Berkeleyan

News Briefs

11 September 2008

Instructional grants available to faculty for small-scale projects

Two teaching-grant programs are available to Berkeley faculty for the 2008-09 academic year. The Instructional Minigrant Program provides rapid access to modest funds (up to $1,000) for small-scale projects to improve existing courses, develop new courses, evaluate instruction, and/or assess curricular needs. Instructional Improvement Grants provide funds (up to $4,000) for innovative projects that will directly and significantly affect teaching and learning, such as developing materials for new and existing courses and developing new modes of instruction. All faculty members, including lecturers, are eligible to apply.

The grant programs are sponsored jointly by the Academic Senate’s Committee on Teaching and the Office of Educational Development. Both programs receive, review, and act upon applications on a rolling basis throughout the academic year.

Guidelines and applications for both programs are available online at teaching.berkeley.edu/grants. For more information, contact Steve Tollefson (642-6392, tollef@berkeley.edu), Office of Educational Development, 403 Sproul Hall.

New-employee reception Sept. 12 welcomes all staff

An all-staff reception welcoming new campus employees will be held this Friday, Sept. 12, from 4 to 5 p.m. in the Multicultural Center at Heller Lounge in the MLK Student Union. The guest of honor at this year’s reception, which is sponsored by the Coalition of Ethnic Staff Organizations and the Gender Equity Resource Center, will be Associate Chancellor Linda Williams, herself a relatively new campus hire.

Questions should be directed to Aimee Tabor, atabor@berkeley.edu or 642-3738.

ESPM sets fall seminar schedule

The Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management within the College of Natural Resources (CNR) has begun its fall series of weekly colloquium seminars. Each one will be held between 4 and 5 p.m. in 159 Mulford, through Dec. 8. All speakers are UC Berkeley-affiliated, most of them from CNR, but including experts from the School of Law, the Energy and Resources Group, and the Department of Integrative Biology, among others. Topics to be discussed range from biodiversity in Madagascar to the basis of “extreme” sociality in invasive ants. For the full schedule, visit espm.berkeley.edu/events/espm_colloquium.php.

StatFinder upgrades, offers more application and admissions data

StatFinder, UC’s interactive and searchable Web tool providing comprehensive application and admissions data, has recently been updated. Now anyone interested in statistics about graduation rates, persistence rates (from year to year), and time-to-degree of UC students, at both the universitywide and campus levels, will be able to access this information online. Additionally, users will be able to generate tables showing the GPA and credits earned by different groups of UC students.

StatFinder (statfinder.ucop.edu) also now includes full-year as well as fall-term admission statistics, providing users full access to information about transfer students who apply and enroll at UC throughout the year.

Barrows Hall repair update

Installation of the final new exterior finish for Barrows Hall has started on the east side of the building and will continue over the next six weeks, with overall repair and construction on Barrows’ exterior expected to continue through November. With sanding currently underway on the east side of the building, windows need to be covered to prevent dust from getting inside. Exterior window covering is now being installed and is expected to remain in place on each side of the building for four weeks, as dust can easily reach windows on floors where work may already be complete. The project team is working to make sure that the building’s air-circulation system works as best it can during this phase of the project.

Questions or concerns about the work to repair the exterior of Barrows Hall may be directed to Christine Shaff of Facilities Services, 643-4793 or cshaff@berkeley.edu.

For the record . . .

In publicizing the fall schedule for the campus’s Lunch Poem series, we erred in stating that the popular series is sponsored by the Department of English. It is, in fact, sponsored by The Library.