Six UC Berkeley deans were confirmed by the UC Board of Regents last week, officially marking the beginning of their terms as the leaders of their respective colleges and divisions. Most of them previously held administrative positions, and some are continuing work they initiated during their tenures as acting deans. Each dean typically serves a five-year term.

Sam Davis will be stepping into the role of interim dean for the College of Environmental Design.

He began his tenure as a faculty member at UC Berkeley in 1971, and is currently a professor of architecture. He served as chair of the department of architecture and was the associate dean for the college from 1998 to 2002.

Davis could not be reached for comment.

J. Keith Gilless takes over as interim dean at the College of Natural Resources; He has already been serving in the dean capacity for one year.

In 1983, Gilless arrived at UC Berkeley as a professor in what was then the department of forestry and research management.

"The downside of the appointment is that I'll get to spend less time in the classroom for the next few years," he said.

Gilless said his top goal is to strengthen the college's research ties with other units on campus. He will serve a two-year term, until a new dean is permanently appointed.

Richard Lyons, the dean of the Haas School of Business comes back to UC Berkeley after spending a few years further developing his upper management skills at the investment firm Goldman Sachs.

"Part of coming into a new role is being in listening mode," Lyons said.

A business professor in international finance, Lyons served as acting dean from 2004-05. Lyons said his goals for his tenure will be to help increase the number of faculty at the school, fundraise, as well as to foster a sense of stewardship among the Haas community.

Since 1976, Richard Mathies has been teaching chemistry at UC Berkeley; He said that as dean of the College of Chemistry, he wants to reinvigorate the curriculum during his tenure.

"What I want to do is to use this opportunity to define how chemistry should be taught for the next 25 to 50 years," Mathies said.

Mathies said his goal is to raise $30 million for the college over the next five years to be used to refurbish the undergraduate laboratories.

Among Mark Schlissel's goals for his term as dean of the biological sciences division in the College of Letters and Science, one is to increase the capacity of prerequisite courses like Biology 1A in order to keep students on track for graduation.

"The problem is that we don't have enough teaching lab space," he said.

Schlissel added that he wants to better coordinate between life sciences departments on campus to make the goals and prerequisites for each major easily understandable.

From 2002 to 2007, Schlissel was a vice chairman for the molecular and cell biology department.

Diana Wu officially steps up as dean of the UC Berkeley Extension program after serving as acting dean since February 2007. She has led efforts to dig the program out of debt, an accomplishment Wu attributed to cost-cutting, marketing of the program and re-energizing staff.

"We had to spend a little money in order to reap the benefits of some of the really great programming that we already do," Wu said.

She said she looks forward to boosting the program's international ties, online courses and interdisciplinary relations with departments on the main campus.

Tags: RICHARD LYONS, MARK SCHLISSEL, RICHARD MATHIES, DIANA WE, J. KEITH GILLESS, SAM DAVIS