News Briefs

Save the date for Cal Day

Winter 2007 | If you haven’t seen Cal Day, you haven’t seen Cal — so mark your calendar for Saturday, April 21, UC Berkeley’s annual open house. With faculty lectures, performances, sports, information sessions, and tours, the day lets Berkeley shine for the year’s biggest audience — some 35,000 parents and students, prospective students, and the public. Admission is free, and a schedule of the day’s 300-plus events will be online.

Parent donors come through for Cal

Two years running, parents have set a fundraising record, contributing nearly $1.37 million in 2005-06 to support UC Berkeley programs that directly benefit their students. And last year’s campaign for The Cal Parents Fund set a new benchmark for participation: 4,767 parents made gifts to Cal, 300 more than in the previous year. To join them, go to calparents.berkeley.edu/gifts.

The funds raised enhance classroom technology, support new and distinguished professors, invest in the library, and aid the campus’s “green” initiatives, particularly in student housing and dining.

Navigating a liberal-arts education

With help from campus advisers, students chart their own course to a meaningful liberal-arts education — but now there is a terrific new resource available to them, offered by the College of Letters and Science. Through the new Finding Your Way Program, academic advisers counsel your student on structuring coursework to meet personal goals, but also to ensure readiness for declaring a major and other academic enterprises that require careful early planning. Take a look at the Finding Your Way Program. 

Take an iPod for a spin around campus

Touring Berkeley has always been easy — a crack staff of student tour guides leads daily tours, and the campus’s award-winning “virtual tour” gives online visitors a look, no matter where on Earth they happen to be. But for those who want to amble around campus at their own speed, a new podcast tour is available for free download.

The tour (more than an hour of playing time) guides the listener around campus and enlivens the narrative with audio clips and historical anecdotes. Left your iPod at home (or “lent” it to your student)? The Visitor Center has a few available for a modest rental fee. For more visiting details, click here.

Google us

You may have toured UC Berkeley, but you’re still not a campus expert until you’ve logged some hours in a Cal classroom. What? Forgot to enroll in General Human Anatomy or Physics for Future Presidents? Not a problem: Point your web browser to Berkeley’s new page on Google Video — the first devoted to a single university campus — and enjoy your choice of archived lectures, symposia, and special events that showcase Berkeley’s excellence.

Cal Parents video is online

Learn about the Cal Parents program — and the role parents play in the campus community — in a new video now online. The quick, fun video includes interviews with participating parents, Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, and others, all aimed at helping you help your student make the most out of Berkeley. Check it out at calparents.
berkeley.edu — and explore the website’s up-to-date, comprehensive parent information.

Disabled students get a boost

The Berkeley campus, a pioneer in disabled access and rights, is taking comprehensive new action to improve access for today’s disabled students. Two services kick off the effort: publication of a detailed Campus Access Guide (available in print, Braille, and online), and a new, individualized golf-cart service to help students with mobility issues get around the campus. Additional new plans — some on the horizon, others already implemented — include improved access to major campus roads and pathways, outdoor campus-access maps, and special safety equipment in every campus building to aid disabled students in emergencies and or evacuations.

Cal lauded for seismic, energy efforts

Berkeley’s Disaster Resistant University program, a national model, has been recognized as one of the 20th century’s top seismic-safety projects by the nonprofit Applied Technology Council, which works to mitigate the impacts of disasters on buildings. Since Berkeley’s program was launched in 1998, every occupied building on the central campus that once had a “very poor” seismic rating has been retrofitted.

The campus was also one of three recipients of California’s top energy-efficiency award from Flex Your Power, a partnership of utilities, residents, businesses, government, and organizations working to save energy. Berkeley was cited for engaging faculty, staff, and students in its conservation efforts, which included creating the Green Building Research Center and holding contests like “blackout battles,” in which residence halls competed to lower their energy use. Through such efforts, the campus now saves about $1 million a year in power costs.

Kudos to Cal's newest philanthropists

Since 1874, graduating seniors have joined to give class gifts to UC Berkeley. Topping them all was the Class of 2006: 1,777 class members contributed a record $98,070 to the campuswide campaign and to fundraising efforts in engineering and business. And alumnus and UC Regent Richard Blum, ‘58 ’59, made it even more interesting: The 2006 philanthropists were just dollars away from fully matching his $100,000 challenge, which doubled their gifts to their alma mater. The Class of 2007 is already working to beat the giving record this spring.

What we'll do in case of flu

While there has been no occurrence of pandemic flu anywhere in the world, UC Berkeley has plans in place should any pandemic disease threaten our region. Chancellor Birgeneau has established a UC Berkeley Pandemic Flu Preparedness Task Force to take charge of campus preparedness. Leading the effort, University Health Services is tracking avian flu, training campus medical providers, testing a rapid-response plan for vaccinations, and working with experts in public health, infectious disease control, and emergency preparedness.

Learn more about planning and resources — and about campus health services in general (click on Pandemic Flu Preparedness).

Campus partners with car-sharing firm

More than a dozen vehicles — a pickup truck, a station wagon, and standard and hybrid sedans — are now available to Berkeley students for short-term use. Customers reserve a car online or by phone, pick it up at a designated parking spot, and return it to that spot after use, paying an hourly fee for the service. The plan is offered by UC Berkeley Parking and Transportation and the car-sharing company Flexcar. Click here for details.

Discover Cal around the state

If you can’t come to Berkeley, Berkeley may be coming to you. Discover Cal, a lecture series featuring some of the campus’s most fascinating professors, will make stops this spring in Danville, Mountain View, Costa Mesa, and Los Angeles. The Northern California events, on “Globalization and the Flow of Knowledge,” are on March 21 and 22, and the series travels south on May 1 and 2 with “Reflections on Ethical Life from Stoic and Buddhist Traditions.” Click here for registration and details.