I am delighted to say I began serving as Dean of the Graduate Division on July 1st. Dean Mason stepped down to return to research and teaching in the School of Social Welfare. In recent weeks we've held several heartwarming events celebrating her diverse and far-reaching accomplishments during her seven years as Dean.
My first act was to appoint a new Associate Dean for Graduate Student Life and Academic Program Review. I hope you will join me in welcoming Susan Muller to that position. Associate Dean Muller holds a faculty appointment in the College of Chemistry (Department of Chemical Engineering), and is a member of both the Bioengineering Graduate Group and the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Graduate Group. She has served as the Department of Chemical Engineering's Vice Chair, Head Graduate Adviser, and Affirmative Action Adviser, among other roles. Associate Dean Muller holds a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from M.I.T. and a B.S.E. (summa cum laude) in chemical engineering from Princeton.
Susan Muller
Photo: Peg Skorpinski
As a faculty member, Susan Muller has shown great commitment to graduate concerns, through her service on the Graduate Council (2005-2007), the Graduate Affirmative Action Advisory Committee (2003-2005), and the Fellowship Competition Committee (2001-2004). She will make a splendid addition to our team.
I hope you have enjoyed a pleasant and productive summer. Mine has been a busy summer, but I have managed to climb some mountains here and there, and to throw a few dinner parties for friends. My advice is to make this the year when you resolve to emerge from the library or laboratory and experience some of the great benefits of our wonderful community, on campus and off.
Best wishes,
Andrew J. Szeri
Dean of the Graduate Division
NRC rankings update: Berkeley doctoral students do their part
Services for International Students and Scholars
- Redesigned, easier-to-navigate website is live.
University Library
- Keeping up with new electronic resources.
University Health Services
- Have dependents who need health care? Find out what to do.
Honors
- Berkeley professor (and grad alum) picks up two campus honors.
- J-school student receives a “grand” prize.
Newslinks
- New chief development officer is a two-degree grad alum.
- College of Engineering's new dean has three Berkeley degrees.
- “Getting the lead out of condors” with a poli sci Ph.D.
- The graduate community mourns Corinne Crawford.
In the multi-stage and complex process of collecting input for its upcoming assessment of American graduate education, the National Research Council sent voluntary confidential questionnaires to more than 16,000 selected advanced-to-candidacy doctoral students at institutions across the U.S. The NRC takes the overall qualitative pulse of research universities every decade or so, but this is the first time the products themselves, graduate students, have been given their say.
The debut interactive questionnaire was tested on students in five fields — English, economics, chemical engineering, and neuroscience/neurobiology. To add their perspective, the students had a bit of work to do; the detailed online questions ran to the equivalent of 15 printed pages.
Groups of questions covered time to degree (to get a picture of the way students progress through their programs), what master’s and other degrees and certificates students earn along the way, what opportunities they’ve had for research publication (authoring or coauthoring) and presentation, and the level and type and source of financial support they’ve had.
Other questions asked about students’ career goals and how supportive faculty have been toward those aspirations, especially when outside of academia. Are there ways to gain career skills including teaching, but also written and oral communication, teamwork, independent research, project management, and ethics? Is there mentoring? Are you getting timely and helpful feedback? Are fellow students supportive of one another? Library, labs, housing, child care, health services: excellent, good, fair, or poor? And there was a place for additional comments about the doctoral program’s characteristics or quality.
Individual answers were not given to faculty or administrators at the respondents’ institutions. A statistical read-out of completion rates has been passed back along the pipeline by the NRC, however.
The participation of Berkeley’s doctoral candidates has been exemplary, according to Graduate Dean Andrew Szeri and the team facilitating the campus response. The numbers speak for themselves: the overall response rate from students nationally is 72 percent. From Berkeley, the response is 94.6 percent of those who gave their permission for release of their e-mail addresses to the NRC. In the five categories surveyed here, all had at least 90 percent participation. Berkeley’s best was Chemical Engineering, perfection itself with 100 percent.
The NRC’s full report, based on data from over 200 universities and more than 100,000 faculty, is planned for release in December 2007.
TopAUGUST 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 2 (Thursday)
Film: “White Light/Black Rain,” with filmmaker Steven Okazaki in person
7:30 p.m., Pacific Film Archive Theater. $4 for UCB students, $5 for faculty and staff. Buy tickets online or by calling 642-5249. Documentarian Okazaki presents the most thorough visual and narrative account yet of the events of the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombings, told through the recollections and photos of survivors.
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 17 (Friday)
Community Computer Recycling Event
9 a.m. to 3 p.m., 1000 Folger Avenue, Berkeley (two blocks west of the intersection of Ashby and San Pablo avenues. The third Friday of each month, the Cal Overstock and Surplus Den offers free recycling of laptops, CPUs. Monitors, TV sets, portable DVD players, keyboards, circuit boards, and power cords.
