In this, my last message as Graduate Dean, I would like to introduce you to the new Graduate Dean, Andrew Szeri, a professor of Mechanical Engineering.
Andrew is well acquainted with graduate students and graduate student issues. He supports nine graduate student researchers on his own project, has chaired the Graduate Council for two years, and served as an Associate Graduate Dean here in the Graduate Division for two years. I think I can fairly say that everyone who knows him finds him a pleasure to work with—and I know you will too.
Once again, I want to tell you how privileged and honored I feel to have served as Graduate Dean for seven years. Now I will return to research and the classroom, which are also great privileges.
Have a great summer!
Mary Ann Mason
Dean of the Graduate Division
Transition
- Andrew Szeri takes the reins as Graduate Dean on July 1
- Mary Ann Mason gets a surprise honor
The Graduate
- The new issue of the Graduate Division's magazine is out, in print and online
Speaking of Graduates
- A short slice of the 2007 commencement season — emotions, wisdom, accomplishments, and challenges
University Library
- Construction continues in Bancroft and Doe libraries
University Health Services
- Student members are need for the Graduate Mental Health Advisory Committee
Government and Community
- Two new websites provide loads of information and ways to serve
Honors
- Graduate student Teaching Effectiveness Awards
- 2007's Outstanding Graduate Student Instructors
- Six faculty members receive awards for Outstanding Mentorship of GSIs
- The new recipient of Una's Fellowship is chosen
- Berkeley professor (a grad alum) will receive prestigious Priestley Medal
Newslinks
- Ph.D. candidate finds that HIV in breast milk can be killed by low-tech technique
- Music grad student debuts composition with National Symphony when not being a DJ
- Grad alum Mike Brown takes Pluto's status down another notch
Deadline for July eGrad
- Submissions are due June 27
Andrew Szeri
(Photo by Peg Skorpinski)
Andrew Szeri is named the new dean of the Graduate Division
His appointment was approved at the May 16 meeting of the Regents. He’ll take office July 1.
More details are in the news release.
Mary Ann Mason gets a surprise honor: the Berkeley Citation
Her farewell-as-dean gathering in I-House, an occasion full of emotion and tributes, was capped with the campus’s highest honor.
Graduate Dean Mary Ann Mason, Berkeley Citation in hand, with Chancellor Robert Birgeneau.
(photo by Ben Ailes)
A new issue of The Graduate is out, available in department/program offices and online.
Its contents include:
The parent rap: why babies matter in academia
Early babies, tenure babies, or no babies at all? Mary Ann Mason explores the best time to have a baby if you’re pursuing an academic career.
Learning to teach, with a little help
Nationally recognized and emulated, the GSI Teaching & Resource Center prepares students for teaching at Berkeley and beyond.
What makes the wheel go around
An outstanding mentor shares the joys and day-to-day tug of working with GSIs.
Dateline: Berkeley
A look inside the Graduate School of Journalism and the people behind its pizzazz and clout.
A cerebral night in Berkeley
Take a mind-expanding trip inside the human brain with Aubrey Gilbert, a doctoral student in the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute.
Out of the lab to the top of the world
Ain't no mountain high enough for Berkeley-trained biophysical chemist Arlene Blum, who relishes first ascents.
Tour de Berkeley
A mainstay in the Visitor’s Center since his freshman year, grad student Michael Colvin knows his way around campus.
Remembrance
A. Richard Newton, Dean of Engineering: a life well lived, at lightning speed.
Each of the article links above will take you directly to that piece of the magazine. The entire issue is available for download as well (PDF).
TopHundreds of you attained that big goal and collected that degree, at ceremonies scattered all over campus during May.
New Ethnic Studies Ph.D.
Ananda Sattwa
(Photo by Steve McConnell)
For some, it was a longer journey that didn’t always go according to plan. Case in point: Ananda Sattwa, an immigrant former high school dropout and mother of four who, at age 68, just got her Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies. Her son, Robin Kelly, now a history professor at USC, was the keynote speaker at her graduation, hooded her, and gave her a big hug. San Francisco’s KGO-TV featured the family milestone. Read the UC Berkeley news release.
