This is a short note as you begin your summer activities. I would imagine many of you have plans for research, plans to study for qualifying exams, plans to check into fellowships you might apply for, and plans for some rest and recreation. All of those things are very worthwhile! Universities are wonderful places in the summer, when the time available for concentration increases and the distractions of classes (mostly) recede.
For those of you who are approaching your graduation in the next year, I offer this month's photograph as encouragement. It shows mechanical engineering graduate students Nicola Fung and Tomasz Matlak with me on graduation day. I am so pleased about the sense of accomplishment that just beams from their smiling faces. You have that to look forward to.
Best wishes for a productive — and relaxing — summer!
Andrew J. Szeri
Dean of the Graduate Division
Announcements
- Expecting a check?
- Receiving financial aid?
Graduate Degrees
- The candidacy fee is going up next month
Graduate Fellowships
- WAGS/UMI Distinguished Master’s Thesis Award
- Fulbright Scholar Grants
- Applying pays off: Anita Milman gets a Udall
University Health Services
- New SHIP benefits
- Summer health and wellness groups
University Library
- Test-pilot the next-generation Melvyl
Recognition
- Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Awards — 271 of them
- Teaching Effectiveness Awards honor GSI problem-solvers
- Faculty Award for Outstanding Mentorship goes to four
Texture
- Squirrels seem to protest human pal’s retirement
Starting next month (July 1) all support paid to students by paper check through the Campus Accounts Receivable System (CARS) will be held for pickup for 21 days at the Billing and Payment Services Office, 140 University Hall. Checks that aren’t picked up in that interval will be mailed to the student’s local address on file in BearFacts. If you’ve signed up for Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT), CARS “refunds” (payments to you) may be deposited directly to your personal bank account. EFT can mean you receive the funds sooner, and avoid problems such as returned mail due to an outdated address. You can sign up for EFT online.
Complete registration for the fall 2008 semester as soon as possible by enrolling in required units and paying a minimum of 20 percent toward registration fees. Resolve any past-due balance on your CARS account and any block on your registration. You can monitor your aid package, registration status, address information, and CARS refund activity online via BearFacts.
TopPlease remember that the Office of the President is raising the Candidacy Fee for doctoral students from $65 to $90 to cover the additional costs related to preparation and submission of doctoral dissertations. The increase is effective for all students whose advancement to candidacy forms are filed in the Graduate Division on or after July 1, 2008.
TopListed chronologically by deadline date.
Graduate Division summary of fellowships and awards for 2008-2009
Resources provided by the Graduate Services: Fellowships office
This award is for distinguished scholarly achievement, usually shown in a formal written thesis. Nominations are 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 2008-2009 award will consist 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 Studies (WAGS), to be hosted by New Mexico State University at the Hotel Encanto de Las Cruces, March 6 to 8, 2009. The award is co-sponsored by University Microfilms International (UMI). Submissions must be made to the Graduate Services: Fellowships Office, 318 Sproul Hall. Further information on the award is available online or contact Maria Loza by email or phone (642-7665).
The competition for the 2009-2010 round of Fulbright Scholar Grants is open. The application deadline is August 1, 2008. Grants typically begin about one year following the application deadline. As a traditional U.S. Fulbright Scholar you can enjoy an experience of a lifetime, one that will provide broad cultural perspectives on your academic discipline or professional field and connect you with colleagues at institutions around the globe. Grants typically range from three months to an academic year. More information and materials to download are online.
Anita Milman, Udall Fellowship recipient
Berkeley’s Anita Milman is one of only two students chosen by an independent review committee to receive this year’s Udall Dissertation Fellowships. Milman, who came here after receiving her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil and environmental engineering from Cornell, is a Ph.D. candidate in the Energy and Resources Group. The Udall award is given to outstanding doctoral candidates in their final dissertation year who have achieved distinction in their scholarly work — and whose dissertation topic is significant and relevant to national environmental public policy or environmental conflict resolution. It covers academic and living expenses for the year, up to $24,000.
