Dean Andrew Szeri (in white shirt with tie) welcomes new grad students with Associate Deans (from left) Carlos Fernandez-Pello, Joseph Duggan, and Susan Muller. (Photo: Peg Skorpinski)
Welcome to the start of the fall semester. I hope this semester brings you great success in all of your endeavors, whether that means advancing to candidacy, applying for an outside fellowship, or hunting for a job.
I have two topics I’d like to touch on here.
One is what’s known by an innocuous-sounding term, 'phishing'. This is the practice, chiefly using email or instant messaging, of luring unsuspecting people to a website under false pretenses, so as to extract financial or personal information from them. Don’t be tricked!
Your best defense against such sneaky tactics is your own alertness. Read your email carefully, even if it seems to come from an institution you would normally trust — a bank, credit union, or credit card company, or even a university or the IRS. Widespread phishing “attacks” have used them all. Sometimes misspellings and bad grammar can make you suspect an otherwise convincing message, but what’s requested (or “required”) of you is the best clue. If you’re asked for your social security number, bank or credit card number, or mother’s maiden name in order to “verify” your account, be very alert. This kind of information can be used for identity theft, which can threaten your credit and even deny your access to your own accounts.
Be advised that Graduate Division — and indeed the whole campus — will never request passwords, social security number or other such personal information via email. Any message purporting to be from this campus, soliciting information of that sort, is in all likelihood fraudulent. The campus Information Services and Technology office has a dedicated page on phishing, with tips, links, and email addresses for questions and for forwarding suspicious email. The university is very much a part of the effort to combat this kind of fraud, but it’s a sophisticated kind of crime, and we all need to take sensible precautions.
My other topic is also an important one: voting. Please keep in mind: the deadline for registering to vote is October 20. Registering to vote is easy to do, simply click here. Registering (and voting!) promotes civic society, and it may be good for you personally: those actions are good indications of your intent to make California your permanent residence (as you can see from this page on the Registrar’s site), which can affect how much you pay for tuition.
Andrew J. Szeri
Dean of the Graduate Division
Graduate Fellowships
- A wide menu of possibilities to help fund your graduate education
GSI Teaching and Resource Center
- Fall 2008 Workshops on Teaching
Beginnings
- Robert Reich captivates audiences at two welcome events
Awareness
- New opt-in direct warning system starts this fall
Career Center
- Workshops on the academic job search and more
University Health Services
- Student members are needed for two key advisory groups
- This fall’s CPS groups for grad students
Housing
- Haven’t settled? Here are some alternatives.
In the News
- Looking back on Berkeley’s showing at the Olympics
- A dynamic duo is “On the Same Page” with Cal undergrads
- The UC system’s newest chancellor has a Berkeley Ph.D.
Hot Off the Press
- California features two grad alums working for chemical safety
- A grad student makes the cover of Biophysics Journal
Pacific Film Archive
- A fall harvest of directors
UCTV
- How the Bible explains suffering
Texture
- Miss the Olympics? Was it hot there?
- The iSchool shows off its newest class in UC’s oldest building
Listed chronologically by deadline date.
Graduate Division summary of fellowships and awards for 2008-2009
Resources provided by the Graduate Services: Fellowships office
CSIRO, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, is Australia's national science agency, and one of the largest and most diverse research agencies in the world. Through this program, it is offering Fulbright scholars an opportunity to work in Australia as part of your American Ph.D. program. Valued at $34,000, this scholarship supports an American citizen to undertake eight to 12 months of postgraduate research in Australia, related to your American Ph.D., with one of the nine CSIRO National Research Flagships, on challenges in climate, energy, water, health, and more. Applications and deadlines are available online through the Institute for International Education. Information about the Fulbright CSIRO Scholarship is available from the CSIRO website.
September 23 (Tuesday), 11:30 a.m. — 1 p.m., Sibley Auditorium, Bechtel Engineering Center. This workshop will give you valuable tips to help you strengthen your application. Speakers will include UC Berkeley’s NSF fellowship coordinator, a Berkeley faculty and fellowship review committee member, and three current Berkeley NSF fellows. The National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships are for U.S. citizens who are in the early stages of their graduate study. Individuals are typically eligible to apply during the senior year of college or prior to or during the first year of graduate school. NSF supports fields in the sciences, math, and engineering. For more information, come to the Graduate Services: Fellowships Office, 318 Sproul Hall, or contact Michael Sacramento, NSF fellowship coordinator, at (510) 642-7739, or by e-mail. Sponsored by the Graduate Services: Fellowships Office.
The Michigan Society of Fellows invites applications to its postdoctoral fellowship program for recent Ph.D.s in the humanities, arts, sciences, and professions. These three-year positions at the University of Michigan are open to recent Ph.D.s who wish to pursue research opportunities while teaching at a major research university. Eight fellowships are available, each with an annual stipend of $51,500. Four of these fellowships will be awarded in the humanities, with the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Applications must be submitted electronically by midnight September 30, 2008. The application is available online. Questions may be submitted by email.
The Michigan Society of Fellows was established in 1970 with grants from the Ford Foundation and the Horace H. and Mary Rackham funds. Horace Rackham, for whom the University of Michigan’s graduate school and the building that houses it are named, was a lawyer, neighbor of Henry Ford’s, and one of the first investors in the Ford Motor Company. He sold his shares in 1919 to Edsel Ford for $12.5 million and spent the rest of his life as a philanthropist.This program seeks to improve the nation’s health by addressing the full spectrum of factors that affect health and inform policy, in part by helping fill the critically short supply of experts capable of researching, developing, and implementing interdisciplinary programs to improve population health. Doctoral candidates with significant research experience related to populations health may apply for two-year appointments beginning fall 2009 with an annual stipend of $86,000 in year one and $89,000 in year two. Apply only through the foundation’s online system. The deadline for receipt of online applications is 5 p.m. ET, October 3, 2008.
