Studies find Latino toddlers' gap in cognitive growth
Two new studies led by UC Berkeley researchers find that immigrant Latina mothers, who typically live in poor neighborhoods, give birth to healthy babies, but their toddlers start to lag behind middle-class white children in basic language and cognitive skills by the age of 2 or 3.
(20 October)

Honorary degrees for students affected by World War II internment order
Approximately 500 Japanese Americans, whose education at UC Berkeley was interrupted by a 1942 executive order that confined about 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry to internment camps, are eligible to receive honorary degrees at a special campus ceremony on Sunday, Dec. 13.
(08 September)

Law school enhances loan forgiveness program in response to tough economy
In an effort to help its students and alumni during the current economic crisis, the UC Berkeley School of Law has significantly strengthened its Loan Repayment Assistance Program, already one of the nation's most generous loan forgiveness plans.
(03 September)

Berkeley Unified's racial integration plan a model for other school districts nationwide, says new report
A new UC Berkeley-UCLA report says the Berkeley Unified School District's plan to maintain diversity could serve as a model for other public schools nationwide that are seeking constitutionally sound desegregation programs. Not only has the integration plan achieved substantial integration, it was upheld earlier this year by the state appellate court, a decision that the California Supreme Court allowed to stand.
(01 September)

Latest U.S. News rankings place Berkeley, again, at the top of the publics
U.S. News & World Report's 2010 guide to "America's Best Colleges," released yesterday, ranked Berkeley 21st among 262 public and private "national universities" offering doctoral degrees.
(21 August)

McNair Scholars, 300 strong, converge at Berkeley to showcase their research
Last weekend 300 undergrads from around the country converged on the Berkeley campus for the four-day McNair Scholars symposium, where they shared research findings in a wide range of fields, from sociology to bioscience, and celebrated their completion of the program and their ambitions for grad school and the future.
(12 August)

Smarts, for sure — but what other qualities make a good lawyer?
The LSAT, in tandem with GPA, the gold standard for U.S. law-school admissions, may do a great job identifying potentially stellar law students — but picking the ones who will ultimately make the best lawyers takes a broader approach, according to groundbreaking research by two Berkeley experts.
(04 August)

Communal Webcasting platform to beef up campus's popular educational content
As a growing number of worldwide learners log on, free of charge, to video and podcast lectures and events at UC Berkeley, the campus is leading an international effort to build a communal Webcasting platform to more easily record and distribute its popular educational content.
(28 July)

Berkeley will remain great, but will it retain its public character?
In a July 22 blog post on the Atlantic website, correspondent Erik Tarloff decried the impending cuts at UC Berkeley, resulting from California's budget crisis, as a "great tragedy" whose damage is "likely to be irreversible." Chancellor Robert Birgeneau responds.
(24 July)

Growing young scientists in Tahiti
Graduate student Brad Balukjian spent a year teaching biodiversity to Tahitian 5th graders on the island of Moorea while pursuing study of the island's endemic insects.
(06 July)

As voters weigh state's budget options, UC Berkeley eyes severe options for addressing cuts
With a slate of critical ballot propositions facing voters on Tuesday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger yesterday offered two revised scenarios for mending the state's worsening budget outlook. One is bad news for the University of California. The other, for some, is too grim to contemplate.
(15 May)

Mentoring is its own reward … but plaques are nice, too
A recent round of awards honor the campus's invaluable graduate-student instructors . . . and the faculty who mentor them.
(07 May)

American Cultures: Discussing differences, building bridges
"Tough conversations" about race and ethnicity occur almost daily at Berkeley, many of them in classes designed to meet a campus requirement dating to the late 1980s.
(09 April)

PACE hosts teacher pay conferences
New ways of compensating teachers in an era of ferocious budget shortfalls will be the topic of discussion for about 400 school superintendents, leaders of teacher organizations and school board members from across California at conferences next Monday and Tuesday (March 30-31) in Oakland and Los Angeles.
(26 March)

Political scientist Henry Brady new Goldman School dean
Political scientist Henry E. Brady, a leading scholar of public opinion, political movements, politics and public policy in the United States, Canada, Russia, Estonia and other countries, has been appointed dean of the University of California, Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy.
(20 March)

U.S. economy spurs foreign students to return home, study says
Most foreign nationals studying at universities in the United States say American higher education is the best in the world, but few plan to remain in this country after graduation to pursue their careers, according to a new study co-authored by a UC Berkeley, authority on technology and the global economy.
(19 March)

Who teaches the teachers? Spelling out the ABCs of pedagogy
While technology has revolutionized the classroom, the past decade has seen a wave of new research on how people learn. Barbara Gross Davis rewrote her 1993 Tools for Teaching to address both these developments.
(11 March)

Stiles Hall: a 'living room' with a committed fan club
It's a student-services center, a cauldron of social causes, an incubator for campus and community initiatives, and an important contributor to Berkeley's diversity.
(04 March)

Kepler in the classroom
Just as NASA's Kepler mission and its search for habitable planets has grabbed the public's attention, Alan Gould hopes that the mission will galvanize student interest in science as well. Since 2001, Gould, coordinator of the Lawrence Hall of Science (LHS) space science programs, has been gearing up for launch as Kepler's co-investigator for education and public outreach.
(03 March)

