Student Honors

University Medalist

By Yasmin Anwar

Lane Rettig (Bonnie Azab Powell photo)

Summer 2006 | If Lane Rettig were a cartoon, he’d be a blur. On any given day, he’s got groundbreaking educational software to design, inner-city children to mentor, Japanese literature to translate, new languages to master, and new countries to explore.

To top it off, the New Jersey small-town boy, who started his first Internet company at age 14, recently landed the highest honor for a graduating senior at Berkeley. As the winner of the University Medal, Rettig spoke at Commencement Convocation last May and received a $2,500 scholarship.

Then he headed to Shanghai to study Mandarin.

A computer science and Japanese double major with a 3.96 grade-point average, Rettig didn’t earn the University Medal by holing up in the library.

Since his arrival on campus in 2002, Rettig has jet-setted around the world completing studies abroad in England, Japan, and China; worked as a system administrator; mastered Japanese; volunteered at an orphanage in Thailand; and designed software to educate children in developing countries. He’s also been a mentor to 5th graders at a Berkeley elementary school.

“What impresses me about Lane . . . is his supreme balance:
of numbers and words, of American and Japanese, of intellectual and emotional I.Q., of serious purpose and a sense of humor,” said H. Mack Horton, chair of East Asian Languages and Cultures, in his letter recommending Rettig for the medal.

The fact is, whether Rettig is studying medieval history or oceanography, he cannot bear to give less than 150 percent.

“It’s not hard to get an A, but if you actually want to take something valuable from that class, to learn something that you are going to use in life, then that’s a lot more work,” Rettig said. “I’m not happy with shallow involvement.”