The U.S. Department of Education is now accepting applications for the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship Program. Javits Fellows receive up to four years of support (fees plus a need-based stipend of up to $30,000 per year) for doctoral/MFA study in select fields of the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Only those who will be in their first or second year of graduate study in 2009-2010 are eligible; the competition is generally limited to U.S. citizens and permanent residents. Fellowship applications are submitted directly to the Department of Education; see the DOE website for details and instructions. The application deadline is October 3, 2008. For questions about the fellowship, contact Solomon Lefler by email or phone (510) 643-7477.
Jacob Javits was U.S. Senator from New York from 1957 to 1981. The fellowship was named for him. These fellowships encourage original and significant research about gender that crosses disciplinary, regional, or cultural boundaries. Previous recipients have explored such topics as transnational religious education for Muslim women, the complex gender dynamics of voluntary marriage migration, women’s role in African-American adult literacy, women’s sports, militarism and the education of American women, and the relationship between family commitments and women’s work mobility. The fellowships — $3,000 for expenses connected with the dissertation — are provided to Ph.D. candidates who will complete their dissertations during the fellowship year. The most competitive applications include not only a clear, thorough, and compelling description of the candidate’s work, but also evidence of an enduring interest in and commitment to women’s issues and scholarship on women. Deadline: October 13, 2008.
Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States and to date remains the only American president to have earned a Ph.D. (his was in political science, from Johns Hopkins University. His dissertation, entitled “Congressional Government,” became an influential book and helped him land teaching positions at Bryn Mawr , Wesleyan, and, within five years, Princeton. Seven years and two more books later, he was president of Princeton, the first layman to head the institution, which began as a training ground for Presbyterian ministers. Eight years there were followed by two as governor of New Jersey, then two terms as President which were punctuated by historic legislation and the outbreak of World War I. Although absent from most of our wallets, Wilson’s visage is the most prominent feature on the U.S. $100,000 bill.
The Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection in Washington, D.C., is an institute of Harvard University. Each year, Dumbarton Oaks makes a limited number of grants to assist with scholarly projects in Byzantine studies, pre-Columbian studies, and garden and landscape studies. The normal range of awards is $3,000 to $10,000. Applications must be submitted online by November 1, 2008. Please note that before applying, applicants must contact the appropriate director of studies at Dumbarton Oaks no later than October 1, 2008, to determine if the project is within the purview of Dumbarton Oaks.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is currently accepting applications for its prestigious Lawrence Fellowship. Applications can be submitted through the LLNL website. They must be completed no later than November 3, 2008.
The Lawrence Fellowship was established to provide outstanding postdocs an opportunity to pursue cutting-edge science and stimulate cross-fertilization of ideas. The successful candidates have freedom to pursue world-class research with ample resources to support their efforts. Lawrence Fellows will interact with scientists having a wide range of expertise. The Laboratory is committed to making their experience at LLNL positive and rewarding.
This three-year fellowship is awarded to candidates with exceptional talent, credentials, scientific track records, and potential for significant achievements. Typically, two to four awards are given each year. After the three-year term, fellows may consider any career option, including staying at the Laboratory. Fellows will choose original and independent research in one or more aspects of science relevant to the competency at LLNL. Research areas may include many branches, including atmospheric science; biology; chemistry; computer science; energy; engineering environmental science; geoscience; lasers; materials science; applied mathematics; and physics.
The fellowships honor Ernest Orlando Lawrence, for whom the Livermore and Berkeley national laboratories are named (along with the Lawrence Hall of Science and element 103, lawrencium). He taught physics here, and became the university’s youngest full professor. A visionary researcher, he invented the cyclotron, assembling (with the help of some graduate students) a particle accelerator that made many discoveries in nuclear physics possible and gained Lawrence the Nobel Prize, the beginning of Berkeley’s long string. As the first director of Berkeley’s Radiation Laboratory (nicknamed the Rad Lab, now called Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory), Lawrence earned a label as “the father of big science,” pioneering the idea of doing research with multidisciplinary teams of scientists and engineers. Instrumental in releasing the nuclear genie from the bottle, he also sought its control. His last trip abroad, prior to his death 50 years ago at the age of 57, was to Geneva, to join negotiations with the Soviet Union on a treaty to ban the testing of nuclear weapons.The International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF) Program supports distinguished graduate students in the humanities and social sciences conducting dissertation research outside the United States. The IDRF is committed to empirical and site-specific research that advances knowledge about non-U.S. cultures and societies (involving fieldwork, research in archival or manuscript collections, or quantitative data collection). The IDRF Program is administered by the Social Science Research Council in consultation with the American Council of Learned Societies and funding provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Application materials and information on the 2009 competition are now available online. The application deadline is November 5, 2008 (9:00 p.m. EST).
The NPSC offers multi-year fellowships for graduate students in the physical sciences and related engineering disciplines. Fellowships are awarded in conjunction with sponsoring employers, who also provide paid summer employment. The NPSC seeks a broad applicant pool with special emphasis on underrepresented minorities and women; all eligible U.S. citizens may apply. Application information and instructions can be found online. The application deadline is November 7, 2008.
The ACLS administers and awards well over a dozen fellowships and grants related to the humanities, in separate competitions. Program descriptions and application details are available online. The application deadlines begin October 2, 2008 and run through January 16, 2009.
