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UCLA Chancellor Albert Carnesale developed his political and diplomatic skills while working on n

It’s hard not to notice him: white mop, cherry complexion, tall and well dressed, with a subtle New York twang to boot.

But beyond recognizing his presence on campus, many students are unaware of Chancellor Albert Carnesale’s notable past – one that took him from a small engineering school in New York to negotiating with the Soviets, advising presidents and leading efforts to limit global nuclear proliferation.

Today, Carnesale sits at the helm of UCLA, overseeing its operation as the university’s chief executive officer.

Though guiding an institution composed of some 38,000 students and 27,000 faculty and staff is a gargantuan task, Carnesale’s background in foreign policy has given him extensive experience in balancing the needs of groups with potentially clashing interests.

“He thrives on being busy and helping to mediate different situations, and he’s got a real level head. I’ve never seen him get flustered by any of it,” said Dawn Scherer, the chancellor’s assistant.

Carnesale, who left his post as provost of Harvard University in 1994 to fill the chancellorship vacancy at UCLA, grew up in the Bronx.

His father a taxi driver and his mother an office clerk, Carnesale commuted from home on the subway every day to Cooper Union, a small but competitive Manhattan college that provides its students with full-ride scholarships.

Though he would later make a splash in academia, Carnesale was a self-described underachiever during his undergraduate years – cramming for exams and hoping to slide by with passing grades, a surprising attitude toward schooling for a man who would later go on to become highly educated.

“I knew it was important never to fail anything because then you had to take it over, but the idea of getting high grades never seemed important to me,” Carnesale said.

“I didn’t get serious about it ’til my senior year, when I started to realize, ‘My God, I’m going to go to work and somebody’s going to pay me, and I don’t know anything.’”

Carnesale’s academic interests were sparked by a burgeoning new science – nuclear engineering.

He went on to work at Martin Marietta, now Lockheed Martin, and would earn his master’s in mechanical engineering at Drexel University before going on to teach at North Carolina State University, where he completed his doctorate in nuclear engineering.

“If you would’ve asked me when I came out of college, ‘What would you think of an academic career?’ I would have said, ‘What are you talking about? Academic career? Look, I never failed anything, but have you noticed my grade point average?’” Carnesale said.

His expertise in the field of nuclear physics in the midst of the Cold War landed him a job in Washington, D.C., where he worked for the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency on a delegation undergoing talks with the Soviets.

The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, a three-year negotiation starting in 1969 and later dubbed SALT I, resulted in a wide range of cutbacks in the offensive nuclear arsenals of both the Soviet Union and the United States.

“I had a strong technical background, but it appeared I also had a talent for the diplomatic and political side of it, and I could write well, which was unusual for engineers,” said Carnesale of the three years he spent crisscrossing the globe, from Vienna to Washington, D.C., to Helsinki.

Carnesale later went on to lead a U.S. delegation in talks with 65 other nations regarding the connections between domestic nuclear fuel and the proliferation of nuclear weapons, a role that allowed the chancellor to work closely with then-President Jimmy Carter.

Carnesale, who worked with a total of four presidential administrations during his stint in government, considers his role in these multilateral talks as one of his most noteworthy achievements.

During the late 1970s, when the talks took place, many believed 50 to 60 countries would eventually develop nuclear arsenals, but the number of countries with such capabilities today is perhaps only one higher than back then, Carnesale said.

“Now maybe it’s just good luck. I can’t say, ‘And that’s why there hasn’t been proliferation,’ but I can say we got 66 countries working hard to try to figure out, ‘How can we try to avoid civilian nuclear power facilities being transformed into weapons?’”

Carnesale says his experience in government has allowed him to more effectively balance interests here at UCLA.

“Try and look at it from the other guy’s point of view. Turns out that’s very important. It may well be that what’s most important to him is not most important to you, so you can find ways to compromise where you both get what’s most important to you,” he said. “Don’t confuse positions with interests.”

Carnesale’s diplomatic skill is apparent to those who have worked with him.

Allende Palma/Saracho, last year’s Undergraduate Students Association Council president, says Carnesale can be a wily craftsman with his words, a trait likely honed during his time in government.

“He can talk to you about a subject but he resists giving you any kind of definitive answer. He doesn’t back himself into a corner,” Palma/Saracho said.