Karl Pister's sublime Berkeley moment arrives often and like an expected guest when he mounts the stepped bridge spanning the south fork of Strawberry Creek and crosses into Faculty Glade. There, on the pitched grass bowl that once hosted Ohlone campers, time defers to him. There, he keeps an appointment with an enduring family memory and an indelible sense of place.

"Its incredible beauty hasn't changed in the 50-plus years I've been around here," says CAA's 2006 Alumnus of the Year. "Every time I come up on the glad, I get this connection to a very vivid memory of visiting Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite as a child and then taking my own family there year after year. The unchanged majestic beauty of both places give me a jolt of reassurance."

The words of an aesthete might sound anomalous when matched against a nine page, single-spaced résumé listing his 20 academic titles, his university and community awards, and his achievements in the engineering world of concrete and rebar. But, in fact, Karl S. Pister, B.S. civil engineering '45; M.S. civil engineering '48; Ph.D. theoretical and applied mechanics, University of Illinois '52; professor of civil engineering at Cal; dean of the College of Engineering for ten years; and chancellor at the University of California, Santa Cruz for six years; entered Cal in 1942 as a "terribly intimidated," bookish 17-yearold farm boy from Stockton who had been told by counselors that he had an aptitude for English literature. He even struggled to avoid flunking his first Berkeley math course.

"I have always believed that the development of people is more important than developing things. I take more pride in my students than in the research papers we produced."

It was then, on the precipice of experiencing failure for the first time, that the high school valedictorian and California Scholarship Federation Award winner decided to apply himself. More than 60 years later, even in retirement, he is still applying himself to the benefit of the Cal community and the world of engineering and education.

"It is hard to find an individual whose life's work better mirrors the very mission of our university," says Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, the latest in the line of 10 chancellors Pister has served. "Teaching, researching, and service define Karl Pister. Karl's deep understanding of the Berkeley campus and of the workings of the UC system have been invaluable to me. Most recently, he has led the complex planning effort for the renaissance of the southeast area of the campus, including the stadium master plan and the new law and business building."

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