These fellowships, for 12 months of full-time dissertation research and writing, are designed to encourage original and significant study of ethical or religious values in all fields of the humanities and social sciences, and particularly to help Ph.D. candidates in these fields complete their dissertation work in a timely manner. In addition to topics in religious studies or in ethics (philosophical or religious), dissertations appropriate to the Newcombe Fellowship might explore the ethical implications of foreign policy, the values influencing political decisions, the moral codes of other cultures, and religious or ethical issues reflected in history or literature. The stipend, raised this year, is $24,000 for a 12-month period of dissertation writing. The Newcombe Fellowships are administered with the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. Application and further information are available online. The application deadline is November 14, 2008.
Charlotte W. Newcombe (1890-1979) was a Philadelphia philanthropist and world traveler. She never attended college; with vision impaired from childhood, she couldn’t read long enough to make serious study possible. But she greatly valued higher education and sent the children of many of her friends to college. In her will, she established the Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation to continue her scholastic giving.
Applications are now being accepted for the one-year 2009 Symantec Fellowship for graduate students pursuing innovative research related to information security, storage, and availability. The stipend is $20,000 plus tuition and fees, and comes with an opportunity to work alongside Symantec researchers. Symantec is a global leader in providing security, storage and systems management solutions to help businesses and consumers secure and manage their information. Headquartered in Cupertino, the firm has operations in more than 40 countries. Application and further information are available online. The application deadline is December 12, 2008.
Columbia University’s Institute for Comparative Literature and Society will appoint a Postdoctoral Fellow for the Spring 2010 semester. The fellow must have received a Ph.D. between January 1, 2003 and July 1, 2009. The ICLS was founded at Columbia in 1998 to promote a global perspective in the study of literature, culture, and their social context. It houses the interdepartmental undergraduate and graduate programs in Comparative Literature and Society, drawing its faculty from the humanities, the social sciences, and the Schools of Architecture and Law. The specific topic of the fellowship is the importance of language learning and/or translation to produce an informed global scholarship and practice. The Fellow will be given time and resources to develop his or her scholarship in a broadening and experimental cross-disciplinary and cross-regional context. The stipend for the spring 2010 semester will be $25,000. Full fringe benefits will be added, plus $1,000 for travel. An additional $2,000 will be given for innovative course planning. Application forms may be downloaded from the institute’s website. The postmark deadline for completed applications is January 31, 2009.
Each year, the Dan David Prize, a joint international enterprise endowed by the Dan David Foundation, awards 20 scholarships (10 to students from all over the world and 10 to students from Tel Aviv University, where the foundation is headquartered). The scholarship amount is $15,000. Advanced doctoral and postdoctoral students of excellent achievement and promise studying topics related to the fields chosen for this year are invited to apply for scholarships for 2009. The fields are broken into three time dimensions. For the Past category, the field is Astrophysics – History of the Universe; the field for the Present category is Leadership; and the Future category, the field is Global Public Health. The application deadline for the scholarships is March 31, 2009. More information is available online.
Dan David is a Romanian-born businessman and philanthropist. He immigrated to Israel in 1960 and the next year, with a $200,000 loan from a cousin, secured the franchise for Photo Me automated photo booths in a number of countries, and eventually took over the company. He is now the sole owner of PhoMat, the company that manufactures the photo booth machines, and in 2000 he created the Dan David Fund and Foundation with a $100 million endowment to recognize outstanding contributions in science, technology, culture, and social welfare, and to assist young scholar-researchers. The scholarship fields are mirrored in the three categories chosen each year for the Dan David Prize. Three prize laureates each receive $1 million, of which they donated 10 percent for scholarships in their fields. Nominations for the prize are now being accepted. The deadline for prize nominations is November 30, 2008, considerably earlier than the March scholarship deadline. Prior recipients of the Dan David Prize include Tom Stoppard, Amos Oz, Michel Brunet, Yo-Yo Ma, Al Gore, Zubin Mehta, and a wide variety of others. SEPTEMBER 18 (Thursday)
Workshop on Teaching: “Teaching to Different Learning Styles”
Noon to 1:30 p.m., 370 Dwinelle Hall
OCTOBER 3 (Friday)
Workshop on Teaching: “Developing a Teaching Portfolio”
Noon to 1:30 p.m., 370 Dwinelle Hall
OCTOBER 15 (Wednesday)
Workshop on Teaching: “Working with Student Writing”
Noon to 1:30 p.m., 370 Dwinelle Hall
NOVEMBER 3 (Monday)
Workshop on Teaching: “GSI Uses of bSpace”
3 to 5 p.m., 370 Dwinelle Hall (Note change in time)
A professional development series for GSIs, these workshops cover a wide variety of topics related to university teaching and the GSI experience. The purpose of the series is to offer GSIs, and other graduate students interested in teaching, opportunities for hands-on learning and practical discussion about pedagogy. On-line pre-registration for each event is encouraged; however, those who have not pre-registered are also welcome.
Top
(Photo: Dick Cortén)
Graduate Division Calendar
Campus Events Calendar
Denotes Graduate Division sponsored event
THROUGH JANUARY 20, 2009 (inauguration day)
“The American President”
Weekdays, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., North Gate Hall
A far-reaching collection of memorable images by Associated Press photographers showing U.S. commanders in chief, from the Civil War to today's "War on Terror," while they travel the campaign trail, attempt to shape international relations, navigate tumultuous governmental crises and personal scandals, and occasionally just rest.
National tragedies, a mainstay of American history, also are featured in a series of photos surrounding John F. Kennedy's assassination in Dallas in1963, and through images recorded immediately after John Hinckley Jr.'s attempt to kill Ronald Reagan in 1981.
Ken Light, an adjunct professor and director of the Center for Photography at the journalism school, selected the exhibit images from a special AP archive of presidential photos. He notes that, ironically, the exhibit is being staged in an era of major staffing cutbacks for traditional media and increased reliance on AP for campaign trail and presidential photos. Light chose the photos on display from a collection of more than 80 iconic images taken by AP photographers covering the U.S. president and made
available to universities, news outlets and other groups during the current presidential campaign. They are part of the AP Images photo archive of more than 10 million film and digital images.
