Berkeleyan

Section Club to host intercampus open house
Talks and tours will showcase campus’s cutting-edge research

By Cathy Cockrell, Public Affairs | 17 March 2004

It happens every spring, but — like leap year — comes to the Berkeley campus but once every four years. The event in question is the Inter-Campus Open House, a collegial gathering of faculty spouses from northern California’s three UC campuses and Stanford. This year, the hosting organization is Berkeley’s own University Section Club, which has planned a day — Wednesday, April 14 — of faculty talks and campus tours showcasing what it calls “The Cutting Edge at UC Berkeley.”

Members of the campus community are invited to join faculty spouses from Berkeley, Stanford, and UC campuses at San Francisco and Santa Cruz at the 2004 event, which begins at 9:30 a.m. at Alumni House. Following a welcome there from Section Club President Terry DeLuca Schooler and Chancellor Robert Berdahl, four distinguished Berkeley faculty in a variety of disciplines will offer a series of half-hour talks beginning at 10 a.m.

One of the campus’s most dynamic speakers, Physics Professor Richard Muller, will take a look back at what has been learned in the 25 years since the team of Berkeley scientists led by Luis Alvarez proposed the theory that an asteroid or comet that struck the Earth caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. Next, anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes will shift the focus to a topic of current interest, the illegal global traffic in human organs. An internationally known authority on the subject, she is frequently shares her expertise on this issue; in addition to testifying in legal proceedings, she also served as a consultant on last year’s Oscar-nominated Dirty Pretty Things, set in the clandestine world of organ sales.

A widely-praised choral and orchestral conductor, Associate Professor of Music Marika Kuzma, speaks next on 18th-century Russian choral music and Handel’s Messiah. To finish up the morning, Tom Campbell, dean of the Haas School of Business and a former congressman and state senator, will address ethics in business and business education.

The day includes a buffet lunch — served on the Alumni House patio, weather permitting — followed by guided tours of several venues: the University and Jepson Herbaria, the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, the Bancroft Library, and public rooms of the chancellor’s residence.

For information on the open house, contact co-chairs Joan Finnie, at 841-7521, or Louise Kaufman, at (925) 253-9292.

To reserve a space, send a check for $25, payable to the UC Section Club, to Kaufman at 711 Ironbark Court, Orinda, CA 94563. Reservations will be accepted through April 5; space is limited.