MBA competition to address D.C. schools performance
Ten teams from top business schools around the country will set their sights on improving the public school system in the nation's capitol in the third annual Education Leadership Case Competition at the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business on Feb. 20-21.
(10 February)

BILD-ing toward a more welcoming campus
The Berkeley Initiative for Leadership on Diversity reaches farther in year two.
(11 December)

Where everybody knows your name
CAL Prep gets kids ready for Cal — and Cal ready for those kids.
(03 December)

Initiative sets educational standards . . . the Berkeley way
Helping schools and departments think through what their undergrads should know.
(03 December)

Economy tanking? Invest in higher ed
To dig out of recession, campus researcher advises, expand access to colleges and universities for tomorrow's 'human capital' .
(03 December)

EEGs show brain differences between poor and rich kids
Children from well-off families have an inherent advantage over those from poor families, but new research shows an added plus. The brains of kids from low socioeconomic levels show decreased activity in the prefrontal cortex - which governs attention and deals with novel situations - compared to the brains of children from high socioeconomic levels.
(02 December)

Big science and Berkeley's soul
As state funds shrivel, faculty reflect on how to avoid the potential pitfalls of campus's growing dependence on private research dollars.
(20 November)

The 'five W's' go to multimedia boot camp
Film at 11? That's so Old School — try Flash at dawn, streaming video at noon, and enthusiastic local coverage around the clock. Berkeley's first-year journalism students aim to succeed where newspapers have failed.
(20 November)

Do babies matter in science?
A true measure of gender equity in academia would look at both the career and family outcomes of female Ph.D.s.
(05 November)

PACE studies offer recommendations for California schools
State leaders rely on inconsistent barometers of student progress, face a looming teacher shortage and wrestle with staggering and persistent achievement gaps - yet, these problems all can be addressed, at least in part, without infusions of new money, according to a comprehensive report released today (Thursday, Oct. 2) by Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE).
(02 October)

New studies assess impacts of "No Child" reforms
Teachers across America are redoubling efforts to lift children's achievement but report declining morale under stiff accountability policies and state-mandated curricula, according to seven new studies published today (Wednesday, Aug. 20) by UC Berkeley scholars and associates.
(20 August)

Girls' and boys' math performance now equal
Despite perceptions by many parents and teachers, there is no differnce in math performance between girls and boys. A new study by UC Berkeley's Marcia Linn and University of Wisconsin colleagues shows that in both elementary and high school, girls and boys do equally well on math assessment tests.
(24 July)

Chancellor Birgeneau honored with 2008 Academic Leadership Award from the Carnegie Corporation
Honoring what it called two higher education "visionaries" and "champions of excellence and equity in education," the Carnegie Corporation announced it has awarded UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau and Syracuse University Chancellor and President Nancy Cantor its 2008 Academic Leadership Award.
(17 June)

Breath of Life for California's native languages
At a time when only about half of California's 90-plus indigenous languages have living speakers, a language conference being held this month at the University of California, Berkeley, may help tribal members become the first to speak their endangered tribal languages in 50 years.
(06 June)

Distinguished Teaching Award 2008 winners
Four professors in the arts and humanities, social sciences and environmental design are recipients of this year's Distinguished Teaching Award at UC Berkeley.
(16 April)

UC to offer admission to all eligible undergraduates for 2008-09
The University of California will continue to offer admission in fall 2008 to all undergraduate applicants who meet its eligibility requirements, despite the fact that the governor’s budget proposes to cut state funding for the university in 2008-09, UC officials announced last week.
(05 March)

Keeping the fruits of knowledge within reach
With subscription costs for traditional academic journals on the rise, the newly launched Berkeley Research Impact Initiative offers subsidies to campus scholars wishing to take the open-access publishing route, and hope for a new model of sustainability.
(27 February)

PACE reports says state's schools holding steady or improving
A new report from Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) says California's public school students lag behind much of the nation in most areas, but have managed to hold steady or improve across subjects and grade levels, with graduation rates also eking upward in era of lagging resources, a growing population and increasing diversity.
(27 February)

New digital projects teach English in India, monitor air pollution
An online mystery game in which student sleuths will monitor air pollution in South Central Los Angeles and in Cairo, Egypt, and a project using cell phones to teach English to children in India have won funding for two University of California, Berkeley, professors.
(25 February)

Chancellor Birgeneau on keeping public universities affordable: ‘We have to start now’
Even before Harvard announced plans to extend financial aid to students from families with incomes up to $180,000, Chancellor Birgeneau was addressing the challenge of ensuring that qualified low- and middle-income students could afford to attend UC Berkeley. In this interview with the Berkeleyan, he talks about what he's learned — and what needs to be done.
(30 January)

Albert Bowker, innovative chancellor, dies at age 88
Albert Bowker, a former chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, an expert is statistics and an innovative administrator during his decades-long career in higher education across the country, died Sunday in a retirement home in Portola Valley, Calif. He was 88 and had been suffering from pancreatic cancer.
(22 January)

UC Berkeley: Craigslist to establish first endowed faculty chair in new media
UC Berkeley announced plans on Jan. 17 to establish the first endowed faculty chair at the Berkeley Center for New Media with a donation of $1.6 million from craigslist, one of the most popular Web sites in the world. The donation, which will support research, symposia and lectures, will be matched with $1.5 million from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation for a total of $3.1 million.
(17 January)