November 3, 1948: the Chicago Tribune had egg on its face, but Harry Truman was happy, having won the electoral vote by a majority of 303 to 189. The popular vote was very close.
(AP photo by Byron Rollins)
Linda Greenhouse
SEPTEMBER 17 (Wednesday — in conjunction with Constitution Day)
Jefferson Memorial Lecture: “The Mystery of Guantanamo Bay”
4:10 p.m., Lipman Room, 8th floor of Barrows Hall
Linda Greenhouse, former Supreme Court correspondent, of The New York Times
In the weeks following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Bush administration made the fateful decision to house "enemy combatants" captured in the war against the Taliban at the U.S. Naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — out of reach, the administration believed, of the ordinary civilian and military justice systems. Three times over nearly seven years, the Supreme Court pushed back and told the President that he had made the wrong call. Yet in all those years, not a single detainee has been ordered released, against the government's will, by the authority of any institution. That is the mystery of Guantanamo Bay. What happened, and what does this saga tell us about our political and legal institutions, their relationships, and their commitment to the rule of law? (The Jefferson Lectures are presented by the Graduate Division and the Academic Senate’s Graduate Council.)
SEPTEMBER 18 (Thursday)
Graduate Women's Project Fall Wine & Cheese Mixer
5 to 7 p.m., patio of Anthony Hall (Graduate Assembly headquarters)
Welcome the fall semester with this social mixer to begin the fall with friends, old and new in a relaxed atmosphere. Complimentary wines of California along with cheeses and foods from Rick and Ann’s Catering. Win prizes in a raffle. Pick up the 2008 edition of the Graduate Women's Resource Guide. Presented by and for graduate women. All are invited. Please bring student and photo ID. Sponsored by the Graduate Women's Project and the Graduate Assembly. Email for more information.
SEPTEMBER 23 (Tuesday)
NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Application Workshop
11:30 a.m. – 1 p.m., Sibley Auditorium, Bechtel Engineering Center
This workshop will give you valuable tips to help you strengthen your application. Sponsored by the Graduate Services: Fellowships Office. For more details, see the Fellowships section above.
SEPTEMBER 25 (Thursday)
Exhibition opens — “Traje de la Vida: Maya Textiles of Guatemala”
Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology, Kroeber Hall
A chance to explore the beautiful styles of native dress in Guatemala, the astonishing stories behind hand woven textiles, and the Highland Maya who create and wear them. The works in this exhibit offer visitors a unique look into Maya culture through textiles collected over a hundred-year period. Film footage by videographer Kathleen Mossman Vitale of Endangered Threads Documentaries is featured in the exhibition as well as photography by renowned documentarian Jeffery Foxx. More information.
SEPTEMBER 26 (Friday)
Orientation for New Academic Student Employees
4:15 p.m. to 5:15 p.m., 150 University Hall
All graduate and undergraduate students who have an ASE (academic student employee) appointment (GSI, reader, or tutor) for the first time must attend one of three orientations co-sponsored by Labor Relations for the Berkeley campus and UAW Local 2865. Otherwise, new appointees will not be eligible for ASE appointments in subsequent terms. Attendance will be taken. This is the third of three identical sessions offered in September.
Ilya Kaminsky
OCTOBER 2 (Thursday)
Lunch Poems: Ilya Kaminsky
12:10 to 12:50 p.m., Morrison Library in the Doe Library
Born in Odessa, Ilya Kaminsky immigrated to the United States in 1993 when his family was granted asylum by the American government. Polish poet Adam Zagajewski says of Kaminsky, "He grafts the gifts of the Russian newer literary tradition on the American tree of poetry and forgetting." Kaminsky teaches comparative literature, poetry and literary translation at San Diego State University.
Details of Lunch Poems events November 6, December 4, and in the spring, are all available online.
The site of Lunch Poems is the Morrison Library, well worth a visit if you’ve never been there. And before you go, you can take a visit in cyberspace, through G. Donald Bain’s virtual reality panorama image (which he labels “Sanctuary”). Bain was the Director of the Geography Computing Facility on campus until his retirement this summer. His specialty is geographically oriented digital graphics. He founded The Geo-Images Project in 1994, one of the earliest web sites, to present imagery for education in geography and environmental sciences. Bain was an undergrad here, and says, “As a student at Berkeley I explored its vast library system, 23 locations and nine million volumes. When I was a graduate student at University College London I spent months in the great libraries of London, sometimes even occupying the seats in the British Museum Readying Room where Karl Marx and George Bernard Shaw had read and written.” (Image © G. Donald Bain)
Talal Asad
OCTOBER 2 (Thursday)
Foerster Lecture on the Immortality of the Soul: “Thinking about Religion, Belief, and Politics”
4:10 p.m., Toll Room, Alumni House (just north of Zellerbach Playhouse)
Talal Asad, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the City University of New York Graduate Center
Professor Asad will discuss the attempts by anthropologists and others to define religion, the shifting place of "belief" in that endeavor, and some of its implications for politics. He’ll stress the need to extend the study of the senses (rather than beliefs) in the formation of religious and secular attitudes. (The Foerster Lectures are presented by the Graduate Division and the Academic Senate’s Graduate Council.)
OCTOBER 7 (Thursday)
Seminar — “Research and Fulbright Opportunities in Australia”
11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., 331 Sproul Hall
A special presentation for UC Berkeley faculty, current graduate students, and juniors and seniors who are considering Fulbright.
Participants include John T. W. Hayton, education counselor in the Australian embassy in Washington, D.C., Mark Darby, executive director of the Austraalian-American Fulbright Commission, and Allen Goldstein, professor of biogeochemistry at UC Berkeley. For further information e-mail Gina Farales in the Graduate Services: Fellowships Office.
