Berkeleyan

News Briefs

19 September 2007

Haas ranked second in Wall Street Journal recruiter survey

The Haas School of Business jumped to No. 2, up from No. 5 last year, in the 2007 Wall Street Journal ranking of MBA programs, published on Sept. 17. This marks the strongest showing of the school's full-time MBA program in any major, popular ranking. (The paper placed Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business in the top slot for the second straight year.)

The Journal bases its rankings on a poll of 4,430 corporate recruiters, who can rate up to three schools at which they recruit MBA graduates. The paper ranked the Haas School in the top 10 in several specialty rankings: third among most improved schools, sixth for producing the most creative and innovative leaders, sixth for minority-student hiring, and 10th for students with the most global mind-set.

Haas also was mentioned in two trend articles that accompanied the ranking - one on custom executive-education programs, which highlighted the school's Project Executive Program, and another on the new trend of business schools taking programs to the Middle East.

Non-subscribers to the Journal can see the rankings and accompanying articles at newscenter.berkeley.edu/goto/haasWSJ07.

'Lack of confidence' found in UCOP

A critical review of the administration of the UC system, commissioned by the university and conducted by the Monitor Group consulting firm, has found a number of problems in the Office of the President, ranging from unnecessary, expensive delays in capital projects to a lack of communication and coordination in the office itself.

"Broadly, UCOP does not perform well as a provider of services to, and on behalf of, the system," the report says, noting "a broad lack of confidence on the part of the regents and the campuses." As a result, it goes on, "both groups end up working around rather than through the central management structures of UCOP."

The full report can be downloaded from www.universityofcalifornia.edu/restructuring/monitor0907.pdf.

Community invited to celebrate Stanley Hall opening on Sept. 29

Stanley Hall, Berkeley's new center for interdisciplinary biological research, celebrates its dedication with an open house for the campus and community on Saturday, Sept. 29, from 1 to 4 p.m.. Visitors can tour the new building and its labs and hear talks by some of the campus's leading faculty members in the biosciences and bioengineering. Chancellor Birgeneau kicks off the event, and a highlight will be the keynote address by Peter Kim, president of Merck Research Laboratories.

The new facility is the Berkeley home of the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3) and of the Department of Bioengineering. Residents of Stanley Hall include bioengineers, biologists, chemists, and physicists, all working on biological research rooted in the quantitative sciences to address challenges in health, energy, and the environment. The building is named for the late Wendell M. Stanley, a Berkeley biochemist and virologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1946.

For details and to register to attend the open house, visit ucb.whsites.net/events/node/6.

New toolkit for campus communicators

The office of the vice chancellor for administration has posted a comprehensive communication toolkit for the Berkeley campus at administration.berkeley.edu/commguide/index.htm. The toolkit is intended for communicators, project leaders, and anyone else looking for tips on how to communicate in Berkeley's complex environment.

Based on input from communication staff and others, the office compiled information about the wide range of campus channels for disseminating communications, as well as how-to tips, advice for communication planning, and links to additional resources on and off campus. A key feature in the "Communication Tips" section is the popular "Grammar Grams" written by Steve Tollefson, lecturer in College Writing and director of the Office of Educational Development.

Kramsch to lecture on 'language ecology' Sept. 21

On Friday, Sept. 21, Claire Kramsch, professor of German and foreign-language acquisition, will discuss what an ecological perspective could mean concretely for foreign-language education at the college level in the United States. Her lecture, "Language Ecology in Practice," takes place from 3-5 p.m. that day in B-4 Dwinelle.

"Language ecology" is part of an interdisciplinary effort to explore language within its individual, societal, cultural, and historical frameworks. Language ecology approaches language learning and language use as a nonlinear, relational human activity, co-constructed between humans and their environment, contingent upon their position in space and history, and a site of struggle for the control of social power and cultural memory.