Berkeleyan

News Briefs
IGS website on state propositions, nominations due for Haas Award, and more...

30 September 2004

IGS offers website on state propositions

Comprehensive backgrounders on California statewide propositions appearing on the Nov. 2 election ballot are available online through the library of the campus’s Institute of Governmental Studies. The new website (igs.berkeley.edu/library/htPropsIndex.html) provides information on all 16 ballot measures — narrative overviews with historical background and legal aspects; arguments for and against; and links to official voter information from the California Secretary of State, as well as to key websites, polls, editorials, and newspaper articles. The website — intended as a resource for voters, journalists, and scholars — will be updated on an ongoing basis as the election approaches.

Comments sought on academic calendar proposal

A campus task force has released an academic-calendar proposal designed to satisfy concerns and goals of varied campus constituencies. The proposed calendar covers the next three years, 2005-08, and will permit longer-term planning by many groups.

Under the proposal, the 2005-06 and 2006-07 academic years would continue to have 71 instruction days in fall semester, 75 in spring semester. The campus would then move toward more equal semesters in 2007-08, with 72 instruction days in fall, 74 in spring. Each year, fall semester would begin in late August and end no later than Dec. 20. Instruction for spring semester would begin on Tuesday following the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday and end in mid-May. Also featured is a seven-day final-exam period, with two “dead days” (not counting Sundays) between the end of instruction and the start of finals; and an eight-week Summer Session beginning the last week of June.

The proposed calendar for 2005-08 is available at opa.vcbf.berkeley.edu/AcademicCalendar/calendar.cfm. The deadline for comments is Oct. 26; a final version is expected by the end of October. Send comments to Sandy Ellison at sellison@ uclink4.berkeley.edu or at 611 University Hall #1510.

Nominations due for Haas International Award

Nominations are being accepted for the 2004 Elise and Walter A. Haas International Award, which honors a Cal international alumnus with a distinguished record of service to his or her country and includes a cash prize of $10,000.

Nominations are due Saturday, Oct. 16. See www.urel.berkeley.edu/haas for information and nomination forms.

Regents increase minimum GPA to 3.0

To keep UC aligned with state policy, the Board of Regents voted Sept. 23 to increase the minimum high-school grade-point average required for UC freshman eligibility, from 2.8 to 3.0, effective with the fall 2007 entering class. The board acted in response to a recent report by the California Postsecondary Education Commission, which found 14.4 percent of California public high-school graduates achieved UC eligibility in 2003, up from 11.1 percent in 1996. The California Master Plan for Higher Education sets UC’s target at 12.5 percent. Together with recent procedural changes, the new minimum GPA is expected to reduce the statewide eligibility rate for UC to approximately 12.8 percent. The regents’ vote was 14-6 in favor of the change.

Botanical Garden course features California native trees

Tree huggers in training can learn to identify many native California species — immense giant sequoias, towering coast redwoods, long-lived bristlecone pines, and picturesque Monterey cypress — from local native-plant expert Glenn Keator, at a five-week Botanical Garden course starting Thursday, Oct. 7. Using illustrated slide lectures and guided walks, the class also covers unique adaptations of many state trees and how to find them in their native habitats. Dates and times are Thursdays, Oct. 7 to Nov. 4, from 7 to 9 p.m. The fee is $155 for non-members; registration is required. See botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu.

UC’s eScholarship Repository gives scholarly papers a second life

UC faculty can now publish papers related to seminars, lecture series, and colloquia online, giving these documents a lasting and visible presence on the Internet. The service is part of the UC Office of Scholarly Communication’s eScholarship Repository. Seminar conveners can use the service to post a schedule of speakers, list lecture topics, upload the full text of papers, distribute information about the series to seminar-specific mailing lists, and archive papers online as a complete series. The service also allows for full-text searches of papers within a series and of all content in the repository. For information, visit repositories.cdlib.org/escholarship.

Online slide show honors Ida Louise Jackson

An online slide show on the life accomplishments of Cal alum Ida Louise Jackson — and the recent naming of a campus building in her honor — is now available on the UC Berkeley NewsCenter. After earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Berkeley in the early 1920s, Jackson went on to become one of the first African American women certified to teach in California. In August, the “College-Durant Apartments” were rechristened in her name, making it the first building at Cal to bear the name of an African American woman. To see the slide show, go the NewsCenter site, newscenter.berkeley.edu, and click on the Multimedia feature on the right side of the page.