“The Freshman Seminars owe their existence to the combination of a good idea and a bad budgetary situation. In 1992 the University suffered deep cuts in its state budget and threats of further curtailments. The legislature resounded with the old complaints that the faculty did not teach enough. To demonstrate
Institutions of higher education and, more specifically, liberal arts colleges, have become the butt of resentment in current culture wars based on misinformation and the attack on facts. But UC Berkeley’s College of Letters and Science aims to combat that by continuing to provide an education that focuses on truth-seeking
In Berkeley Talks episode 148, Robert Full, a professor of integrative biology and founder of the Center for Interdisciplinary Biological Inspiration in Education and Research at UC Berkeley, discusses how nature and its creatures — cockroaches, crabs, centipedes, geckos — inspire innovative design in all sorts of useful things, from
NPR’s Morning Edition speaks with astrophysicist Alex Filippenko of the University of California, Berkeley about the latest findings of the Webb Telescope. …
Oliver O’Reilly, whose 30-year career at UC Berkeley is characterized by a deep passion for teaching and student success, will be the campus’s new vice provost for undergraduate education starting this Friday, July 1, officials announced today. …
It began my freshman semester when I took David Presti’s Drugs and the Brain. I learned that we are amidst a tremendous resurgence of a class of compounds known as psychedelics. A couple of sessions with psilocybin, a molecule found in 200 species of mushrooms, and people heal from a
The UC Berkeley community spans countless disciplines and provides a unique environment for creation and innovation. “Collaborative Innovation,” one of the College of Letters & Science’s Big Idea Courses, seeks to foster that culture by bringing together the disciplines of business, theater, design, and art practice. …
After making the astonishing discovery that what he and his fellow cosmologists thought they knew about the universe was wrong, Saul Perlmutter began a course at his university explaining why catching mistakes is at the heart of science. It’s also a lesson in life for the rest of us.
To engage students in course materials, educators often turn to cutting-edge tools. As technology progresses, new methods offer an increasingly wide array of options for professors. …
The evolution of handwriting has been a critical factor in preserving history and learning about the past. If it were not for the development of handwriting, some of the greatest thinkers of our time would not have been able to share their thoughts; thus, their stories never being told. …