News briefs

17 April 2002 |

Nader to speak April 26 at Clark Kerr Campus
Consumer advocate and former U.S. presidential candidate Ralph Nader will speak on corporate and government responsibility at 4 p.m., Friday, April 26. The lecture will be held in the Krutch Auditorium, Clark Kerr Campus. Seating is limited; admission will be on a first-come-first-served basis.

Named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential Americans of the 20th century, Nader was instrumental in creating the EPA, OSHA and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and in the passage of numerous pieces of national legislation. Calling the two-party system a “duopoly,” he ran as Green Party presidential candidate in 2000. In his latest citizen initiative, he is working with alumni classes to organize community projects that advance social justice.

The talk is sponsored by the Goldman School of Public Policy. For information, call 642-4670.

Memorial Stadium set for new press box
Construction of a 100-seat temporary press box to replace Memorial Stadium’s former facility will begin this summer, now that most of the original press box has been demolished.

The temporary facility will be completed in time for the 2002 football season, as part of the campus’s seismic action plan. The press box was the only portion of the stadium to receive a “very poor” rating in the campus’s seismic study; construction of the new facility signals the first step in a long-term program of seismic improvement at the stadium.

Because the stadium is not considered an educational facility by the state, seismic retrofitting is dependent on private funding, said Cal athletic director Steve Gladstone. As part of the seismic retrofitting to take place over the next decade, athletics hopes to add new locker rooms and offices for women’s sports teams, new restrooms, concession stands and concourse areas and expanded weight and training facilities.

Approximately 800 Cal football season ticket holders sitting at the top of the stadium’s west side will be temporarily relocated during construction of the new press box.

Users may customize CalNet IDs
Faculty and staff can now change their pre-assigned numeric CalNet IDs to a name of their own choosing by visiting calnet.berkeley.edu.
The new service is optional but can only be exercised once. Users’ CalNet ID must be activated before the change can be made. For information, e-mail calnet-admin@uclink.berkeley.edu.

‘Eligibility in Local Context’ boosts UC enrollments
UC’s two-year-old Eligibility in the Local Context program boosted enrollment in 2001 and provided opportunities to a greater number of deserving students in the program’s second year, according to a new report.

Approximately 2,065 new applications were received as a direct result of the program in its first year, the university study said.

Under Eligibility in the Local Context, the top 4 percent of students in the senior class of each participating California high school are granted UC eligibility, based on their successful completion of college preparatory course work.

In 2001, most of California’s high schools participated in the program and the number of applications grew by nearly 20 percent. The growth indicates that more students from rural and urban schools are pursuing a UC education. Application estimates at participating schools also show strong gains for underrepresented students.

Microcredit pioneer explores use of technology to end poverty
Muhammad Yunus, a pioneer in the movement to provide "micro-loans" to the poor, discusses "Creating a Poverty-Free World Through Information Technology" at 4 p.m., Friday, April 19 in the Bechtel Engineering Center’s Sibley Auditorium.

Yunus is the founder and managing director of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and has gained international renown for developing the concept of micro-loans to help the poor become self-sufficient.

In his lecture, Yunus will discuss the role information technology plays in helping people escape poverty — as when satellite phones transformed a farming village in Bangladesh.

The talk is sponsored by the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society, or CITRIS.

Researchers pursue‘Do babies matter?’
Mary Ann Mason, dean of the Graduate Division, and Marc Goulden, principal analyst of the Graduate Division, have been awarded a $30,000 research grant to pursue a project called, “Do Babies Matter? The Role of Family in the Careers of Academic Women and Men: From Graduate School through Retirement.”

The study, funded by the Association for Institutional Research, will draw on data from the National Science Foundation to paint a portrait of the effects of family on the career paths of academic women and men. The study will examine issues of cause and effect, family and career timing, and spatial patterns. The project begins June 1 and continues through May 31, 2003.

UC’s 24-hour TV to air on local Berkeley channel
The University of California’s 24-hour educational cable channel, UCTV, will soon air locally on Berkeley Community Television, Channel 25 on AT&T, as well as on other local channels.

In addition, Berkeley staff, faculty and students automatically have round-the-clock access to the UC station online (at www.uctv.tv/streaming.shtml), as well as on closed-circuit TV in California Hall and about 30 classrooms around campus.

UCTV programming features documentaries, faculty lectures, cutting-edge research, symposiums and artistic performances from all of the UC campuses on a daily basis. Nationwide, the cable station reaches more than seven million households on Channel 9412 of the Dish Network.

Correction
An article in the April 11 issue of the Berkeleyan, entitled “Forces that Shape the Bay,” incorrectly identified Ian Carmichael as an associate dean of the Graduate Division. He is a former associate dean of the Graduate Division.