AUGUST 17 (Friday)
UCTV: Conversations with History — “Freedom of Expression, Tolerance, and Human Rights”
6 p.m., cable channel 33 in Berkeley, channel 27 in San Francisco
Host Harry Kreisler talks with Harvard philosophy professor T. M. Scanlon.
(Also available “on demand” on your computer all day, every day, as are all the “Conversations with History,” many Graduate Council Lectures, and other programs from Berkeley, via the UCTV website.
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. Sponsored by the Graduate Division's Graduate Diversity Program and the Graduate Assembly. 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. Sponsored by the Graduate Division and the Graduate Assembly.
AUGUST 22, 29, and September 5
Workshop for students with dependents in need of health insurance
See below under University Health Services.
AUGUST 23 (Thursday)
Teaching in the U.S. Classroom: A Conference for International GSIs
9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., various locations in Dwinelle Hall. Details are online (PDF).
Sponsored by the Graduate Division's GSI Teaching and Resource Center.
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. Details are online (PDF). Sponsored by the Graduate Division's GSI Teaching and Resource Center.
AUGUST 27 (Monday)
Memorial for Classics graduate student Corinne Crawford
5 p.m., Alumni House. See Newslinks, below.
AUGUST 28 (Tuesday)
Reception Honoring American Indian/Alaska Native Graduate Students
5 to 7 p.m., Heller Multicultural Lounge, second floor of the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union. Sponsored by the Graduate Division's Graduate Diversity Program.
All are invited.
AUGUST 30 (Thursday)
Reception Honoring Graduate Diversity
5 to 7 p.m., Toll Room, Alumni House (just north of Zellerbach Playhouse). Sponsored by the Graduate Division's Graduate Diversity Program.
All are invited
AUGUST 30 (Thursday)
Back-to-School Social
6 to 9 p.m., East Pauley Ballroom, Martin Luther King Junior Student Union.
Featuring pizza (from West Coast; vegan and vegetarian available), beer (from Trumer Pilsner), and live music by Berkeley grad students (Aaron Platt’s beatbox routine, The Thrillionaires, and The Old Fashioned Way). $3 entry fee, UC Berkeley student ID and proof of age required. You may bring up to three guests. Presented by the Graduate Social Club.
AUGUST 31 (Friday)
Application deadline for graduate events funding
Noon, Anthony Hall (just north of Barrows Hall)
More information is available online from the Graduate Assembly.
SEPTEMBER 3 (Monday)
Labor Day holiday
SEPTEMBER 7 (Friday)
Berkeley Writers at Work
Noon to 1:30 p.m., Morrison Library, 101 Doe. Sponsored by the College Writing Programs. Bonnie Wade, the music department’s chair, will read from her work, be interviewed about her researching, drafting, and revising process, and take questions from the audience. Among her books are Music in Japan; Thinking Musically: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture; and Imagining Sound: An Ethnomusicological Study of Music, Art, and Culture in Mughal India.
SEPTEMBER 12 (Wednesday)
55th Annual Noon Concert Series: Cello and Piano
12:15 to 1 p.m., Hertz Hall. Kevin Yu, cello, and Chen Chen, piano (Brahms sonata number 1 in E minor, opus 38); Tony Lin, piano (Schubert sonata in A major, D.664).
Services for International Students and Scholars (SISS), after months of planning and writing by staff members, has gone live with its redesigned and easier-to-navigate website.
Take it for a spin!
The library subscribes to more than 800 premium online information sources, and the list keeps growing. Just in one month, it added AskART, Black Studies Center, CEIC Global Database (economic time series), Encyclopedia of the Quran, Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic cultures, E-STAT (Canadian statistics), Everyday Life and Women In America, Greenwire (environmental news), Science.gov, Social Theory, and Thomson Datastream. To stay on top of new resources and services, consider subscribing to the “What’s New in the Library” RSS feed.
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UHS is offering a new workshop on coverage options available for spouses, partners, and children of students, on three separate dates for your convenience. Determining which plan is best for your family can be challenging. Kathy Gage, UHS’s insurance advisor for dependents, will explain how to choose and enroll in a plan. All workshops will be held in the Education Center on the first floor of the Tang Center, 2222 Bancroft Way. Students may choose one of the following dates:
August 22 (Wednesday), 3 to 4:30 p.m.
August 29 (Wednesday), 9 to 10:30 a.m.
September 5 (Wednesday), 3 to 4:30 p.m.
Please RSVP. Questions about this event? Call the Student Health Insurance Office (642-5700).
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Caroline Kane with Chancellor
Birgeneau and her award
Photo: Peg Skorpinski
Caroline Kane Ph.D. ‘79, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology in April received the Chancellor’s Award for Advancing Institutional Excellence, which came with $30,000 to be used for her diversity and education work. Earlier, at the 2007 Charter Gala in March, she was given the California Alumni Association’s Excellence in Service Award. She founded the Biology Scholars Program, which helps severely disadvantaged students achieve educational parity in the rigorous biology major; co-founded the Biology Transfer Consortium, which encourages community college students to study science; and she’s a founding member of the Coalition for Excellence and Diversity in Math, among many activities from the local to international levels.