Amory Lovins
OCTOBER 28 (Tuesday)
Barbara Weinstock Memorial Lecture on the Morals of Trade: “Natural Capitalism: The Next Industrial Revolution”
4:10 p.m., Lipman Room, 8th floor, Barrows Hall
Amory Lovins, cofounder and chief scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute
Industrial capitalism productively employs and reinvests in two forms of capital — money and goods. Natural capitalism adds two even more important forms of capital — people and nature. Playing with a full deck lets businesspeople make more money, have more fun, do more good, and gain stunning competitive advantage through four interlinked principles. (The Weinstock Lectures are presented by the Graduate Division and the Academic Senate’s Graduate Council.)
Top
Arriving at Berkeley toward the end of August, new grad
students were greeted by a hot spell and a welcome
reception with the deans of the Graduate Division atop
Barrows Hall, where the view was panoramic, the drinks
were cool, and friendships were in the making.
(Photos: Peg Skorpinski)
New graduate students and first-time Graduate Student Instructors had special treats in common at two separate events for them as the semester kicked off, and in both cases they were the vocal stylings of Robert Reich. He wasn’t singing, but Reich, who was Secretary of Labor in Bill Clinton’s first term and is now a professor of public policy here, is one extraordinary speaker.
Self-effacing and effortlessly powerful, he’s also disarming. His first line, as the new GSIs saw him step out with the microphone from behind the podium, was, “As you can see, my years in the cabinet wore me down. I was six-foot-two when I started.”
He is four-foot-ten.
He was following two very good acts, Graduate Division Associate Dean Joe Duggan, who teaches French and comparative literature, and George Breslauer, who is executive vice chancellor and provost of the Berkeley campus and teaches political science. They each had literate, amusing, and mildly horrifying anecdotes about their early teaching experiences.
Reich revealed the little-known fact that he, highly visible as an alumnus of Dartmouth, Oxford, and Yale, had once been a teaching assistant (forerunner to GSI) “ right here at Berkeley. True! Forty years ago, one course, in the architecture department. I had taken courses in architecture, thought I wanted to be an architect. And I didn’t even know Berkeley. If I remember right, I came into Berkeley in my beat-up Volkswagen. I knew of Berkeley, I had heard of Berkeley. I had the sense of knowing I was here when I smelled the eucalyptus and marijuana and tear gas — that shock of existential recognition.” Getting serious, he told the packed auditorium of incipient teachers about what he called a “tacit curriculum, what students are picking up from you as teachers, beyond what is in the course, but as important, if not more important, than the substance of what you are teaching.” The most obvious example of it, he said, “is the excitement, the energy that you bring to bear when you sit there with students, your enthusiasm about the subject matter, but also your excitement about doing the job you are doing.” Despite any understandable anxiety — “many of you have not done this before” — he urged them, in preparing for that first class, to remember that “the enjoyment you exude, part of the tacit curriculum, is very important. Relax and enjoy it. Relax and enjoy them.”
From the top: George Breslauer (left)
was somewhat chagrined his first day
as a Cal professor when students
literally climbed out the classroom
window; Joe Duggan, long before it
became business slang, discovered
the virtue of being “on the same
page;” Robert Reich told of the
journeys he took between the worlds
of academe and politics — after his
grad-school date with Hillary Rodham.
(Photos: Benjamin Ailes)
A few days later, Reich was on another bill with Breslauer, this time welcoming the crop of grad students brand-new to Berkeley.
Breslauer gave them “a brief profile of yourselves,” saying there are “about 2,800 new graduate students on campus,” about half of whom are pursuing master’s degrees, and about a thousand are pursuing Ph.D.s. “Forty-five percent of you are women, 55 percent are men. The youngest graduate student this year is 19 years old, the oldest — most mature — is 64, in the Graduate School of Education. We have students from all across the United States and from 67 different countries. Nineteen percent of you are international students, and the top three countries from which our international students come are India, the People’s Republic of China, and South Korea, as has been the case now for three or four years running.” He told them, “graduate students are fundamental to our preeminence as a research and teaching university,” the single “most important factor in attracting top faculty.” Personally, he said, “the most intense feelings of job satisfaction” have come from teaching the brilliant graduate students who would become his successor, students “who were coming up with ideas that I had never thought of and then working those ideas up into dissertations that I am proud to have helped supervise and from which I also learned a great deal.”
In his turn, Reich pointed out the fundamental difference between being an undergraduate and being in grad school — “as an undergraduate you learn a little about a lot of things, whereas in graduate school you learn a lot about a few things. And if we on the faculty do our job properly, you will not learn more and more about less and less, to the point where you know everything about nothing.” In fact, “If we do our jobs properly, you will learn a lot about your subjects, but you will also learn about the context.”
He was surprised and delighted when he came to Berkeley and the Goldman School of Public Policy, he said, and “one of the first things that happened was that I got a call from people on the computer science faculty, and they wanted to sit down and have lunch with me. I said, “That’s great — may I ask why?” And they said, ‘We just want to know about public policy, and to meet you.’ Now, that never would have happened at the other university where I taught. And I’m impressed not only by the quality of the faculty and the quality of the students here, and the graduate students, and also the weather — but also by people’s eagerness to branch out beyond their own discipline, and to understand their own discipline in the context of other disciplines. And that is easy to do here, much easier than it is at almost any other place.”