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Families and friends gathered in droves to share the achievement (and relief). Here, new Sociology Ph.D. Jessica Mullison Vasquez (center) posed in front of Sproul Hall after her commencement with (left to right) brother Jason Vasquez, father David Vasquez, stepfather
Earl Smith, and mother Dorothy Mullison-Smith.
New Sociology Ph.D. Jessica Mullison Vasquez
(Photo by Dick Cortén)
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(Photo by Peg Skorpinski)
Some students — graduate and undergraduate alike — are willing to go to considerable lengths to call attention to themselves and make the occasion even more memorable. New grads in the College of Engineering are the most consistently far-reaching in this endeavor. Among many notable mortar-board decorations, one took the traditional “Hi, Mom” motif to a new technological level, spelling the message out in blinking light-emitting diodes. Another, the new master’s degree recipient shown here, was always easy to find, thanks to her portable graphic, a three-dimensional arrow.
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In addition to their own departmental graduations, undergraduates had a collective ceremony, the Commencement Convocation, in the Greek Theatre. One of the speakers, in addition to Chancellor Birgeneau, was a grad alumna, Mu Sochua M.S.W. ’91, winner of this year’s Elisa and Walter A. Haas International Award, drawing upon the history of turmoil in her native Cambodia to deliver a message of human rights and nonviolence. Sochua, whose parents died during Cambodia’s upheaval, returned to her homeland after 18 years in exile and became a public figure. She was elected to the National Assembly, and as minister of women’s and veteran’s affairs from 1998 to 2004 she led a nationwide campaign to reduce workplace and domestic violence against Cambodian women and to end human trafficking there, helping nongovernmental organizations rescue women and children from brothels.
Grad alumna Mu Sochua
(Photo by Peg Skorpinski)
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Richard Blum
(Photo by Peg Skorpinski)
Those earning bachelor’s degrees at Berkeley this year also received a challenge — and a boost — from longtime Cal supporter and alumnus Richard Blum ’58, M.B.A. ’59, who happens to be the current chair of the UC Board of Regents. He personally will match, dollar for dollar, each contribution they make to the 2007 Senior Gift Campaign, up to $100,000. Blum is Chairman and President of Blum Capital Partners, L.P., an equity investment management firm, (and is the husband of U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Stanford grad).
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(Photo by Peg Skorpinski)
'The university is a subversive force' (and other wisdom from the podium)
Good graduation pictures, in capturing joy and a sense of accomplishment, resemble one another strongly. Good graduation speeches, if carefully written, strike their own singular chords. Examples of both, from the commencement season just concluded, appeared in Berkeleyan, the campus newspaper for faculty and staff.
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JULY 2 (Monday)
Submission deadline for the WAGS/UMI Distinguished Master’s Thesis Award. Nominations will be accepted from any discipline in which a master’s degree is offered. Screening standards include originality, significance of the study, overall quality, and outcomes and accomplishments from the thesis. Finalists will be asked to provide three complete copies of the thesis. The 2007-2008 award consists of a certificate of award, $1,000 to the recipient, and travel expenses for the student and the student’s adviser to receive the award at the annual meeting of the Western Association of Graduate Schools (WAGS), to be hosted by the University of Denver at the Brown Palace Hotel, March 7-9, 2008. The award is cosponsored by University Microfilms International (UMI). Submissions must be made to the Graduate Services: Fellowships Office, 318 Sproul Hall. For further information, contact Maria Loza by email or phone (642-7665).
JULY 4 (Wednesday)
Independence Day Holiday
AUGUST 1 (Wednesday)
Application deadline for the traditional Fulbright Scholar Program, which sends 800 U.S. faculty and professionals abroad each year. Grantees lecture and conduct research in a wide variety of academic and professional fields. You can find details on the new awards, check eligibility guidelines, request or download materials, and apply online.
AUGUST 16, 17, 18, and 24
Welcome and Orientation Programs for New International Students: International House Auditorium, various times. Full details are available on the Services for International Students and Scholars (SISS) website.