Other recipients of the Chancellor’s Award for 2007, and the discretionary $30,000, were Frederick Collignon, associate professor of city and regional planning; Jabari Mahiri, associate professor of education, and Susan Schweik, associate professor of English.
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David Gelles, master’s degree student in the Graduate School of Journalism, was honored — and given $1,000 — by the East Bay Press Club, which named him its 2007 “graduate journalist of the year.”
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David Blinder
Photo: Peg Skorpinski
Starting August 13, David Blinder will be Berkeley’s associate vice chancellor for University Relations. He’ll be heading the campus’s diverse development effort, coordinating all fundraising activities across campus academic and administrative units and spearheading offices devoted to corporate and foundation relations, communications, operations, and events.
He holds master's and doctoral degrees in philosophy from UC Berkeley, earned in 1977 and 1981, respectively, and during his previous span here he was a teaching assistant (forerunner to GSI) in philosophy.
He went on to faculty positions at UC Irvine, Yale, and Princeton, taking fundraising posts at the latter and then at Wellesley, where he has been vice president for resources and public affairs. At Wellesley (enrollment circa 2,300), Blinder managed a campaign that raised more than $472 million in seven years, making it the number one fundraiser among liberal arts colleges.
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Sastry took the helm of the
College of Engineering July 1.
The appointment of S. Shankar Sastry to succeed A. Richard Newton follows a long tradition at the College of Engineering of choosing from within the Berkeley engineering family (every dean so far has been a member of the Berkeley engineering faculty, and many have been alumni as well).
Like Newton, Sastry began his affiliation with this campus as a graduate student, earning his master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer sciences in 1979, another master’s in mathematics in 1980, and then his Ph.D. in EECS in 1981. He slipped away briefly to MIT for two years as an assistant professor, then returned here with the same rank, remaining here (but advancing rapidly upward) ever since. Most recently, he chaired the EECS department for four years before becoming the director of CITRIS, the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society and the Banatao Institute at CITRIS Berkeley.
He is married to Claire Tomlin, who also came to Berkeley as a grad student, earning her Ph.D. here in 1998. (She’s an associate professor in Berkeley’s EECS department and last year won a “genius award” — the MacArthur Fellowship — for her studies addressing problems in aircraft flight control and collision avoidance.)
Announcing the appointment, Chancellor Robert Birgeneau said Sastry “will be an outstanding dean. A technology visionary, he has a tremendous record of achievement leading large organizations and advancing our knowledge of intelligent systems to improve high-impact areas, such as health care and security."
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Graham Chisholm Ph.D. ‘82 who took eight years to get his political science doctorate — “there’s a reason they call it gradual school,” he says — was profiled in the July 22 San Francisco Chronicle Magazine. He’s now director of conservation for Audubon California. The focus of the piece is condors, almost lost to the world, now very slowly on the upswing, thanks to breeding programs, power-line safety, and an expensive but effective process for removing high concentrations of lead in the predators’ bloodstreams (from bullets in the carcasses they scavenge on). The largest bird in North America, the California Condor has a wingspan of 9-1/2 feet, a few inches longer than a 2007 Corvette.
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Corinne Crawford
A 26-year-old Classics doctoral candidate and UC cycling team member, Corinne Crawford died June 26, two days after being struck by a car. She and Jan Christian Claussen, an exchange student at UC from Norway and cycling teammate, had ridden to the summit of Mount Diablo and were waiting for a traffic signal in Walnut Creek when they were hit by a driver who lost control of his car for reasons currently under investigation. Despite the helmets they wore, both suffered head injuries. Claussen’s were relatively minor, a concussion and abrasions; Crawford’s proved fatal.
Crawford came to Berkeley from Harvard, where she graduated summa cum laude in 2001 with a combined B.A. and M.A. in classics and linguistics. She earned a master’s in Greek here in 2003, and expected to complete her doctorate next year. According to friends, she spoke German, Spanish, Italian, French, classical Latin, ancient Greek, ancient Babylonian, and other languages, taught both Latin and Greek, and had archaeological experience.
Corinne Crawford and friends at a
Classics graduation
She joined the coed UC Berkeley cycling team in 2005 and raced for Cal in 2006 and 2007. In UC’s Yongmudo martial arts program, she had reached the rank of red belt, one below black belt. According to the Classics website, she “was a precocious young scholar who had already delivered several compelling and polished lectures at professional conferences and had effectively participated (as student representative) on a departmental search committee. She was a passionate and committed teacher, utterly devoted to her students and inspiring a like passion and admiration in them.” She received an Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award from the Graduate Division’s GSI Teaching and Resource Center in 2005.
On her blog, Crawford’s “about me” profile read, “Pissy feminist Ph.D. candidate and proud. Dammit.”
A campus memorial will take place Monday, August 27, at 5 p.m. in Alumni House. Crawford will be awarded the Ph.D. posthumously in Spring 2008.
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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.
