Berkeleyan

New Briefs

01 September 2005

Campus sale of surplus office furniture

Budget-minded campus units, as well as members of the Cal community and the public, can purchase affordable "pre-owned" campus office furniture and equipment on Friday, Sept. 9. Organized by the Cal Overstock and Surplus Den (formerly known as Excess, Surplus and Salvage), the sale will be held from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. between the bookstore and Sproul steps. Items for sale will include office chairs, computers, desks, tables, filing cabinets, and shelves, as well as a selection of bicycles. (Plan to bring a vehicle or cart to transport items to their new home.) Campus surplus will be on sale, as well, at a Sept. 21 "liquidation" event at the Cal Overstock and Surplus Den, located at 1000 Folger Ave. (two blocks south of the intersection of San Pablo and Ashby avenues) - as well as on site and online on an ongoing basis. For information, call 642-1186.

Instructional grants available to faculty

Two teaching-grant programs are available to Berkeley faculty for the 2005-06 academic year.

The Instructional Minigrant Program provides rapid access to as much as $1,000 for small-scale projects to improve existing courses, develop new ones, evaluate instruction, and/or assess curricular needs. The Classroom Technologies Grant Program provides up to $3,500 per grant to help faculty introduce new instructional technologies into the classroom. All faculty members, including lecturers, and students in partnership with faculty are eligible to apply.

Both grant programs receive, review, and act upon applications on a rolling basis throughout the academic year. Guide-lines and applications for both programs are available online at teaching.berkeley.edu/grants.html.

For information, contact Steve Tollefson at the Office of Educational Development, 403 Sproul Hall, tollef@berkeley.edu or 642-6392.

Campus fundraising sets new record

UC Berkeley alumni, parents, and friends gave a record-breaking $318.3 million in private gifts in the 2004-05 fiscal year. The contributions will help fund a range of academic programs, teaching and research, and other activities across campus.

The amount raised represents a nearly 83-percent gain from the previous year. The total also reflects a record number of gifts to the university - 80,234 gifts from 54,128 donors. It includes the largest international gift ever received by the campus, $40 million for health-sciences research.

Compared to last year, giving by alumni and foundations showed the most dramatic increases of any donor segment. Alumni giving jumped by 69 percent to $124.6 million, while giving by foundations increased 194 percent to $129 million.

A growing number of donors is also going online to give. UC Berkeley's secure online giving site (givetocal.berkeley.edu) registered a 45-percent increase in donors, who used their credit cards to contribute more than $1 million, selecting from more than 200 campus programs. Top gifts for the fiscal year, which ended June 30, included:

. $40 million from the Li Ka Shing Foundation to support innovative research, including stem-cell research, as part of the UC Berkeley Health Sciences Initiative. The donation, the largest international gift in campus history, will go toward the Li Ka Shing Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences.

. $25 million, given anonymously for capital projects.

. $16 million from Col. Charles T. Travers '32. This includes a $12-million trust to endow the Department of Political Science, which has been named in honor of Travers and his late wife, Louise. It also includes $4 million to support the Cal football program.

The previous record year for private giving at Berkeley was in 2000-01, when the campus received $315.3 million.

Volunteers sought to mentor Berkeley teens

The Y-Scholars Program is looking for volunteer mentors to work with low-income, first-generation college-bound students at Berkeley High. The result of a partnership between the Downtown Berkeley YMCA, Berkeley High School, UC Berkeley's Destination: College Americorps program, and other outreach organizations, Y-Scholars provides after-school tutoring, college-preparatory curriculum, senior advising, mentoring, and extra-curricular activities. Community mentors volunteer two hours a week during after-school hours in an academic and/or social setting over the course of a school year and attend a one-hour monthly roundtable.

For more information, visit www.baymca.org/index.php/d_scholars.html or contact program coordinator Jennifer Stevens at mentor@baymca.org or 665-3255.

New website on Richmond Field Station enviro issues

Information on environmental-remediation and marsh-restoration activities at the Richmond Field Station (RFS) is now available on a comprehensive RFS environmental website - rfs.berkeley.edu. Launched last week, the site features news and information (including but not restricted to fact sheets, technical documents, and monitoring data) on the field station's natural resources and restoration plans. For UC staff, faculty, students, and any others with questions or concerns not addressed by the site, there are links and contact information for relevant campus and non-campus offices and regulatory agencies.

For the record . . .

In our Aug. 25 issue we misidentified the academic discipline of associate professor Eva Nogales. She is in the Division of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology.