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A crowd of some 3,900 in black caps and gowns, and 21,000 fanatically proud fans in the stands above, turned out at California Memorial Stadium for Saturday’s Commencement Convocation 2013. Apple co-founder and Berkeley alum Steve Wozniak keynoted the event, which was held in the sports venue for the first time in more than 40 years.
Education archive
Student graduation speaker on ‘vaulting off a page and into the world’
May 22, 2013: At the English department’s 2013 commencement, student speaker Prachi Naik ’13 pays respects “to the connective tissue of our world, that glimmering lattice of convergences [that is] made most brilliant, most visible through literature.”
Jerry Brown tells grads ‘you can make change’ 
May 20, 2013: California Gov. Jerry Brown praised students for making a difference in the last election, and encouraged them to continue their activism to improve the world, in his keynote speech at Monday’s political-science graduation.
Marlene Castro: Back to middle school, on a mission
May 16, 2013:
Marlene Castro loved learning, but life in East Palo Alto and Redwood City, where her family alternately lived, made it tough. In an environment of gangs, weapons and school lockdowns, the high-achieving student was bullied constantly in middle school and high school – even jumped on and beaten.
New grads head back to class, as Teach for America recruits
May 16, 2013: Dozens of UC Berkeley grads are heading to Teach for America, a national teacher corps that ranks UC Berkeley No. 1 for the number of recruits who join, giving kids in poverty a top education.
Biology scholars thank Birgeneau, Breslauer
May 13, 2013: More than 50 students and 30 alumni of Berkeley’s Biology Scholars Program gathered recently in the Durant Hall atrium to thank Chancellor Robert Birgeneau and Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost George Breslauer for their support.
Holder urges law-school grads to work for ‘a better world’
May 13, 2013: U.S. Attorney Gen. Eric Holder delivered the commencement address at Berkeley Law on Saturday, congratulating graduates on what he called “your chance to help realize your vision of a better world.” Here is a video excerpt of his remarks.
Chancellors see Berkeley’s future through students’ eyes
May 3, 2013: Dirks, who takes over as Berkeley’s chancellor on June 1, and Robert Birgeneau, who has held that position for nine years, took a lunch meeting in a Durant Hall conference room with the winners of the campus’s Fiat Lux Remix contest.
Students check out incoming chancellor
May 3, 2013: Nicholas Dirks introduced himself and fielded questions at a conversational meet-up Thursday afternoon between UC Berkeley students and the campus’s next chancellor. About 100 people turned out for what Dirks called one of the “first of a long series of conversations with you.” Earlier in the day, Chancellor Birgeneau and Dirks met with student winners of the “Fiat Lux Remix” contest.
How graduate-student instructors help undergrads thrive
April 30, 2013: At a large research university like Berkeley, graduate-student instructors play a vital role in undergrads’ academic lives. “Letter Home,” the Cal Parents newsletter, explores what GSIs bring to the educational equation — and the training that helps prepare them to be effective teachers and mentors.
Chancellor looks back: ‘a period where leadership mattered’
April 26, 2013: In an interview with NBC11, Robert Birgeneau talks access and excellence, Dreamers, and how — despite a budget model for UC Berkeley that has changed in response to severe state funding cuts during his time as chancellor — “we still spend our money, as we should, like a public university.”
‘Fitness for All’ is an exercise in inclusion
April 24, 2013: Campus staffer and Cal grad Matt Grigorieff is the driving force behind Fitness for All, a new program that aims to provide health and fitness options to UC Berkeley students with disabilities. Among the first offerings is a class on goalball, a court sport that puts blind and sighted players on a level playing field.
Fourth-generation Berkeley student lands prize for water work
April 19, 2013: The Blum Center’s Rebecca Peters, whose classroom work and field research focus on issues of water security, management and equity, is one of 62 “exceptional college juniors” nationwide selected as 2013 Harry S. Truman scholars.
Celebrating 40 years of fostering student success
April 16, 2013: Testimonies about lives changed, often against the odds, flowed freely at a weekend gala celebrating the Student Learning Center’s 40 years on campus. Providing academic support to 8,500 undergrads annually (80,000 since its launch), the SLC has much to do with Berkeley’s high retention and graduation rates, as many of its alums attested.
Chancellor honored for aid to Dream Act students
April 16, 2013: “I myself am a beneficiary of a community that supported my education,” Chancellor Birgeneau told an appreciative audience at Oakland’s Scottish Rite Center, where he accepted the Centro Legal de La Raza’s “Visionary Leadership Award.”
From high school dropout to U.S. Gates Cambridge scholar 
April 16, 2013: Justin Park dropped out of high school, but he never lost his love of literature and learning. After 20 years as a bartender, bike messenger and military man, Park returned to school at UC Berkeley, graduated — and now has been selected as a Gates Cambridge Scholar, a top world honor.
Contest winners shine new light on Fiat Lux
April 9, 2013: The Fiat Lux Remix contest invited students, faculty and staff members to revisit images of UC campuses commissioned in the mid-1960s by then-President Clark Kerr and taken by legendary photographer Ansel Adams – and published in the book Fiat Lux – and give them their own spin.
#GlobalPOV: Art, videos and Twitter take poverty curriculum to the world
April 8, 2013: Three Cal alumni and teachers — a live-action sketch artist, a social-media proselytizer and a brilliant professor who is also an unapologetic Bono fan — have teamed up to create artful, provocative videos and brought Twitter into the classroom. The goal: to extend the teachings of Berkeley’s biggest minor, Global Poverty and Practice, online. The project could be a model for a new kind of public scholarship and online education.
42 years on, Berkeley’s provost is ready to leave the nest
April 4, 2013: George Breslauer was a 25-year-old Kremlinologist when he arrived at Berkeley in 1971 for his first teaching job. He never dreamed he’d become an administrator, much less the No. 2 man at the nation’s No. 1 public university.
Searching for ‘the Berkeley spark’ in Sub-Saharan Africa
April 3, 2013: Admission officer Lin Larson traveled to top high schools in Sub-Saharan Africa to talk to disadvantaged, talented young students about UC Berkeley and opportunities to be a MasterCard Foundation Scholar.
Bears’ winning formula? Aim high, don’t forget to dance 
April 2, 2013: Head coach Lindsay Gottlieb, 35, has just led the women’s basketball team to the NCAA Final Four. In a Q&A, she talks about personal influences, her approach to mentoring student-athletes and connecting with fans, and what makes Cal’s diverse team click.
Centro Legal de la Raza to honor Birgeneau
March 26, 2013: Centro Legal de la Raza, a Bay Area organization that supports the rights of immigrant, low-income and Latino communities, has named Robert Birgeneau as recipient of a “visionary-leadership award,” for his efforts on behalf of undocumented students. The chancellor will be honored April 12 at the center’s 44th-anniversary gala.
Edwin Okong’o, ‘storyteller by any medium necessary’
March 26, 2013: Swahili instructor by day, comedian by night, campus lecturer Edwin Okong’o mines the immigrant experience for comic gold in his stand-up routines. A “storyteller by any medium necessary,” the Cal journalism grad also speaks his truth as radio-show co-host, writer, reporter and award-winning video producer.
I School research looks at online collaboration and MOOCs
March 25, 2013: How can students work together in the new generation of online courses? And how can online systems support and encourage peer learning? A new UC Berkeley School of Information research project aims to answer these questions and more.
BBC video features Asian ‘Dreamers’ at Berkeley
March 21, 2013: Across California, Asian students make up 46 percent of ‘Dreamers’ (who would benefit from the proposed DREAM Act) on UC campuses. Undocumented Asians at Berkeley are featured in a BBC news video.
Ph.D. students rethink the tenure track, scope out non-academic jobs
March 20, 2013: Traditionally, the holy grail for doctoral students has been a professorship at a prestigious university. But in a sign of changing times, many Ph.D. students are now seeking jobs outside higher ed. Enter “Beyond Academia,” a career conference organized by Ph.D. students and postdocs.
Attention high schoolers: March 23 talk on “survival of the kindest”
March 19, 2013: UC Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner is the next speaker (Sat., Mar. 23, 10 a.m.) in the Nano-High series of talks sponsored by Berkeley Lab. Any high school student or teacher can sign up online and drop in to hear about cutting-edge scientific issues of the day. Keltner’s talk is titled “The Compassionate Instinct: A Darwinian Tale of Survival of the Kindest.”
From ‘Beat Street’ to Berkeley
March 19, 2013: A visiting assistant professor in the music department, J. Griffith “Griff” Rollefson has carved out a unique specialty for himself in the world of musicology. He’s not just a go-to guy when it comes to the study of hip hop and its cultural impact. He’s the go-to guy in the field of European hip hop.
Berkeley’s top teaching honor goes to five faculty
March 18, 2013: Among the many illustrious faculty at UC Berkeley, five have been ben selected as winners of the prestigious 2012 Distinguished Teaching Award, which recognizes teaching that incites intellectual curiosity in students, engages them thoroughly in the enterprise of learning and has a lifelong impact.
Berkeley’s new honor code ‘a living, breathing document’
March 18, 2013: The UC Berkeley Honor Code is a student-driven document – and, for a large research university, a pioneering one – that grew out of discussions between the ASUC, the Graduate Assembly, the Academic Senate and the deans of the College of Letters and Science, which accounts for more than half of Berkeley’s faculty and three in four of its undergrads.