He told of spending half his adult life in academe, and the other half in public policy and politics, at present being an economic adviser to Barack Obama. His biggest impact on American politics, he said, “was that in graduate school I introduced Hillary Rodham to Bill Clinton.” Not long before that, he said, “I had a date with Hillary Rodham.” He had completely forgotten it, but “about six months ago, when she was in the primaries, some of her letters from those days turned up and had been sent to the New York Times.” They had each been class presidents at their colleges, he at Dartmouth, she at Wellesley, and he had arranged “a presidential summit.” Which amounted to going out to see a movie, Antonioni’s Blow-Up. So the Times called with a question: “Can you tell us anything about that date that might reveal how she would govern if she were elected President?” “Not remembering anything about the date,” Reich related, “I didn’t want to lose the opportunity to say something, so I said, ‘Well, I do recall that she wanted a great deal of butter on her popcorn.’ There was a pause on the other end. And then the reporter said, ‘Thank you very much.’ And that actually appeared in the New York Times. Which tells you something about the quality of our political journalism in America.”
Reich then talked about the wider context, an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the American economy right now. Oil prices, the credit crisis, the housing market balloon and bust, all are related to “structural changes that began in the 1970s and continued and accelerated in the ‘80s and ‘90s and today.” He gave a quick tour of globalization and technological change, wage drops and job loss, women entering the work force, everyone working more hours and often going deeper into debt, responses to change that may have been uncomfortable but worked , at least until the bottom dropped out of the housing market. But, not wanting to talk only of “gloom and doom,” he said working in both government and academe has been a cross-pollinating “wonderful opportunity,” something he hopes at least some of the new students can experience, and that all of them enjoy their work and help “add immeasurably to the store of knowledge and to our standard of living.”
Top
UC Berkeley is instituting a new service this fall to help keep the campus community alerted in an immediate crisis as part of its continuing efforts to improve campus safety and emergency response.
Called "WarnMe," the new campus service will proactively contact individual students, faculty and staff to warn them of situations on or near campus that may pose an immediate threat to their safety and to provide instructions on what to do. Alerts and instructions will also be sent in other kinds of significant emergencies, such as major accidents and natural disasters.
The system uses contact information you provide. Emergency alerts and instructions on what to do can be sent via cell phone, text messaging, TTY, e-mail and office and home phones.
WarnMe is being launched as an opt-in system. To receive warnings and instructions, you must sign up using your CalNet ID at warnMe.berkeley.edu.
You’ll be able to select how to be notified and in which order your chosen devices should receive the warning. The system will attempt to notify you on all numbers and addresses you provide. (Participation in the new system is free, but you may incur a per message cost depending on your mobile device plan.)
The more current and complete your contact information, the more helpful the system will be. You can update your contact information at any time, and updates will become effective within 24 hours. All contact information will be protected and kept private. It will be used only for WarnMe and will not appear in campus directories.
TopThe following are just some of the many workshops, career fairs, and other events for the Career Center presents for graduate students and those who’ve already earned their Ph.D.s. The full range is available online.
SEPTEMBER 17, 24 and OCTOBER 1
Looking Beyond Academia: A Series of Three Workshops
5 to 6:30 p.m., Room 104, Career Center, 2111 Bancroft Way
This is a three-week workshop series on how to identify and pursue professional opportunities outside academia. Topics include assessing interests, identifying options, translating the CV to a resume, job search, interview and salary negotiation strategies. Registration via email is required.
SEPTEMBER 18
Academic Job Search Workshop — “Going Live: Interviews, Job Talks, and Negotiating the Offer”
5 to 6:30 p.m., Career Center, 2111 Bancroft Way
Whether you plan on wading or plunging into the market next fall, here’s a chance to learn a little more about what you’re getting into. The session takes place in the Career Center Info Lab (2111 Bancroft Way, just past the car wash, between Oxford and Shattuck. Take the elevator to the second floor, and enter the Info lab just across the hall).
Before returning to Berkeley, Ph.D. counselor Andrew Green survived the academic job search and spent six years at Connecticut College — serving on numerous search committees. The workshop is free, and doesn’t require advanced registration.
SEPTEMBER 25
Preparing for the Masters/Ph.D. Career & Biotech Fairs and On-Campus Recruiting for Grad Students & PhDs
5 to 6:30 p.m., Room 104A, Career Center, 2111 Bancroft Way
During the first week of October there are two career fairs (Master’s/Ph.D. Career and Biotech) oriented towards employers primarily interested in recruiting candidates with advanced degrees. Learn how to approach potential employers, transform your CV into a resume, and other means of interacting effectively with recruiters from the business, government, and nonprofit sectors. In addition, hundreds of companies will use the CalJobs On-Campus Recruiting (OCR) service to search for new talent, and an increasing number are interested in graduate students and PhDs. This service is free for all graduate students and postdocs, and the Fall recruiting season begins toward the end of September. Learn more about the process, and how to use the system to your best advantage.
Top
Interested in influencing and providing feedback for health-related issues on campus? Two student-run and staff-supported advisory committees to the Tang Center are looking for new graduate student members. If interested, contact Bené Gatzert, the University Health Services staff member who works with the committees, by phone (510- 642-3629), or email.
The Student Health Advisory Committee (SHAC) fosters an organized dialogue between students and the administration about student health and counseling needs, and UHS programs and services. SHAC makes recommendations to the UHS Executive Director and senior managers. Committee members provide consultation on programs/services, student health insurance and budget issues, educational and informational needs of students, accessibility and ease of use, and emerging student issues. SHAC meets three times per semester. Meetings for 2008-09 will be held on Thursdays from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Tang Center on the following dates: September 25, October 23, November 20, February 5, March 5, and April 16 or 23 (to be determined). More information is online.
The Health Fee Advisory Board (HFAB) advises University Health Services-Tang Center and the Associate Vice Chancellor—Health and Human Services on matters related to the Campus Health Care Fee. The committee reviews allocation of the fee monies to meet student health and counseling needs, makes annual recommendation to campus health officials about any increase or decrease in the health care fee level and advises on communicating matters pertaining to the fee to the student body. HFAB meets three to four times per month during the fall and less frequently in the spring. More info is online.
