Christopher Callahan

Christopher Callahan became the 26th president of University of the Pacific, California’s first university, on July 1, 2020. He is chief executive of a university that is ranked among the nation’s top 100 and No. 19 in the West, with campuses in Stockton, Sacramento and San Francisco.

He joined Pacific after more than 25 years in higher education leadership, most recently as the founding dean of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, CEO of the university-owned Arizona PBS station and vice provost for ASU’s downtown Phoenix campus. He came to ASU from the University of Maryland at College Park, where he served as associate dean of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism and senior editor of American Journalism Review.

A first-generation college graduate, the New York native earned his BS degree in journalism from Boston University’s College of Communication and an MPA from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Before entering higher education, Callahan was a journalist for The Associated Press in Washington, D.C., and state capitals in New England.

At Pacific, Callahan is focused on building on the strengths of California’s first university: the personalized education of a small college combined with the choices of a major university, with a focus on experiential learning and public service across all three of its northern California campuses (Sacramento, San Francisco and Stockton).