Summer 2024

Parent Weekend at Homecoming

Alumni and Parents Weekend at Homecoming is scheduled for October 18–20, 2024. Let's come together to create new traditions, spark innovation, and write the next chapter in the Berkeley story! We’re planning lectures and other learning opportunities, special tours, and much more! Check back often as events will be added to the website frequently. Registration is now open!

Letter Home

A welcome from Chancellor Lyons

I couldn’t be more excited for Berkeley’s next decade and beyond and what we will build together. I bring to this role more than 30 years of service and personal growth at Berkeley. I love this place, and I have profound respect for the values and capabilities – including access, excellence and so much more – that set Berkeley apart. These values and my dedication to them, are steadfast and enduring.

I am home grown, the first undergraduate alum to serve as your Chancellor. More than anyplace else,...

Carol Christ: Years of challenge, years of historic progress

By Edward Lempinen

In an interview before her retirement, the UC Berkeley chancellor reflected on the social turmoil of her years in office, the values that have guided her — and the essential lesson she learned from students.

One might expect that a leader, just weeks before retirement, would be quietly winding down. But for UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ, campus turmoil arising from the Hamas-Israel conflict and a looming budget shortfall have left little time for celebration ahead of her departure at the end of June.

It’s striking that...

Unprecedented campus construction marked Carol Christ’s chancellorship

By Gretchen Kell, Kyle Gibson

It's been "a golden era for UC Berkeley's physical development," says Marc Fisher, vice chancellor for administration.

As her retirement nears, UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ is being lauded as a collaborative and effective leader who is decisive, a listener and team builder, and a champion of free speech, equity and inclusion, and knowledge creation.

These values and priorities all are embodied in what likely will be Christ’s most visible legacy at Berkeley: major changes to its physical...

Berkeley researchers send 3D printer into space

by Marni Ellery

Imagine a crew of astronauts headed to Mars. About 140 million miles away from Earth, they discover their spacecraft has a cracked O-ring. But instead of relying on a dwindling cache of spare parts, what if they could simply fabricate any part they needed on demand?

A team of Berkeley researchers, led by Ph.D. student Taylor Waddell, may have taken a giant leap toward making this option a reality. On June 8, they sent their 3D printing technology to space for the first time...

Meet Our New Dean - Sharon A. Bentley

Post By Eric Craypo

We are pleased to announce that after a successful international search, Sharon A. Bentley has been selected to serve as the new dean of the Herbert Wertheim School of Optometry & Vision Science. Professor Bentley is currently professor of optometry, deputy dean of the Faculty of Health and director of the Centre for Vision and Eye Research at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. She will join the UC Berkeley community on February 3, 2025...

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In Focus: Moffitt’s metamorphosis

Since Moffitt Library opened in 1970, students have taken to it like butterflies to a garden. But after a half-century, the library needed freshening up.

In 2016, students fluttered to Moffitt’s sleek, colorful top two floors, newly renovated. And starting in winter 2024–25, the lower three floors will begin a transformation of their own, blossoming into new life.

What’s changing at Moffitt? In short, a lot...

https://inspire....

50 years of Excellence: UC Berkeley's Rausser College of Natural Resources

By Mathew Burciaga and Julie Gipple

This month officially marks 50 years since the founding of the College of Natural Resources at UC Berkeley. The College has already launched a special issue of Breakthroughs magazine, published other stories in honor of the anniversary, and installed commemorative banners around campus, and is planning a number of celebratory events for the coming months.

In the first course catalog for the newly formed College of Natural Resources in 1974, acting dean Loy L. Sammett wrote that the philosophical direction of the new College lay in the...

Athletics: ACC, Fall sports, Olympics and more

“New” will be the operative word for Cal Athletics this fall as the Golden Bears make the move to the Atlantic Coast Conference. Cal will get to know a whole new set of opponents in most of its sports and travel to locations its teams haven’t typically visited in the past.

The Cal football team opens the season at home against UC Davis on Aug. 31 and plays its first ever ACC game at Florida State on Sept. 21. Its first home ACC game is on Oct. 5 against Miami. The Bears will look to build on last season, when they won their final three regular...