Counseling and Psychological Services will offer several groups during the fall semester. Three of these groups are specifically designed for graduate students. Further details are available in the CPS section of the UHS website. For information beyond what’s there or to register, call CPS at 642-9294. A phone-screening appointment is required to join the group.
Top“Understanding Self and Others” (on campus in the Grad Annex)
Mondays, September 29 through December 8, 4:30 to 6 p.m.“Graduate Women’s Support Group” (on campus in the Grad Annex)
Wednesdays, October 17 through December 8, 4:15 to 5:45 p.m.“Health and Wellness” (in the Tang Center. 2222 Bancroft Way)
Fridays, October 17 through December 12, 3:15 to 4:45 p.m.
Last month Cal Housing added 324 New West Village Apartments to East Village and West Village for a total of 972 apartments in the vibrant University Village community in Albany. Eligibility for the new one bedroom apartments has been expanded to include single graduate students, postdocs and visiting scholars. Students who are married or in committed relationships are still welcome, of course.
All apartments at University Village include gas, electricity, water, garbage, recycling, basic cable TV, internet and a parking space. If you haven’t yet settled on a place to live or are looking to move to someplace different, two bedroom units for student families and a few one bedroom apartments are available now. For more information, contact the Apartments Assignments Office by phone (642-4109) or email.
Top
Miss the Olympics?
See Texture below.
In an op-ed piece at the end of August, Chancellor Robert Birgeneau called the two-week pageant of the Summer Olympic Games “an extraordinary showcase for current and former student-athletes who hailed from California's intercollegiate athletics programs, especially from the Bay Area. Underneath the Red, White and Blue, was a generous amount of Cal Blue and Gold, and plenty of Stanford Cardinal Red, too.” Expressing pride in the accomplishments of the athletes and the leadership provided by Cal coaches, he recalled what he told incoming students that week: ”The five gold, nine silver and three bronze medals won by Cal athletes, including an incoming freshman swimmer, would have placed UC Berkeley at 16th in the medal count if we were a country. Cal's 17 medals put us one ahead of the Netherlands and two ahead of Brazil, a country with a population of 187 million people.” This, he said, “set a record for UC Berkeley at an Olympics and, more importantly, showed that on the global stage, Cal students and all collegiate athletes not only complete — and win — at the very highest levels, they serve as wonderful ambassadors to the world.”
If you’re still suffering Olympics-withdrawal, see Texture, below.
At the beginning of the spring semester, more than three-quarters of Berkeley’s undergraduates — all new freshmen and transfer students in the College of Letters and Science — were given free DVDs of, and asked to watch, two movies by director Ang Lee (of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The Ice Storm fame). The freebies were part of L&S’s youthful program “On the Same Page,” which encourages student engagement in rich intellectual dialogues through activities planned around a central creative work, with the creator on campus to be part of the process.
In the same frame: Ang Lee and James Schamus
Next March, Lee and his longtime collaborator and screenwriter, James Schamus, will be the featured speakers at a series of public programs. Meanwhile, this fall the two films will be the main meat of classes, discussion groups, and seminars on topics like gender, sexuality, and family in Lee’s films; how Lee and Schamus have blurred established film genres; the river in film; and how film recreations of the past enhance or undermine the ways we understand history.
The fall program will include a panel on screenwriting, a Zellerbach Hall presentation by Lee and Schamus, and a Pacific Film Archive retrospective of Lee’s work.
Both men are well known for their separate endeavors, but they have even more notably combined, sometimes interchangeably, on eight feature films, all markedly different from each other (the most famous being Brokeback Mountain, for which Lee won a 2005 Oscar as best director). Schamus is also a published film historian, a member of the faculty at Columbia University — and a three-degree Berkeley alumnus (B.A. ’82, M.A. ’87, and Ph.D. ’03, all in English). A Wikipedia trivium: “Friends, acquaintances, and even rivals sometimes refer to him as James James, Schamus Schamus, or Seamus Seamus because his first and last names are etymological cognates.”
“On the Same Page” started in 2006 with A Briefer History of Time and its author, Stephen Hawking, followed in 2007 by Lincoln at Gettsburg and Garry Wills.
Timothy P. White:
Riverside's new boss
At the beginning of this month, Timothy P. White, an internationally recognized scholar for his work in muscle plasticity, injury, and aging, took the helm of UC Riverside.
An immigrant from Argentina and first-generation college student who attended all three systems of California public higher education, White has three decades of experience in public research universities, including stints here as a student and then as a faculty member. He taught at the University of Michigan, ultimately serving as chair of the kinesiology department. From 1991 to 1996, he was a professor and chair of the human biodynamics department at UC Berkeley. Subsequently, he was at Oregon State University, where he served as dean of the College of Health and Human Sciences, provost, executive vice president and interim president, before his joining the University of Idaho as president in August 2004. White began his higher education at Diablo Valley Community College before earning his B.A. degree from CSU Fresno, M.S. degree from CSU Hayward, capping it off with a Ph.D. in exercise physiology from UC Berkeley.
White joins another Berkeley grad alum in the chancellor ranks. Sung-Mo (Steve) Kang Ph.D. ’75 (EECS) became chancellor of UC Merced in March of 2007, succeeding yet another Berkeley alum, Carol Tomlinson-Keasey Ph.D. ’70 (developmental psychology), Merced’s first leader.
There are a lot of ideas floating around about how you can save on gasoline, some good, some entirely mythical, potentially harmful, and even dangerous. Graduate Division Associate Dean Carlos Fernadez-Pello, a professor of mechanical engineering, recently helped a local TV station sort them out.