AUGUST 17 (Friday)
Summer Session ends
AUGUST 20 (Monday)
New Graduate Minority Student Orientation: An Orientation for All Focusing on Issues Facing Underrepresented Students 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Heller Multicultural Lounge, second floor, Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union. All are invited.
AUGUST 22 (Wednesday)
Orientation for New Graduate Students 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., third, fourth, and fifth floors, Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union
AUGUST 23 (Thursday)
Teaching in the U.S. Classroom: A Conference for International GSIs 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Registration: Dwinelle Hall Lobby. Consult the Web for more information.
AUGUST 23 (Thursday)
Dean’s Reception for New Graduate Students 4 to 6 p.m, Lipman Room, eighth floor of Barrows Hall
AUGUST 24 (Friday)
Fall Teaching Conference for GSIs 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Registration: Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union
AUGUST 28 (Tuesday)
Reception Honoring American Indian/Alaska Native Graduate Students 5 to 7 p.m., Toll Room, Alumni House (just north of Zellerbach Playhouse). All are invited.
AUGUST 30 (Thursday)
Reception Honoring Graduate Diversity 5 to 7 p.m., Toll Room, Alumni House (just north of Zellerbach Playhouse). All are invited.
Construction continues in Bancroft and Doe libraries
A major seismic retrofit of the Doe Annex (the east end of the building) is now under way, causing significant changes. This part of the building previously housed the Bancroft Library, administrative offices, and the newspapers and microforms collection. Work on this major project will continue through spring 2008. This summer, the south hallways in Doe will be closed to the public. For information on construction and detours, consult the Doe/Moffitt Libraries building projects web page. The Bancroft Library has moved to temporary quarters at 2121 Allston Way, just off campus in downtown Berkeley. Some materials and services may be unavailable in the temporary quarters. For more information is available on the Bancroft website.
UHS is recruiting members for the Graduate Mental Health Advisory Committee
Openings are available for grad students in the social sciences and humanities. The committee, coordinated by UHS-Tang Center, advises on Berkeley’s Counseling and Psychological Services, mental health outreach, and graduate student education. Specific issues addressed by the committee have included international student needs, GSI training, campus awareness of depression, and mentorship of graduate students. The committee meets monthly, beginning in September (dates and times to be determined). If you’re interested, email Dr. Susan Bell.
TopThe campus Office of Government and Community Relations has created two new websites — Cal in the Community and the Communications Toolkit — which provide useful information about the Berkeley’s considerable public service in the community, plus a wide variety of available resources and communications tools. The sites provide many ways to become involved as a volunteer, to gain awareness of the positive impact Cal individuals and groups have in the surrounding area, and possibilities for research.
Cal in the Community is a public site providing a guide to over 200 campus public service programs and resources available to the community. The revised site includes new and updated program information, and the navigation and search capabilities have been enhanced; check out the combination search.
The Communications Toolkit, aimed for use by UC Berkeley affiliates only, is divided into three sections:
Teaching awards for students, mentoring awards for faculty
In May, tucked between and around the many commencements on campus, special ceremonies were held to recognize the inspirational efforts of graduate students who teach undergraduates and the faculty members who guide and encourage Graduate Student Instructors and Graduate Student Researchers.
Each year, the Graduate Division's GSI Teaching and Resource Center recognizes the remarkable contributions of graduate students in undergraduate teaching on campus through its Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Awards and Teaching Effectiveness Awards.
The 2007 Teaching Effectiveness Award honorees and those who honored them (left to right, top row) Maria Goodrich, Matias Cattaneo, Ryan Steele, James Su, James Ramey, Carolyn Sparrey, Angela Chau, Monika Gehlawat, and Carl Olsen; (middle row, seated on chair arms) Veronica Herrera, Laurel Westbrook, and Jennifer McGuire; and (front row) Linda von Hoene, director of the GSI Center, Dean Mary Ann Mason, and Associate Dean Joe Duggan. (Not pictured: Robert Held and Sonya Lebsack.)
