Briefly speaking: Get acquainted with new chancellor

Last month, UC Davis welcomed its sixth chancellor, Linda Katehi.

Katehi, 55, grew up on the Greek island of Salamis. The first in her family to go to college, she earned an engineering degree in Greece before coming to the United States for master's and doctoral degrees at UCLA.

She was an engineering professor and dean at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, then at Purdue University. Most recently, she served as provost of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

And for more than 25 years, she's been a mom.

Below are excerpts from a recent interview with UC Davis' Dateline, conducted when Katehi was visiting Greece:

Q. The budget crisis means higher fees, albeit with more financial aid, including the Blue and Gold Opportunity Plan. What do you say to students and their families about the fee increases, and how can you ensure that the UC Davis experience for these students is all that it should be?

A. We all understand how difficult it is for families to bear the cost of higher education. It's an education that cannot be afforded by many, and this is something we need to keep in mind. So, I don't believe public institutions can rely too much on raising fees to develop the resources they need to provide the high quality.

Creating the necessary resources without raising fees is very challenging, considering that the state is substantially cutting funding to public institutions of higher education through draconian measures.

I am not implying that there is no solution to this problem. We need to step back and ask ourselves: What kind of programs will be important to our student education and to the quality of the institution, and how can we provide these programs at a lesser cost?

There should be ways to accomplish both high quality and access, if we take advantage of online education, and take advantage of technologies that can allow students to learn faster and more effectively.

Q. Speaking of students, what are some of the most important things you learned as the parent of two college students? (Erik Tseregounis, 25, is a graduate of the University of Michigan, where he's a microbiologist in the medical school; and Helena Tseregounis, 22, graduated with an English degree from Indiana University and now attends law school at the University of Chicago.)

A. First of all, it was important to me as a parent, that the campus was safe. That my kids had access to high quality education that would allow them to develop their own careers in ways that could bring satisfaction and quality of life to them and their families. Obviously, we all have to reconsider what that means in today's environment. It used to be that we expected better lives for our children, but I'm afraid this trend may not continue at the same rate.

I also learned of the importance of research opportunities for undergraduates. Both my children benefited from having mentors — faculty or TAs — who valued research and scholarship, and who provided my children guidance about graduate school options.

Of course, I was concerned about cost. I know why families worry, and I can see why students are skeptical. We as a society, especially in the U.S., need to rethink the importance of higher education and the need of the states and the public to fund their own institutions. I was reading, in fact, today, in the newspapers here in Greece that Europe is investing heavily in higher education; we cannot afford in the U.S. to remain behind.

The complete interview is published in the fall issue of UC Davis Magazine, which is available online and is mailed to the parents of UC Davis students.