Student Achievement

Honors at graduation

The 2007 commencement season saw some 5,000 remarkable Berkeley students earn diplomas. Here’s a look at the year’s top graduates

By Yasmin Anwar & Wendy Edelstein

Top graduating senior is ‘quintessential Berkeley’

Adrian Down with a fistful of radishes in the student garden. Steve McConnell photos

An eclectic mind takes University Medalist Adrian Down from particle physics to teaching kids to organic gardening, drinking in all that Berkeley offers

Summer 2007 | Most days, Adrian Down might be found pushing a wheelbarrow around the campus’s student organic garden. Resembling a tropical frog or brash tourist, he’s often garbed in an orange T-shirt, blue plaid shorts, and blue and pink sneakers.

But goofy thrift-store outfits belie Down’s wisdom and humility. His 3.9 grade-point average, intense scientific curiosity, and altruism have earned the math and physics major the 2007 University Medal — Berkeley’s top honor for a graduating senior.

Shaped by a world of experiences Four finalists for the University Medal — the cream of Berkeley’s academic crop — share insight into what makes exceptional students tick > From the podium A brief sampling of Class of ’07 sendoffs >

Since arriving at Berkeley in 2003, Down has published scholarly articles on extra-spatial dimensions; taught science and math to low-income urban youth and yoga to the disabled; perfected his French; practiced the martial art of Hankido (he’s also a black belt in Tae Kwon Do); played alto saxophone and guitar; grown organic fruits and vegetables; and provided nutritious food to folks who shop mostly at convenience and liquor stores.

“Adrian is quintessential Berkeley,” wrote Stephen Andrews Jr., coordinator of UC Berkeley’s Environmental Science Teaching Program and lecturer in environmental earth science, in his letter recommending Down for the University Medal.

In his application essay for the medal, the Canadian-born, North Carolina-educated Down likened his success at Berkeley to the growth of a tomato, with a seed finding new fertile soil and drawing on the environment to thrive.

The metaphor is apt. Down became interested in food policy and access in high school after reading Frances Moore Lappe’s book Diet for a Small Planet. He also became a vegan.

When it was time to apply for college, he covered the traditional East Coast bases. But he soon discovered Berkeley was where he was meant to be. “I’ve visited friends at Harvard, and when I got there, I was really glad I ended up at Berkeley,” Down says. “Everything I’ve gotten here has been really ideal, and has fit me very well.”

One highlight during his first semester was an environmental studies class he took with former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass. In his second semester, he discovered the organic garden at the corner of Walnut and Virginia streets in Berkeley. As his math and physics coursework became more challenging, he looked to the garden to ground him. “Gardening refreshes my mind,” he explains. He also joined UC Berkeley’s Environmental Science Teaching Program, through which he taught elementary and junior high school students.

Oddly enough, math and physics did not come easily to Down when he started out. He has watched his young students struggle, too, and that has inspired him to study the internal and external barriers that prevent many minorities and women from going into the sciences.

When Down applied to the Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program in 2005, physicist Yury Kolomensky grabbed him right away to study matter and anti-matter. “Adrian was — and is — the intellectual leader of the (student research team),” Kolomensky wrote in his nominating letter. “The analysis work he has done is of very high quality, on par with what would be expected from the graduate students in particle physics.”

Eventually, Down expects to go to graduate school, but to do what? His future is up in the air right now, but one thing is constant for him, and that’s the garden. “If I had to choose the place most important to me in Berkeley, it’s definitely the garden,” he says. “Without a doubt.”