regards,

Karl Pister Special Issue editors

Loc Vu-Quoc1 and Shaofan Li2 (2021 Nov 25)

1Aerospace Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL 61801, USA ∙ vql@illinois.edu
2Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California at Berkeley, CA 94720, USA ∙ Shaofan@berkeley.edu[8] ❞

Notes

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  1. ^ Pister received the Wason Medal for Materials Research in 1960, as recorded in the official website of the American Concrete Institute, Paper Awards (Internet archived 2024.02.07), but mis-remembered the award year as 1962 in his Oral History book.[5]
  2. ^ Part of the citation for Pister's membership at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences describes his experience "As Chancellor of UCSC, Pister faced an array of problems: recession-caused budget cuts, the UC Regents' controversial decision regarding affirmative action, town-gown relations, and controversies surrounding construction projects on campus. He put in place a collaborative budget process that helped the campus weather those budget storms, while at the same time maintaining faculty, staff, and student morale during a difficult period in the campus's history. He also established cordial relations with the city and county of Santa Cruz, ushering in a new era of cooperation. Throughout his tenure, Pister was a tireless advocate for university involvement in the effort to improve K-12 education in the region, and he played an important role by creating the Monterey Bay Educational Consortium, which has fostered collaboration between the campus and public schools."
  3. ^ Editor's note: “The Berkeley Medal was established in 1981 as UC Berkeley’s top honor. On very rare and special occasions, it is bestowed on individuals whose exceptionally distinguished contributions to society advance the university’s ideals and goals and whose careers have benefited the public beyond the demands of tradition, rank, or direct service to Berkeley.” Among the past recipients were Corazon Aquino, Kofi Annan, Michelle Bachelet, Jimmy Carter, the 14th Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso, to cite a few."[1]

Citations

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  1. ^ a b Austin 2021.
  2. ^ LaBerge 2003, p. 30.
  3. ^ a b UIUC 1982.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g LaBerge 2003.
  5. ^ LaBerge 2003, p. 122.
  6. ^ a b NAE 1980.
  7. ^ Vu-Quoc & Li 2021a.
  8. ^ a b Vu-Quoc & Li 2021b.

References

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  • "Karl S. Pister, Dean, College of Engineering, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley California, PhD, Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, 1952", Distinguished Alumnus, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Grainger College of Engineering, 1982, retrieved 2024-05-11.
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