The First Woman Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley

Carol T. Christ was named chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley. When she becomes the university’s 11th chancellor on July 1, she will be the first woman to serve in this position.

Since 2015, Dr. Christ has served as director of the Center for Studies in Higher Education and interim executive vice chancellor and provost at Berkeley. From 2002 to 2013, Dr. Christ was president of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Before leading Smith College, Dr. Christ served on the Berkeley faculty for 30 years, including six years as executive vice chancellor and provost.

In accepting her appointment as chancellor, Dr. Christ said, “I feel honored and privileged to lead the campus at this challenging time. It is a small way to give back for everything the university has given me. My experience at Berkeley has been transformational; it formed my ideas of higher education, and it formed my ideals of higher education.”

Professor Christ is the author of The Finer Optic: The Aesthetic of Particularity in Victorian Poetry (Yale University Press, 1975) and Victorian and Modern Poetics (University of Chicago Press, 1984).

Dr. Christ is a graduate of Rutgers University in New Jersey. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Yale University.