Milman’s research analyzes the factors that influence the formation of cooperative management strategies for internationally-shared aquifers and cross-border flows of wastewater along the U.S.-Mexico border. Milman hopes to continue connecting people and agencies along the border after she completes her dissertation, to help resolve the diverse environmental challenges both countries face.
Congress created the Morris K. Udall Foundation as an independent federal agency in 1992. In honoring the late Congressman’s legacy of public service, the foundation awards scholarships, fellowships, and internships for studies related to the environment and Native American policy.
A new Information School M.A. jumps into the spirit of the season in front of South Hall.
(Photo: Peg Skorpinski)
Graduate Division Calendar
Campus Events Calendar
Denotes Graduate Division sponsored event
JULY 4 (Friday)
Independence Day Holiday
AUGUST 18 and 19 (Monday and Tuesday)
New International Student Orientation
Monday 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Tuesday 8:30 a.m. to noon
International House Auditorium
More information: Berkeley International Office
AUGUST 20 (Wednesday)
Reception for New International Students
2 to 4 p.m., International House Auditorium
More information: Berkeley International Office
AUGUST 21 (Thursday)
Fall Teaching Conference for GSIs — Teaching in the U.S. Classroom
(for International GSIs)
8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., Dwinelle Hall
More information: GSI Center
AUGUST 22 (Friday)
Fall Teaching Conference for GSIs
(for all GSIs, Domestic and International)
8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Plenary session in Wheeler Hall, breakout sessions in Dwinelle Hall
More information: GSI Center
AUGUST 25 (Monday)
New Graduate Minority Student Orientation: an orientation for all focusing on issues facing underrepresented students
10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union
All are invited
AUGUST 26 (Tuesday)
Orientation for New Graduate Students
9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Pauley Ballroom and other rooms in the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union (registration is from 8:30 to 9 a.m.). Presented by the Graduate Division and the Graduate Assembly.
AUGUST 27 (Wednesday)
Reception Honoring American Indian/Alaska Native Graduate Students
5 to 7 p.m., Heller Lounge, Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union
AUGUST 28 (Thursday)
Fall 2008 Graduate Advisers and Graduate Assistants Meeting
9 to 10:30 a.m., Lipman Room, eighth floor of Barrows Hall
AUGUST 28 (Thursday)
Workshop: Applying for a Fulbright-IIE Grant
1 to 3 p.m., 370 Dwinelle Hall
Further information is available online
AUGUST 28 (Thursday)
Dean’s Reception for New Graduate Students
4 to 6 p.m., Lipman Room, eighth floor of Barrows Hall
SEPTEMBER 10 (Wednesday)
Reception Honoring Graduate Diversity
5 to 7 p.m., Toll Room, Alumni House (just north of Zellerbach Playhouse)
New and continuing graduate students interested in one of the New West Village Apartments opening in August 2008 at University Village in Albany can pre-select an apartment at a Friday afternoon open house (see tour schedule). Eligibility for particular units depends upon family size:
As part of our commitment to the health and safety of students and their families, Cal Housing is pleased to announce that most of our new buildings will be designated as “smoke free.” There will continue to be “smoking neutral” buildings at University Village.
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Beginning August 15, 2008, your Student Health Insurance Plan (SHIP) benefits will include:
In addition to these improvements, SHIP will continue to offer the usual great benefits — a comprehensive medical and counseling plan as well as dental coverage. For more information on SHIP benefits, visit the UHS website. The SHIP fee for graduate students in 2008-09 will be $849 per semester, or $1,698 for 12 months of coverage.
Waiving SHIP Enrollment: You will be enrolled automatically in SHIP and charged the health insurance fee on your campus E-Bill. You can choose to waive enrollment in SHIP by completing an on-line waiver application form.
