Asian-American May Be in Line to Head UC Berkeley : Education: The No. 2 administrator at UC Irvine, a native of China, is reported to be a leading candidate for the chancellorship.

Chang-Lin Tien, the No. 2 administrator at UC Irvine, is a leading candidate to become chancellor of UC Berkeley and thus the first Asian-American to head a UC campus, sources said Sunday.

Tien, a 53-year-old native of China, is an internationally recognized expert in mechanical engineering and a former vice chancellor for research at Berkeley. He joined the faculty there in 1959 and went to UC Irvine as executive vice chancellor in 1988.

If chosen, Tien, who once faced segregated drinking fountains in Kentucky, would head a prestigious and argumentative campus that has been under fire for its policies on admission of Asian-American students and hiring of minority faculty.

Tien declined to comment Sunday on reports from several sources that he is among the finalists recommended to UC President David P. Gardner by a search committee. “Any comment has to come from the university,” Tien said.

Gardner must recommend one name to the UC Board of Regents to succeed Ira Michael Heyman, who is retiring after 10 years as chancellor. The regents are to meet Thursday in San Francisco to discuss the location of the first of three proposed new campuses.

Ron Kolb, a spokesman for Gardner, said Sunday that if the Berkeley chancellorship is to be taken up at that meeting, the matter would have to be added to the agenda by this afternoon.

“The fact is that President Gardner has not made a decision or a recommendation,” Kolb said.

Faculty and administrators at Irvine said Tien’s candidacy had been rumored there for months. Several were disappointed by the reports and said they would consider the departure of the administrator and scientist a great blow to UC Irvine.

“To be quite truthful, I’m kind of disappointed if he’s leaving,” said John Liu, co-chairman of Irvine’s Asian Faculty Staff Assn. “I think he’s brought dialogue that the campus has long needed and he has shown a sensitivity to a lot of pressing issues that the administration hasn’t always done.”

Liu and others said Tien has played a leading role in recruiting minority faculty to the Orange County campus and instituting a new “international breadth requirement.” As of next year, all incoming freshmen will be required to take one class on a multicultural issue and one class on an international issue.

Kathy Jones, associate vice chancellor at Irvine, said Tien has also taken steps to give faculty a greater voice in managing the campus.

Tien was born in Wuhan and fled to Taiwan in 1949 after the Communist takeover on the mainland. He graduated from National Taiwan University and earned a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Louisville.

“When I got off at the bus station, I saw drinking fountains that said ‘whites only’ and drinking fountains for ‘colored,’ ” Tien told The Times in a 1988 interview. “I was very disturbed. I didn’t know which fountain I was supposed to use.”

Tien went on to earn a second master’s degree and then a doctorate in mechanical engineering from Princeton University.

Tien has won a distinguished teaching award from Berkeley, a Guggenheim fellowship, and prestigious scientific awards from West Germany and Hong Kong. He also held the Berlin Chair in Mechanical Engineering at Berkeley.

As a consultant for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, he helped solve the problem of keeping heat-shielding tiles from falling off U.S. space shuttles in the early days of the program.

Tien lives with his wife, Di-Hwa, in University Hills.