Teaching

Sitting on laurels

Berkeley’s biggest gift ever will bring the campus 100 new endowed chairs — good news for the faculty and great news for undergraduates

By Wendy Edelstein

Fall 2007 | This fall, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation made a groundbreaking $110 million challenge gift to endow 100 new faculty chairs, the largest gift ever to UC Berkeley. A “chair” is an endowment that generates funds to support the work of top professors — funds that can be critical in recruiting and retaining the finest faculty. But the new chairs promise to be a boon to undergraduates, too. Here three creative Berkeley professors explain how their chairs are enriching undergraduate education.

Using technology to make anthropology come alive

Meg Conkey Peg Skorpinski photo

A decade ago, Meg Conkey, who holds the Class of 1960 Chair in Undergraduate Education, turned down an attractive offer from an east coast university to stay at Berkeley. In return, she asked that she be allowed to develop a campus multimedia-teaching lab. Using funds from her endowed chair, Conkey helped establish the Class of 1960 Multimedia Authoring Center for Teaching in Anthropology, a Macintosh-based laboratory with the latest in web and CD/DVD publishing software and hardware. In the lab undergrads now develop the computer skills necessary to turn their research into captivating audio-visual presentations.

Images are at the heart of archaeology, says Conkey. In fact, anthropology is about the visual representation of people and culture, so creating multimedia-rich presentations is a more active way to learn for most students. It is “increasingly the way many students engage with ideas and issues,” she explains. Her undergraduates have created projects on a wide range of topics — from archaeology during the Ice Age to the depiction of prehistorical gender roles on the Web to efforts to preserve a ninth-century Cambodian temple.

Conkey has presented her students’ work in other classes and public lectures. “Their ideas and interpretations have the potential to reach a much wider audience” than they would in a written report, she says.

The multimedia lab is also a place where students can share their new technical know-how. In an anthropology field-methods class that Conkey developed with a colleague, undergrads spend one afternoon a week teaching computer skills to underserved students at an Oakland middle school, enabling sixth-graders to access — and achieve competence in — the digital world. “The kids create digital stories about themselves, their backgrounds and identity, and the material culture of their families,” explains Conkey.

With chair funding, Conkey annually upgrades the multimedia lab, supports undergrad travel to conferences and field work, develops tutorials in new research methods, and supplements her department’s budget for adding new courses.

Tyrone Hayes Peg Skorpinski photo

Giving back in a big way

During his four years as an undergraduate at Harvard University, the holder of the Class of 1943 Memorial Chair, Tyrone Hayes, worked in a lab where graduate students treated him like one of their own. Hayes credits that experience with helping him complete his Ph.D. at Berkeley in a speedy three and a half years. “Knowing how it affected my own career, I’ve always made an effort to give that opportunity to undergraduates,” says Hayes.

In his research, Hayes focuses on the role of hormones in growth and development — how chemicals and pesticides stress and affect immune-system development and function in amphibians.

To staff his labs, Hayes seeks out freshmen and sophomores willing to learn the basics as volunteers. After their initial semester, all undergrads in his labs receive stipends. As they advance, students learn a variety of lab techniques — how to measure hormones, handle histology procedures, and assess development of animal tissue. By their third semester, they are equipped to run the project and train other students in the techniques they’ve learned.

“They really grow from an assistant to a technician to someone who’s involved in every aspect of the research,” says Hayes.

For Hayes, part of teaching undergrads about the world of research includes offering them a lesson in the harsh realities of fundraising. He requires that students write an annual proposal for that purpose. Doing so “really requires them to understand the project inside and out,” he explains.

One real benefit of chair funding is that it gives Hayes the ability to offer opportunities and experience in laboratory work to those who otherwise might not be able to take advantage of it. “Not every student can afford to go to school, work, and volunteer in a lab,” observes Hayes, “so the chair funds allow me to attract a greater diversity of students from various socioeconomic backgrounds.”

Dave Donrfeld Peg Skorpinski photo

Planting the seeds for graduate school

Including undergraduates in his lab is a “no-brainer,” says Dave Dornfeld, who holds the Will C. Hall Family Chair in Engineering. “Besides being exceptionally motivated, they’re really smart.” Dornfeld’s research is in the field of “sustainable manufacturing,” creating green manufacturing technologies and evaluating mechanized processes to measure the resources and energy they use.

Dornfeld uses funds from his chair to hire students to work in his lab during the summer and to purchase resources for their independent projects during the academic year. Students build databases to track lab findings and create simulations to aid in analyzing how environmentally friendly a given manufacturing process really is.

Since Dornfeld has focused his research on sustainable manufacturing, his teams have become more gender balanced, a noteworthy shift in the male-dominated world of manufacturing engineering. “I’m finding this area of research is very attractive to young women who are smart and motivated and who want to apply themselves to an area that has social impact,” says Dornfeld. “This work is drawing women [to the field] who otherwise might not think of engineering as a career.”

Dornfeld next plans to involve undergrads in writing reports based on their research. With the help of funds from his chair, he will cover their travel expenses to technical conferences where they present their findings.

“Maybe we’ll see some of these kids back in graduate school,” says Dornfeld. “Whether it’s at Berkeley or not is not all that important. What is important is that, if they’re smart and motivated, they’ll think about graduate school as the next step.”

For more information about the Hewlett Challenge, visit newscenter.berkeley.edu/goto/hewlett.