July 15, 2008 is the deadline for continuing graduate students to submit a request to waive enrollment in the Student Health Insurance Plan for Fall 2008.
The waiver form must be completed by July 15, 2008. Continuing students submitting waivers between July 16 and September 15 will be charged a $50 late waiver service fee on their e-Bill. New graduate students only may submit waiver applications without a late waiver service fee until August 31, 2008. No waivers will be accepted after September 15, 2008. If you have not submitted a waiver application by that date, you will be enrolled in SHIP for the semester and responsible for the $805 SHIP fee.
Graduate Student Instructors and Researchers may be eligible for remission of the health insurance fee. Please check with your hiring department.
Do you need health insurance for your spouse, children or other dependents? The Student Health Insurance Office can assist you in selecting a plan that best meets your family’s needs. Please contact Kathy Gage, Dependent Insurance Advisor, at (510) 642-5742 for assistance.
For more information about UHS and SHIP, visit the UHS website. If you would like to speak with someone about SHIP, call the Student Health Insurance Office at (510) 642-5700.
Experiencing anxiety, depression, stress? For seven weeks this summer, Counseling and Psychological Services staff will conduct Health and Wellness Groups for students on a weekly basis. Participants will learn cognitive skills and practical techniques to improve emotional health, manage feelings of depression and anxiety, reduce stress, improve relationships, and enhance general well-being. Topics will include:
Two grad-and-undergrad groups will be offered, one on Mondays, June 23 to August 4, from 4:15 to 5:45 p.m. in room 3290 of the Tang Center, and the other on Tuesdays, June 10 to July 22, in the same location. A grad-only group will meet Wednesdays, June 18 to July 30, in the CPS branch office for grad students in 2241 College Avenue (behind Wurster Hall toward the stadium). Please call CPS at 642-9494 to speak with a counselor about joining one of these groups.
TopIf you are a fan of Melvyl, the online catalog of books, journals, and other materials held by the ten UC campuses, you may be pleased to learn that major enhancements are being considered. The Next-Generation Melvyl pilot project began in May and will last for at least six months. It merges Melvyl and WorldCat, an online catalog containing more than 80 million records about books, journals, videos, music, articles, and other types of materials held by libraries worldwide. The pilot will enable you to search both of these databases and more for items such as hard-to-find materials, current and historical works, and foreign-language items.
The pilot contains most but not all of the records in the current Melvyl catalog as well as all of the records in WorldCat. It includes article references in education (from journals indexed in ERIC), medicine and health (from journals indexed in MEDLINE), U.S. government publications (from journals indexed in GPO), and general topics (from journals indexed in ArticleFirst). It also includes UC books digitized by Google and materials from the Online Archive of California, UC eScholarship Repository, and UC Press. Next-Generation Melvyl is an incredibly rich resource, although it works better for some disciplines than others and does not replace subject-specific databases and other scholarly sources.
Once you locate records of interest in Next-Generation Melvyl, you can build lists of items, share them with colleagues or students, bookmark them using del.icio.us and similar tools, export references to EndNote or RefWorks, read Amazon.com reviews or write your own, and much more. The results display shows which Berkeley libraries own the item as well as other libraries where the item can be found, and you can request items held elsewhere. You can also search Next-Generation Melvyl in multiple languages.
The library encourages you to use the Berkeley version at http://berkeley.worldcat.org and give feedback about whether Next-Generation Melvyl meets your needs, using the link at the bottom of the interface screen.
Help with Next-Generation Melvyl is available online. Note that the current Melvyl catalog will continue to be available throughout the pilot project.
TopIn May, amid the bewildering array of 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.
This year’s recipients of the Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award were honored May 7 in Alumni House. The names and departments of all 271 winners are posted on the GSI Center website.
Outstanding GSIs honored en masse by the Graduate Division's GSI Teaching and Resource Center.
