Features

Chancellor Robert M. Berdahl announced two appointments Tuesday to senior leadership positions at UC Berkeley. 

UC Berkeley Professor Mary Beth Burnside, 57, former dean of the biological sciences at UC Berkeley and a former Chancellor’s Professor, will become vice chancellor for research in January 2001. Mary Ann Mason, 56, professor of social welfare, becomes the new dean of the Graduate Division on Aug. 1. 

This week’s appointments are the first of five positions in the campus’s senior management that are expected to be filled before the fall semester begins. The openings are a result of a restructuring of the senior administration that Berdahl said is aimed at seizing opportunities in teaching, technology and research as the Berkeley campus heads into the new century.  

Burnside will replace Joseph Cerny, a nuclear chemist, who has had held the dual position of vice chancellor for research and dean of the Graduate Division since 1994. He plans to return to research. As vice chancellor, Burnside will administer more than $400 million in state, federal and private research grants awarded annually to UC Berkeley faculty and researchers. 

Burnside, a cell biologist, was dean of the biological sciences from 1983 to 1990 and oversaw its restructuring. The 10-year effort involved 10,700 students, 200 faculty scientists and 11 academic departments and, at the time, was the largest reorganization of research and teaching ever undertaken at a university.  

Burnside, who teaches biology 1A and an upper division cell biology course to undergraduates, currently runs a research laboratory studying mechanisms of movement in light sensitive photoreceptors of the retina, movements that are critical to photoreceptor survival and vision. Her studies seek to identify cell components whose function goes awry to produce retinal degeneration in humans. She said she plans to continue her research as vice chancellor.  

A native of Texas, Burnside received her B.S., M.A. and Ph.D. in zoology and developmental biology at the University of Texas at Austin. She joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1975 as an assistant professor in anatomy. She became a full professor in 1982 and was honored as a Chancellor’s Professor in 1996.  

As the new dean of the Graduate Division, Mason will lead one of the nation’s largest graduate programs with more than 8,000 students and 100 programs.  

Mason said she will work to keep UC Berkeley competitive with private colleges in recruiting top students by building a large endowment for graduate students. She also faces the challenge of maintaining diversity among graduate students. Two years ago, as acting associate dean for UC Berkeley’s Graduate Division, she established a parental leave policy for graduate students.  

A professor in the School of Social Welfare for 11 years since her arrival at UC Berkeley in 1989, Mason has gained a national reputation as an expert on family and child law. She completed her undergraduate studies at Vassar College, earned a Ph.D. in history in 1971 from the University of Rochester and received her law degree from the University of San Francisco in 1976.  

Mason said she plans to continue teaching her course on children and the law and pursuing her research on child and family policy while fulfilling the dean’s role.