News

Nobel Prize Recipient Talks About Academic Life at UC Berkeley: An Interview with Professor Randy Schekman on the Undergraduate Experience

September 26, 2017

Dr. Randy Schekman is a Professor in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at UC Berkeley, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. At Berkeley, he developed a genetic and biochemical approach to the study of eukaryotic membrane trafficking. Dr. Schekman, James Rothman and Thomas Sudhof shared

College of Letters & Science First Lecture Series

August 29, 2017

In August 2017 the College of Letters & Science, UC Berkeley, organized a First Lecture series for its incoming freshmen and transfer students. This series was L&S’s academic contribution to the new student orientation, Golden Bear Orientation. Imagining a New World: Arts and Humanities. Presented by Professor Kathleen Donegan on

Reinventing the First Year Experience

February 23, 2017

The first year experience is ripe for reinvention. Since a freshman experience consisting of a smorgasbord of disconnected general educational classes does little to engage or motivate new college students, a growing number of institutions have responded by instituting “signature” first year experiences. …

What Makes Science Science?

January 30, 2017

In an undergraduate course that I’m teaching this semester, we introduce students to an unconventional definition of science. The course, Letters & Sciences 22: Sense and Sensibility and Science, comes from an interdisciplinary collaboration between a philosopher (John Campbell), a social psychologist (Robert MacCoun), a Nobel-prize-winning physicist (Saul Perlmutter), and

History 24 Course Visits Getty in L.A.

May 7, 2016

On May 7, 2016, Professor Thomas Laqueur with the help of graduate assistant Olivia Benowitz took his History 24 freshman seminar, which has been studying the museums of Berkeley—BAM, the Magnes, the Bancroft, the Jepson Herbarium, the Hearst Anthropology Museum, the Essig Museum of Entomology, among others—on a field trip

‘Blind analysis’ Could Cure Social Science Research Black Eye

October 11, 2015

Because particle physicists and then some cosmologists began using blind analysis earlier than most scientists in other fields, Perlmutter said, he was intrigued to learn that social scientists weren’t already using the technique. This realization came while he and MacCoun were co-teaching an undergraduate course, “Sense and Sensibility and Science,”

Professor Dacher Keltner talks about the science of happiness

February 18, 2015

There’s a science to happiness. And one of the centers for its study is right here in the Bay Area. The Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley studies human happiness, compassion and altruism. KALW’s Hana Baba wanted to find out the formula, so she went to the center and

Public Matters

November 19, 2014

The history of scientific discovery and innovation has been punctuated by disbelief, mistrust, and at times, outright fear. The 17th century persecution of Galileo serves as one of the most dramatic examples—found guilty in a trial for heresy over his scientific observations, Galileo was sentenced to house arrest until his

Merging Meditation with the Marketplace

April 25, 2014

At the University of California at Berkeley, beginning economics students were frustrated with some of the basic assumptions behind Econ 1: more is always better, an extra dollar of income is the same whether you make $10,000 or $1 million, transactions don’t have external consequences. One professor decided it was

Scholars discuss value of liberal arts at inaugural symposium

November 8, 2013

Just hours before the Friday inaugural ceremony of a chancellor who has championed the value of a liberal arts degree, a number of visiting scholars and campus professors came together in a panel discussion about the importance and challenges of creating a well-rounded undergraduate education. …