(Photo by Peg Skorpinski)
Teaching Effectiveness Award recipients for 2007, listed alphabetically with teaching department and essay title (essay archive web page)
Matias Cattaneo (Economics) – “Teaching Students with Diverse Backgrounds”
Angela Chau (Bioengineering) – “Learn at Your Own Pace”
Monika Gehlawat (English) – “Critical Objectivity and Sentence Style Improvement”
Maria Goodrich (Integrative Biology) – “Using a Focal Organism as a Teaching Tool in General Biology”
Robert Held (Bioengineering ) – “Interaction and Integration: How to Teach Students with Varying Expertise”
Veronica Herrera (Political Science) – “Reversing Roles: How Would Your Students Devise a Section Lesson Plan?”
Sonya Lebsack (Legal Studies ) – “Teaching Critical Skills in Legal Studies”
Jennifer McGuire (Integrative Biology) – “Instilling Effective Study Skills in Students: Start Early, Know Your Weaknesses”
Carl Olsen (Scandinavian) – “Creative Writing and the Horizon of Expectation”
James Ramey (Comparative Literature) – “Making It Fun: Framing Literary Discussion as a Social Practice”
Carolyn Sparrey (Mechanical Engineering) – “Implementing the Scientific Learning Cycle in the Confines of the Classroom“
Ryan Steele (Chemistry) – “A Voice in the Sciences”
James Su (Vision Science) – “Stretching the Field of View”
Laurel Westbrook (Sociology) – “Drawing to Learn: One Way to Teach to Multiple Learning Styles”
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(Photo by Peg Skorpinski)
Two of the 268 Outstanding Graduate Student Instructors honored were Mosche Michael Barda of Business Administration and Elena Rodriguez-Vieitez of Nuclear Engineering. (The OGSI group picture from the award-presentation event ran in the May eGrad.)
The names of all of those honored as OGSIs are available by clicking here (PDF).
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The GSI Center in addition salutes faculty who work with GSIs and for the fourth year presented the Faculty Award for Outstanding Mentorship, co-sponsored by the California Alumni Association. To learn more about the awards and to read students' essays on teaching and mentoring statements from faculty, visit the center's website.
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2007 Faculty Award for Outstanding Mentorship of GSIs
The GSI Center in addition salutes faculty who work with GSIs and for the fourth year presented the Faculty Award for Outstanding Mentorship, co-sponsored by the California Alumni Association.
Awards were given to:
(Photos, except Burawoy, by Peg Skorpinski)
Prior recipients' statements of mentoring philosophy are available online — an excellent resource, to be joined soon by those honored this year.
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(Photo by Ellen Gobler)
Dinner at the Faculty Club, and more, for Jasmine Johnson
Every year, a slightly-out-of-the-usual ritual takes place at the end of the spring semester: the presentation of the Una Fellowship. It’s given to “an outstanding woman in the field of history to foster the spirit of inquiry and individuality so characteristic of Una Smith Ross,” a Berkeley alumna (B.A. 11, M.A. ’13) in whose memory the supporting funds were provided. In addition to a pleasant meal in good company and a year’s help with tuition and expenses, the new Una Fellow follows the distinctive tradition of wearing Una’s own heirloom necklace for the evening.
This year, the recipient is Jasmine Johnson, who just completed her first year in grad school here, on her way to a Ph.D. She earned her B.A. at Berkeley last year, in African American Studies. In addition to working in her family’s Oakland bookstore and pursuing a personal and academic interest in modern dance, Johnson has been a dedicated tutor of eighth-grade students in Oakland’s Making Waves Education Program. She plans to teach in her community.
In the photo, she’s seated in the center. Flanking her, left to right, are Carolyn Chee, the Graduate Division’s director of graduate services, Robert Allen, professor of African American Studies, Joe Duggan, associate dean of the Graduate Division, Ula Taylor, professor of African American Studies, and Jasmine’s guest Joshua Begley.