Michael Wilson M.P.H. ’98, Ph.D. ’03 is a former firefighter/paramedic and mentally and physically “retains some traits of a first responder.” The 911 calls he dealt with included lots of industrial accidents involving machinery and toxic leaks spills which often had dire and permanent consequences for those involved. Even worse, most were preventable. Wanting to do more than mop up after the fact, came to Berkeley to study the problem. Now a research scientist in the School of Public Health, he has issued two hard-hitting and influential legislative reports on the often-unintentional but widespread abuse of chemicals in our daily business and home lives. A profile of Wilson in the September-October issue of California is headlined “Mr. Clean” and documents his progress, including the recent second report, “Green Chemistry: Cornerstone to a Sustainable California,” co-authored by Megan Schwarzman M.P.H. ’07, whose residency in a low-income clinic convinced her that her patients’ illnesses should have been prevented upstream. Treating them, the article quotes her as saying, “was like trying to catch the ocean in a teacup.”
When Christopher Wolf was still an undergrad here, finishing his B.S. in bioengineering, he wrote a paper with Professor Mohammad Mofrad, who directs Berkeley’s Molecular Cell Biomechanics Laboratory. The paper, in Wolf’s words, “applies engineering methods to the nuclear pore complex, the gateway to the cell’s nucleus.” The paper was accepted by Biophysics Journal, which is published by a society for chemists, biochemists, physical chemist, biologists, neuroscientists, plant and animal physiologists, engineers, mathematician, and physicists. The journal published the paper in its August 15 issue, as its cover story, anchored with an illustration by Wolf, a hybrid image of the nuclear pore complex. Wolf is now an engineering grad student in the Applied Science and Technology Program, aiming at medical school and becoming a neurosurgeon. He’s somewhat hard to keep up with; at 14, he graduated as valedictorian of his high school and was already attending classes at Foothill. His interest in medicine was sparked at the age of nine, when he was reading medical thrillers such as Outbreak by Robin Cook.
Glad you asked: Here’s the explanation provided in the Biophysical Journal for Christopher Wolf’s cover illustration. Take a deep breath.
Hybrid representation of the basic octagonal structure of the nuclear pore complex (NPC) based on a finite element mesh that was constructed on structural topology obtained from electron microscopy (6)
of the complex. These NPCs comprise the only gateways that traverse the nuclear envelope and provide persistent nucleocytoplasmic transport for processes crucial to the continued operation of the cell such as
protein transcription, cellular replication, and other such events where nucleocytoplasmic transport plays a major role. Despite such relevance to the cell, the exact mechanisms used by the NPC to effect complete
cargo complex transport remain unknown, although the NPC itself exhibits very high rates of transport for cargo complexes of all sizes. The ramifications of proper quantification of the NPC and associated transport
mechanics would be of great benefit toward the development of antiviral therapeutics and enhancing genetic transfection efficiency. This work represents a theoretical analysis on the eightfold symmetry of the NPC
and a biocomputational analysis based on several models, one of which is the finite element analysis model shown; with this treatment, we strive to present a cohesive biophysical model that can accurately and precisely predict the biomechanics and associated dynamics behind nucleocytoplasmic transport via the NPC. See the article by Wolf and Mofrad on page 2073. Biophysics Journal.
Alternative Visions
Jean-Luc Godard: Movie Love in the Sixties
Unknown Pleasures: The Films of Jia Zhangke
Before Big: The Early Films of David Lean
The Pacific Film Archive Theater is located at 2575 Bancroft Way (between Telegraph and Bowditch) in Berkeley. Advance tickets are available by calling (510) 642-5249 or online. More information is available online.
Top
“God’s Problem and Human Solution: How the Bible Explains Suffering,” a Foerster Lecture by Bart Ehrman, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is now online, joining the array of Graduate Council Lectures that are available through UCTV and YouTube. (The lecture in the video below starts playing within 45 seconds after clicking the "play" button)
Top
Miss the Olympics? You can still catch behind-the-scenes detail on Cal-related competitors in Beijing on YouTube, through the dispatches of video journalist Jigar Mehta, who has both undergraduate and graduate degrees from Berkeley (one each; a B.S. in mechanical engineering and a master’s in journalism). Mehta is a principal in SEB Media and makes online video reports for The New York Times. He went to Beijing and reported, in installments, for the Cal faithful.
Here, for instance, is his interview with Natalie Coughlin, who won six medals in Beijing, bringing her Olympic total so far to 11, the most for any Cal woman. Oh, and those six medals are the most won by any American female athlete in modern Olympic history, and, by the way, she’s the first woman ever to win 100-meter backstroke gold medals in two consecutive Olympics. Meanwhile, as if this were what it was all about, in addition to the combined heft of her Olympic metal and the records she shattered, Coughlin has joined the august ranks of Sports Crunch’s 50 Hottest Women in Sports (#35) and 50 Hottest Female Athletes of All Time (#36) as well as (of course) the 50 Hottest Female Olympians of the 2008 Summer Olympics (#8).
Natalie Coughlin with her five medals from 2004, before she picked up six more: a champion, no question. And apparently her degree of hotness has somehow been calculated, as well. (Photo: Jeffery Kahn)
FYI: newcomers to the iSchool, a.ka. the School of Information, pursue a cutting-edge field in South Hall, which was completed in 1873 and is the oldest building on campus. (Photo: Peg Skorpinski)
The School of Information is kicking off the 2008-09 academic year with 44 new students and three new professors. Four of the students are working on Ph.D.s (two come from Berkeley, two from Stanford). The other 40 students come from seven countries, including Korea, India, Japan, China, the Philippines, and Canada. There is evidence that they are able to stand companionably on successively rising levels packed like sardines.
The exterior of South Hall, in pre-digital days, seen from the west.
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.