He led Cal to Olympic gold in 1928. Now his rowing medal is back at UC Berkeley
By Jason Pohl | January 30, 2024 For decades, in a family’s home in West Marin, a set of rowing oars hung horizontally over the French doors leading to the patio. Below the oars was a finish line photo of the moment UC Berkeley’s undefeated 1928 men’s varsity eight won the world championship. And next […]
New Brilliance of Berkeley course introduces undergrads to 28 luminaries — in one semester
By Gretchen Kell | January 18, 2024 With so much brilliance at UC Berkeley — from headline-grabbing research to stellar faculty members across disciplines — it’s impossible for undergraduates, many scouting for their academic passions, to sample it all while on campus. But this week, a new spring semester course, Brilliance of Berkeley, kicks off […]
New ‘Boys in the Boat’ movie — and a unique campus class — spark pride in Cal’s rowing history
By Jason Pohl | December 5, 2023 In the 1920s, when football fans first packed California Memorial Stadium, thousands of people also lined the Oakland Estuary, eager to spectate the campus’s original sport. They cheered as eight Cal rowers and a coxswain crammed in a narrow shell and raced in college sports’ fiercest rivalries. Next […]
Celebrating 30 Years of Freshman and Sophomore Seminars at Berkeley
“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 that we could do more […]
Oliver O’Reilly is Berkeley’s new vice provost for undergraduate education
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. …
Cal Advantages: Freshman Seminars
I have had many incoming students on my tours as me for advice for UC Berkeley freshman. This is a hard question to answer – being a large research university, opportunities at UC Berkeley are nearly endless. No two paths are identical, and it is impossible to generalize life at Cal. This being said, I […]
Nobel Prize Recipient Talks About Academic Life at UC Berkeley: An Interview with Professor Randy Schekman on the Undergraduate Experience
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 the 2013 Nobel Prize in […]
College of Letters & Science First Lecture Series
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 August 16, 2017 Thinking Critically: […]
Reinventing the First Year Experience
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. …
History 24 Course Visits Getty in L.A.
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 for the day to the […]