(Photo by Peg Skorpinski)
The 2008 Teaching Effectiveness Award honorees and those who honored them (left to right, top row) Naomi Kohen, David Divita, Nicholas Stephanopoulos, Justin Underhill, Sereet Alexander, Hillary Gravendyk, Naomi Leite, Molly Babel, and Sarah Underhill; (bottom row, seated) Ladan Foose, Rosemary Joyce (chair of the Graduate Council’s Advisory Committee for GSI Affairs), Polina Dimova, Joe Duggan (Graduate Division associate dean), Linda von Hoene (director of the GSI Center), and Jann Vendetti. (Not pictured: John Denero.)
(Photo by Peg Skorpinski)
The Graduate Division’s Teaching Effectiveness Awards were presented May 21. The winners, from among recent Outstanding GSI Award recipients, have identified a teaching/learning problem in their own classes, laboratories, and sections, then come up with a method, strategy, or idea to address the problem, implemented it, measured its effectiveness, and described the process in an essay. These essays become part of a permanent archive.
Teaching Effectiveness Award recipients for 2008, listed alphabetically with teaching department and essay title.
Sereeta Alexander (Education) – “Creating Collaborative In-class Activities: Minimizing the Diffusion of Responsibility and Disinterest during Group Work”
Molly Babel (Linguistics) – “Externalizing Analyses and Bridging Sub-disciplines”
John DeNero (Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences) – “Now Students, Don’t Forget to Play your Video Games”
Polina Dimova (Comparative Literature) – “The Theory Scare: Teaching Students How to Grasp Abstract Ideas”
David Divita (French) – “Shaking up the Standard in a French Phonetics Course”
Ladan Foose (Chemical Engineering) – “Searching for the ‘Big Picture’”
Hillary Gravendyk (English) – “Poetry and the Scientific Method”
Naomi Kohen (Materials Science and Engineering) – “The Kitchen as a Laboratory”
Naomi Leite (Anthropology) – “Introducing Course Themes through Experiential Learning: A First-Section Activity”
Sarah Macdonald (Sociology) – “Encouraging Critical Thinking through Exam Preparation”
Nicholas Stephanopoulos (Chemistry) – “Making the Connections: Dissecting Fatty Acid Biosynthesis”
Justin Underhill (History of Art) – “The Power of Observation in Situ (by Proxy)”
Jann Vendetti (Integrative Biology) – “Understanding Biological Shape with Pipe Cleaners: An Exercise in Integrating Multiple Learning Styles”
Seasoned pro Rosemary Joyce, an anthropology professor (and chair of the GSI Center's advisory committee) who helped select and present the Teaching Effectiveness Awards, admitted that it’s not only pleasurable, but also professionally useful to screen the essays for these awards — “to get to read all your ideas. And steal them — as I have.”
Vendetti with her Teaching Effectiveness Award
(and Grad Division Associate Dean Joe Duggan)
(Photo by Peg Skorpinski)
The 13 GSIs were all innovative and effective in different ways. Jann Vendetti is just one example. She’s a a Ph.D. candidate in integrative biology who happened to learn, during a year she spent in Taiwan teaching English before she started grad school, that she gets a “big kick” out of teaching.
She’s been a GSI during nine of her 10 semesters here, in courses on evolution, biology, paleontology, and oceanography.
While leading the lab for Integrative Biology 108 (Principles of Paleontology), she noticed her students were struggling with theoretical morphology, one of the building blocks of the curriculum. The classic examples from the fossil record were the coiling shapes of snail shells, which come in many shapes that vary by compressing and stretching like prehistoric Photoshop options — with hard-to-visualize mathematical comparisons. She saw them skip over the lab exercises on coiling “and cringe when this concept was listed on exam review handouts.” Despite “aural descriptions and visual representations” of the key variables (called Raupian parameters) presented in lecture and lab, it was clear “most students did not grasp the concepts.” How to get them across?
