Join Our Donor Community

Thanks to gifts from our donors, the most talented graduate students from all over the globe come to Berkeley to fulfill their dreams — to re-imagine, invent, innovate, and improve our common good. The impact of these investments is immeasurable.

We invite you to become part of Berkeley’s legacy by joining our community of donors. Your support will expand the resources that enable our graduate students to engage in critical research, scholarship, teaching, mentoring, and public service.  Read about our giving opportunities on this site or visit give.berkeley.edu to make your gift now.

I feel so strongly that Cal is a resource to the state of California, the country and the world […] I realized what a need there was for Cal alums to step up.”

Eric SternBS Business Administration Senior Vice President at Captial Group
Catherine Hutto Gordon

Critical Support for the Student-Parent Juggling Act

Funding for the Back-Up Child Care program

The Back-Up Child Care program was launched in 2013 with a generous gift from the Hutto Patterson Charitable Foundation. Its trustee and president, Catherine Hutto Gordon, received her BA in Social Welfare from Berkeley. Since its inception approximately 660 students have registered; doctoral and master’s students outnumber undergraduate students by more than two to one.

Read more about support for student parents

Photo of Jorge Calderon

Jorge Calderon

Investing in the Future of Colombian Students

Engineering alum Jorge Calderon has created an endowed fund — the Colombian Graduate Student Fellowship — to support Berkeley graduate students from his native country

Read more about Jorge

Ausfahl Family photo of three people

The Ausfahl Family Gives Back

The Ausfahl family’s campus giving began with athletic programs and has continued to the arts and humanities, math and sciences, and graduate student support. Bill and his wife Trudy spearheaded the first Graduate Division matching program, the Named Fund Initiative, by creating the Ausfahl Family Fellowship.

Read more about the Ausfahl Family

Photo of Dick and Beany

Dick & Beany Wezelman

Beany and Dick Wezelman launched their import business following Beany’s Peace Corps service in Ethiopia, which also preceded their affiliation with UC Berkeley. Beanie says “Supporting graduate scholars from Africa at Berkeley just feels right — it fits with how we want to contribute. In part it is reciprocating for all the wonderful experiences and people we know in Africa. But really both Africa and Berkeley have given so much to us! We are glad to give back to Africa via UC Berkeley.”

Read more about Dick & Beany

Photo of Eric and Rachel Stern

Eric H. and Rachel K. Stern

The Health Sciences Graduate Student Award

The Sterns have created the Eric H. and Rachel K. Stern Health Sciences Graduate Student Award, an endowment providing fellowship funding for students in health and biomedical sciences at Berkeley. “I feel so strongly that Cal is a resource to the state of California, the country and the world,” says Stern, a Phi Beta Kappa recipient who earned his B.S. in business administration in 1987. “It’s a fabulous institution.”

Read more about Eric and Rachel

Photo of three women

Japanese American Women Alumnae Scholarship Fund

Legacy of Japanese-American Women at Berkeley Empowers Female Students Today

When seven Japanese-American Berkeley women and their housemothers moved into a two-story house in 1937, they were searching for a safe haven in the midst of discrimination.The women purchased the white-framed house on Hearst Avenue for $7,000 after 10 years of fundraising. The proceeds were endowed to the University as the Japanese American Women Alumnae (JAWA) Scholarship Fund, which continues supporting Asian American women today.

Read more about JAWA

The children of Chris and Warren Hellman (left to right): Marco “Mick” Hellman ’83; Judith Hellman ’84; Frances Hellman, dean of the Division of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at UC Berkeley; and Patricia Hellman Gibbs.

Hellman Graduate Awards Program

Established in 2014, the Hellman Graduate Awards will support UC Berkeley doctoral students who exhibit the capacity for great distinction. This program is made possible by a multi-year grant totaling $1.47 million from the Hellman Fellows Fund, an organization established by Chris and Warren Hellman (1934 – 2011), Berkeley alumnus.

Read more about Hellman Graduate Awards program

Family of Francoise Tournaire (four people)

Françoise Tourniaire (Ph.D. ’84) and Dominique Goupil

Passport to Opportunity

UC Berkeley has been a constant in the life of Françoise Tourniaire, Ph.D. ’84. She and her husband, Dominique Goupil, MBA ’82, met at I-House and the eldest of their three children is a recent Cal graduate. But Tourniaire’s dedication to the campus extends beyond those family connections. With a generous gift, she and Goupil recently established a new graduate fellowship through the campus’s Graduate Fellowships Matching Program.

Read more about Françoise and Dominique

Photo of Paul Hertelendy

Memorial Fund Benefits Berkeley Students for Half a Century

It was 1965 when Paul Hertelendy earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering. Since then, he has gone on to become a researcher, a professional classical music critic, and a donor to his alma mater where students have been benefiting from his generosity for half a century. The same year he earned his Ph.D., Hertelendy established a fund in memory of his former colleague, Tse-Wei Liu, a student from Taiwan.

Read more about Paul

Awtar Singh

Awtar and Teji Singh

Building the Dream

A 23-year-old Awtar Singh Ph.D. ’66 found himself constructing his country’s first large dam — the Bhakra Dam — at the request of India’s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in 1949. In 1998, Awtar Singh created the Awtar and Teji Singh fellowship for graduate students from Punjab Engineering College who are accepted to Berkeley — benefiting 16 students.”

Read more about Awtar Singh

Photo of Alan Dundes

The Alan Dundes Graduate Fellowship

Alan Dundes, whose rigorous scholarship established folklore as an academic discipline, was a beloved Berkeley professor. He personally trained generations of graduate students, many of whom have gone on to become leaders in the field. In 2005, Professor Dundes unexpectedly passed away. To continue his legacy, his colleagues in the UC Berkeley Folklore Program, in collaboration with the Graduate Division, created the Alan Dundes Graduate Fellowship Fund.

Read more about Alan Dundes

Kiwei and Michele U

Kwei Ü likes to say he grew up at UC Berkeley’s International House

The Adrian Hao Yin Ü Gateway Fellowship

Kwei and his wife Michelle gave a gift of property in 2006 and established the Adrian Hao Yin Ü Gateway Fellowship to honor their son Adrian’s memory, and to express their affection for UC Berkeley’s I-House, The earnings from the endowed gift pay for room and board during the academic year for one I-House student who comes from a university in Hong Kong, Taiwan, or China.

Read more about Kwei and Michelle

photo of six women in the sorority

Asian Sorority Creates New Graduate Fellowship

Sigma Omicron Pi Sorority (ΣΟΠ) was founded in 1930 by ten young Chinese-American women at San Francisco Normal School, the teacher’s college that would become San Francisco State. At the time, Greek sororities and fraternities routinely excluded ethnic minorities, and ΣΟΠ, whose initials stand for “Students of Pedagogy,” was the first Asian sorority at that campus, where it was an active social, educational and philanthropic organization until World War II.

Read more about Sigma Omicron Pi Fellowship