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Gabor Somorjai
(Photo:Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory)
Berkeley professor (and grad alum) will receive a coveted Chemistry medal
Next spring, the American Chemical Society’s highest honor, the Priestley Medal, will be presented to Gabor Somorjai, University Professor of the UC system, professor of chemistry at Berkeley, who received his Ph.D. in chemistry here in 1960. “Professor Somorjai could be considered the father of modern surface chemistry,” said Francisco Zaera, Ph.D. ’84, a chemistry professor at UC Riverside who conducted his doctoral research with Somorjai here in the early 1980s. Somorjai expressed his delight at the honor, which has been won by several other members of the chemistry department, saying “It honors pioneering research in surface chemistry and heterogeneous catalysis” over four decades “with more than 300 outstanding Berkeley graduate students and postdoctoral fellows” — all of whom he has trained and mentored in that time. (Berkeley-connected chemists have taken a substantial portion of Priestley Medals. They include Joel Hildebrand, Kenneth Pitzer Ph.D. ’37, Harold Urey Ph.D. ’23, Henry Eyring Ph.D. ’27, Melvin Calvin, Glenn Seaborg Ph.D. ’37, Henry Taube Ph.D. ’40, George Pimentel Ph.D. ’49, and Darleane Hoffman.)
More information is available online.
TopPh.D. candidate leads Berkeley-Davis study that finds HIV in breast milk can be killed by the low-tech technique of flash-heating
(Photo by Kiersten Israel-Ballard)
A doctoral candidate in the School of Public Health, Kiersten Israel-Ballard, is the lead author of a newly released study showing how heating a glass jar of expressed breast milk infected with HIV in a pan of water over a flame or single burner can inactivate the free-floating virus and make the milk safe for feeding babies. The method also kills bacteria, but retains most of the milk’s nutritional and antimicrobial properties and a majority of its vital antibodies. Thermometers and timers, which are hard to come by in resource-poor communities, are not required for the technique, so it can be applied readily in developing countries, where many of the 300,000 infants who contract HIV from breastfeeding live. “Mothers in Africa have told us they will do anything to keep their babies alive,” says Israel-Ballard. “This work is ultimately about providing them with viable options to do just that.” The findings will appear in the July 1 print issue of the Journal of the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes, but are now available online. More details — and a video — may be found with UC Berkeley’s press release.
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Mason Bates used the National Symphony Orchestra to turn solid ice into water
He’s finishing his doctorate in music, but manages to keep a lot of other balls in the air in the process. He’s a composer, in the usually widely-separate worlds of techno and classical music. In February, he performed his work “Liquid Interface” with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. He’s been teaching a harmony class in the Department of Music. He writes for the theatrical stage as well as the concert hall. He appears in clubs in San Francisco, Rome, and Berlin as the underground DJ and electronica artist “Masonic.”
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Berkeley grad alum demotes Pluto even further — a bigger dwarf planet is also heavier. More in the wings?
(Image courtesy Mike Brown/Caltech)
Astronomer Mike Brown, who works at the California Institute of Technology (and earned his master’s and Ph.D. degrees here in 1990 and 1994, respectively) helped put the skids under former-ninth-planet Pluto by discovering another object in the distant Kuiper Belt that was slightly pudgier in diameter. Now he and his graduate student Emily Schaller have reported (in the journal Science) that the wider dwarf, named Eris (formerly nicknamed Xena) is also 27 percent heavier than Pluto, weighing in at 36.6 billion trillion pounds. Brown and his team have found 15 dwarf planets, and they’re “continuing to look hard.” He was named in the Time 100 for 2006 as one of “the people who shape our world,” Scientists and Thinkers division.
TopNews and other items for the July 2007 issue of eGrad are due Wednesday, June 27. Please send your information to gradpub@berkeley.edu. Submissions may be edited for length, clarity, and accuracy.
eGrad is produced by Graduate Communications & Events, distributed by email, and archived online. Graduate students, alumni, faculty, and staff are invited to send timely news and announcements of interest to or utility of graduate students and the graduate community. Please submit items to Dick Cortén, editor, at gradpub@berkeley.edu.