Slit worm snail (Siliquaria ponderosa) from Northern
Australia, found in deep-water sponges, with its pipe-
cleaner counterpart (both photos by Jann Vendetti)
Vendetti ended up in a crafts store, looking for a way to make the abstract more concrete. Aware that one theory of learning breaks it up into auditory, visual, and kinesthetic, she wanted to concoct an exercise that combined what they’d been seeing and hearing with some doing and touching. Her “aha!” moment came when she found multicolored pipe cleaners.
Required to use the fuzzy wires in lab to make a three-dimensional coil they heard about in lecture and “describe it using its correct Raupian parameters, and hand it in,” they became lively, engaged, and focused, asking questions and talking to each other using the correct terms. “Such attention and animation” had never happened during the Raupian phase, Vendetti says, in her two years of facilitating the lab.
A turritelid from the teaching collections of the
Principles of Paleontology course, right, with pipe-
cleaner representation of its coiling
In their lab reports, and the practical exams three weeks later, the students proved they not only got the concepts, but many even expanded their answers to include subtleties and specific parameter changes. Vendetti is sold on keeping multiple learning styles in mind when teaching, and on trying “whenever possible to teach concepts creatively.”
The essays by this year’s award recipients will soon join the many shared insights and techniques available at the essay archive web page. Plunder at your pleasure.
Honored May 7: With plaques, from left: faculty mentors Seda Chavdarian (lecturer in French), Steven Goldsmith (associate professor of English), Lisa Little (lecturer in Slavic Languages and Literatures), and Claire Kramsch (professor of German). Bookending the winners are Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost George Breslauer (left) and Darek DeFreece ‘93, president of the California Alumni Association.
(Photo by Peg Skorpinski)
The GSI Center in addition salute faculty who work with GSIs and presented the Faculty Award for Outstanding Mentorship, co-sponsored by the California Alumni Association for the fifth year in a row. The recipients’ statements of their mentoring philosophy are posted online, along with those of previous winners, for inspiration and practical tips.
An earlier ceremony back in April recognized a half-dozen other faculty mentors, three with the Graduate Division’s Sarlo Distinguished Graduate Student Mentoring Award, and the other three with the Graduate Assembly’s Distinguished Faculty Mentor Award. That event was covered here.
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Right after the big win: Larissa Kelly and
Jeopardy host Alex Trebek
(photo courtesy of Jeopardy Productions)
The drama that actually took place in a much more compressed interval back in February of this year played out over seven separate days in the latter part of May.
That its star, Larissa Kelly, was no longer in California, or even the United States, didn’t matter. It was literally academic. (Kelly was, like the serious Ph.D. candidate she is, pursuing her dissertation research, which took her to Mexico.)
Her role in the episodic television quiz show “Jeopardy!” was “previously recorded” in a two-day burst, then broadcast to the nation in distinct weekday segments, as is standard procedure for the highly-rated program.
Each daily installment is a conflict among the minds and buzzer-reflexes of three contestants who are provided with clues in the form of “answers” worth varying dollar amounts in a variety of categories. They respond with what they hope are the right “questions.” Not too surprisingly, the one with the most money at the end is the winner or “champion” of that day’s show, and is eligible to return and compete in the next show.
Larissa Kelly kept winning and kept coming back for more, creating buzz among the game’s fanbase with her style of play — alert but calm, and bold in her bets. Before it was over, she had played the game longer and won more cash than any other woman contestant and, more amazingly, had become the third-largest money winner in the show’s 24-year history.
On the show, she was billed simply as “a grad student from El Cerrito, California.” Many local people who saw the first show suspected her institution was Berkeley, not one of those other places within commuting distance. Some searched the Web and found a few confirming references.
She grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, and went to Princeton as an undergrad. As a freshman there she met a classmate named Jeff Hoppes, who lived in the same “residential college” (i.e., dorm). It didn’t take long to establish that they were both already veteran quiz kids (not their term). Larissa competed in the National Geography Bee in elementary and middle school; Jeff came in third in the country in that Bee when he was in seventh grade. Both competed in quizbowl (which has its own intense subculture; Google it, if you dare) in high school, then at Princeton, and following that, at Berkeley , where both came to seek Ph.D.s in history, hers in Latin American, his in British. They were married in the summer of 2002, after Princeton and before Berkeley.
Word filtered around that a Cal person was on the show, and winning.
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Hans Hofmann: Nocturnal Splendor
1963; oil on canvas; 60 1/8 x 72 1/4 in.
gift of Hans Hofmann.
Through August 3
Hans Hofmann (1880-1966) was renowned as both an artist and as a teacher of art. German-born, he briefly taught at Berkeley before going on to world fame, primarily for his abstract expressionist paintings. His Greenwich Village school was a vortex of influence in the burgeoning art scene of the 1930s and 1940s, “a major fountainhead of style and ideas for the ‘new’ American painting,” according to the critic Clement Greenberg. The works on view in this show reveal the development of Hofmann’s distinctive and highly influential artistic vocabulary. An extraordinary group of Hoffman’s paintings, the world’s most extensive museum collection of his work, forms a cornerstone of BAM’s entire collection. This exhibition, on view in Gallery A, draws on this group, spanning nearly 30 years of his practice, from figurative works of the 1930s to the explosive abstraction of the postwar period.
“Hong Kong Nocturne: The Films of Johnnie To”
“Louder, Faster” Punk in Performance”
“Mental Minefields: The Dark Tales of Zeki Demirkubuz”
“Joan Blondell: The Fizz on the Soda”The Pacific Film Archive Theater is located at 2575 Bancroft Way (just west of Bowditch) in Berkeley. For more information, visit the PFA web site. Advance tickets are available by calling (510) 642-5249 or online.
TopA healthy new recreational program just for women will be launched the weekend of September 19 through 21 by the California Alumni Association at its mountain vacation spot, the Lair of the Golden Bear. Women’s Wellness Weekend will offer expert instruction in yoga, high-Sierra hiking, lake kayaking, and guest lecturers in the health and wellness field. The Lair is situated at 5,600 feet near Pinecrest, California, in the central Sierra Nevada. Cost for all programs, including food and tent-cabin accommodations, is $195 per person. More information is available online. The Association also offers, for adults, Club Lair, a week for singles, August 24 to 31, and Sports and Recreation Week, which runs from August 31 to September 7, with coaches and leaders to help you raise your level in tennis, golf, hiking, swimming,and much more, all in the Stanislaus National Forest.
Multitasker: Mary Byrnes somehow took this picture of
herself while offering a peanut to a visiting squirrel
named Punky (or are they fighting over it?).
Punky and Notch, two campus squirrels who regularly visited the Cory Hall office window where Mary Byrnes supplied them with peanuts, don’t come around anymore. They may be on a hunger strike. Byrnes, a three-decade campus employee, announced she was leaving in May, and the bushy-tailed rodents she named and fed (mouth-to-mouth!) have been notable by their absence.
Byrnes is a Cal alumna who’s grateful to the place, as she said in April, for her “education, husband, employment, friends, and retirement.” She leaves generations of grateful grad students for her work on their behalf in a number of student affairs positions, helping guide them through the campus bureaucracies. For the last 14 years, her efforts have taken place in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, where, among other things, she managed the Center for Student Affairs. Before that, the Graduate Division was happy to have her in its Admissions Office.
A more flattering shot of Byrnes
which ran in the Berkeleyan in April.
(Photo by Peg Skorpinski)
The loyal squirrels were named by Byrnes, Punky, perhaps for his attitude, and Notch for one ear, which was missing a chunk. Animals are a big part of her life — particularly dogs. She’s had dogs named Brownie, Bricksleg, Willy, and Charlie; the current canine is Ginger Baker.
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.