Budget crisis prompts LAEP students to take a lesson from the Great Depression
Landscape architecture and environmental planning students respond to the ongoing budget crisis by putting their expertise — and muscles — to work at local schools, a park, and on the campus.
(04 December)

Untraditional students of the world
The federally funded Gilman International Scholarship helps cash-strapped students, and other undergrads who have been underrepresented in study-abroad programs, take their studies international. For the current academic year, 20 UC Berkeley undergrads have been awarded Gilmans, making Berkeley the second-leading recipient of the scholarship nationwide.
(03 December)

Hunger gets a seat at Berkeley's table
To bring home the issue of world hunger, the dining commons in Berkeley's Unit 3 residence hall held a most unusual dinner Thursday night: Just rice and water on the floor for most attending. It was all part of Hunger Awareness Week at Cal.
(13 November)

At town hall on campus response to budget crisis, students raise concerns and questions
More than 300 students turned out Thursday evening for a town hall meeting with Chancellor Robert Birgeneau and other senior administrators. Their common concern: the state budget emergency and the campus's response to draconian budget cuts that the crisis has brought.
(06 November)

Berkeley scholars' adventures in the blogosphere
A growing number of campus scholars are using Web 2.0 blogging tools to reach a larger audience, create intellectual community, and be more proactive in relation to the media.
(28 October)

Picture Yourself at Berkeley reaches out to to connect with prospective students
A new online service offered by the campus's Office of Undergraduate Admissions helps prospective students envision themselves as a member of the UC Berkeley community.
(28 September)

Pollan's public-interest prediction
This semester's On the Same Page program, aimed at focusing the attention of incoming L&S undergrads on a single work or creator, is built around Professor of Journalism Michael Pollan's game-changing take on industrial agriculture and America's food systems, The Omnivore's Dilemma.
(10 September)

New faces on Dwinelle Plaza
Portraits of students who are benefiting from privately funded scholarships and fellowships smile out at passersby, as the now-familiar "Thanks to Berkeley…" billboard gets a one-year facelift.
(10 September)

Foreign scholars say 'yes' to American English pronunciation course
In a popular class organized by the Visiting Scholar and Postdoc Affairs program, international scholars at Berkeley hone their ability to hear and create sounds not found in their native languages. The goal is help them prepare for their professional careers and the job market.
(04 September)

Fourth member of "Old Blue" family to live in the same residence hall room
Perhaps it's time to call Norton Hall's Room 414 at UC Berkeley, "The Eidelson Room." This Sunday (Aug. 23), 18-year-old Aaron Eidelson of Santa Barbara will move into the very same residence hall room that his father Jon and brothers Michael and Joel ate, slept, studied and occasionally partied in during their undergraduate years at UC Berkeley. Room 414 is a double room in Unit 3 that overlooks Durant Street and has a corner view of the landmark Campanile.
(19 August)

McNair Scholars, 300 strong, converge at Berkeley to showcase their research
Last weekend 300 undergrads from around the country converged on the Berkeley campus for the four-day McNair Scholars symposium, where they shared research findings in a wide range of fields, from sociology to bioscience, and celebrated their completion of the program and their ambitions for grad school and the future.
(12 August)

Money rocks (and raps) in economics grad students' music videos
A group of graduate students in the Berkeley economics department, calling themselves the Metrics Gang, relate the trials and tribulations of their doctoral quest in four popular online singles.
(13 July)

Berkeley civil-engineering students take title in concrete-canoe competition
A team of Berkeley civil-engineering students won the 22nd annual National Concrete Canoe Competition at the contest's June 11-13 finals in Tuscaloosa, Ala. June 11-13. It was the campus's fifth title in the remarkable battle of the boats, sometimes called the America's Cup of civil engineering.
(19 June)

A sunny day for graduates — and the many who helped them
Under sunny skies at the Greek Theatre, graduates from the class of 2009 take a clear-eyed look at an uncertain future.
(26 May)

Sights and speeches from Commencement Convocation 2009
A sunny afternoon and inspiring speakers drew thousands of graduates and their families to the Greek Theatre to celebrate the accomplishments of the Class of 2009.
(22 May)

