Students may associate Jim Hamerly as the Dean of College of Business Administration. Yet, what others may not know is that he is a first-generation college student. He holds his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. Hamerly also contains degrees in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from MIT, UC Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon University. Hamerly was asked a short series of questions and shared a few other things about himself that may take students by surprise.

Q&A with Dean Hamerly

What are you most excited for this semester?

There appears to be very strong growth and interest in our college from incoming students. That’s both exciting and challenging!

What are your main goals that you would like to accomplish this semester?

Two items among many:

• Most importantly, the completion and distribution of a ten-year plan for our college. I hope that it will force us to think about and make changes that will affect the longer-term health of our college.
• Continuing to strengthen our relationships with the community at large, including continued success with intercollege student projects across the University, increasing the size and depth of our community volunteer base, now numbering approximately 150.

What was the most exciting thing you did over Winter break?

I am doing an experimental study of the photosynthesis processes of sequoias (Sequoiadendron giganteum), and cedars (Calocedrus decurrens). I would like to better understand the highly-selective communication processes between “mother” and “child” trees. To the best of my knowledge, they don’t use Instagram, Snapchat, or Facebook, though I do maintain Facebook pages for them.

Can you provide an interesting fact about you that most of the student body doesn’t know?

I maintain a forest of about 25 acres of trees, raise sequoias from seed and probably have the largest sequoia grove in southern California. It’s small and young, but check back in about 500 years.