University Medal finalists make discoveries at Berkeley about themselves and the world
This year, five students — Jordan Anaya, Sonia Fleury, Lara Palanjian, Zoe Sima Silverman, and William Vega — were finalists for the University Medal, given to Berkeley's top graduating senior. These five stellar students take time out to answer questions about their time at Cal and their plans for life beyond Berkeley.
(14 May)

Campus helps graduating students cope with bleak job market
With the Class of 2009 understandably worried about employment prospects after graduation next month, UC Berkeley is helping seniors prepare for a job market riddled with layoffs and hiring freezes.
(15 April)

American Cultures: Discussing differences, building bridges
"Tough conversations" about race and ethnicity occur almost daily at Berkeley, many of them in classes designed to meet a campus requirement dating to the late 1980s.
(09 April)

Almost 13,000 high school students offered admission to UC Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley, announced today (Tuesday, April 7) that it has offered freshman admission for the 2009-2010 school year to almost 13,000 high school students, including several nationally-ranked debaters, a world-champion figure skater, and a set of triplets.
(07 April)

A new garden grows at Berkeley
A group of students has been tilling and planting a conspicuous space in the heart of campus . . . to grow their own food, and to show others how it’s done.
(19 March)

How are Berkeley students faring in hard times?
Many UC Berkeley students currently find themselves looking for cheaper housing, worrying about debt, or (especially if they're about to graduate) stressing about their job prospects. Eleven undergrads discuss how the economic downturn is affecting them. (With audio.)
(16 March)

What's Berkeley's hottest minor?
The global poverty and practice minor introduced two years ago appeals to the activist impulses of today’s Berkeley student. As one of them says, “Programs like this have given us a chance to get out there and actually do something.”
(12 March)

Newspaper on a mission
Daily Cal editor Bryan Thomas is working hard to keep the campus’s student paper alive in the present while positioning it for the future.
(11 March)

Fighting global poverty is fastest-growing minor
Students majoring in everything from engineering to English are signing up at the UC Berkeley, for the campus's fastest-growing minor - "Global Poverty & Practice" - a veritable magnet for a "Yes We Can" generation eager to get out of the virtual world and into the real one.
(10 March)

Musical video, 'The Nano Song,' a megahit on YouTube
When the American Chemical Society put out the call for short videos explaining nanotechnology to the non-scientist, a group from Berkeley pulled together an orchestrated score, a classically trained singer, and a gaggle of dancing puppets. Public response to their contest entry has been anything but small — with attention from science, technology, and social-networking websites, and nearly 300,000 hits on YouTube.
(06 March)

Paint, video, Etch A Sketch — this artist's media are varied and many
Grad-student artist Miguel Arzabe explores his complicated appreciation of nature using a wide assortment of media — paint, video, laser etchings, online social-networking tools, public enactments and installations, and the Etch A Sketch.
(03 March)

'Pockets of intimacy' for undergrads
"Teaching freshmen taught me," says a faculty member who has organized more than 20 seminars for lower-division students since 1997. He's part of a program that offers 'meaningful intellectual contact' to the campus's youngest scholars.
(26 February)

Student photos of foreclosed home win Lange Fellowship
Photographs of possessions left in a Vallejo, Calif., home following foreclosure, an all-too-familiar contemporary event across the nation, have earned journalism student Rhyen Coombs the University of California, Berkeley's 2009 Dorothea Lange Fellowship.
(25 February)

Two Berkeley seniors earn prestigious Armed Forces med-school scholarships
A pair of students in Berkeley's Navy ROTC program — along with just 10 other students nationwide — have been chosen to receive a military scholarship that provides tuition and living expenses for the medical school of one's choice, in return for service as a U.S. military doctor upon completion of one's M.D. (With audio)
(25 February)

Record number of students apply to UC Berkeley, but growth in applications slows
More than 48,600 high school students have applied for admission to UC Berkeley's fall 2009 freshman class, reflecting another record year for the number of applications filed, campus officials announced today (Friday, Jan. 23). However, administrators at Berkeley and across the University of California system noted a slowdown in the volume of applications submitted for this fall when compared to fall 2008 applications.
(23 January)

Where future doctors learn the rudiments of aging from elders
In a course on aging at Berkeley, UC premed and medical students collaborate with seniors to present literary works on growing old — and to become more sensitive health practitioners down the line. (With video.)
(12 January)