January 24, 2011

Reminder: to honor your mentors, nominate them now!

Every year, the Graduate Division and the Graduate Assembly team up to call public attention to the exemplary and caring assistance individual faculty members have provided, above and beyond the call of duty, to their students. As the culmination of two separate exhaustive selection processes, they jointly sponsor an awards…

December 15, 2010

Set the stage for honoring faculty mentors — nominate now!

Every year, the Graduate Division and the Graduate Assembly team up to call public attention to the exemplary and caring assistance individual faculty members have provided to their students.

July 15, 2010

Grad Division and Graduate Assembly team up to honor mentors

In the 1970s, the Berkeley campus was, a veteran faculty member told a concerned new assistant professor, “not a loving institution.”

May 24, 2010

Ellie Schindelman

Earlier, the "prize patrol" had (also with GSI connivance) snuck into a computer-lab setting on the third floor of Haviland Hall, where public health lecturer Ellie Schindelman was team-teaching a class on using video for public health leadership and advocacy.

Professor Gary Sposito with award plaque

May 5, 2010

Three faculty who’ve been very, very good mentors are “ambushed” with honors

Environmental Science, Policy and Management professor Gary Sposito is not fond of having his picture taken. When a friendly deputation invaded his Wheeler Hall classroom earlier this month to surprise him with an honor, his first impulse was to cross his arms in front of his face, not like a perp-walked mob boss, but more reminiscent of an exhausted exorcist facing the ultimate evil.

April 25, 2010

Two Superb Mentors Get Their Due at Berkeley

For the last three years, there’s been a new way to honor faculty mentors at Berkeley. Called the Sarlo Distinguished Graduate Student Mentoring Award, it honors faculty for all the ways they help graduate students — not only in research, not only in teaching, but across the board.

April 6, 2010

The Importance of Mentoring

Following the adoption of this 'best practices' document by the Academic Senate in 2006, Graduate Division sought external support to establish a mentoring award — and that effort has been successful!

April 30, 2008

Rewarding mentors, the academy’s unsung secret weapon

Five faculty members, accompanied by colleagues and students who nominated them and friends and fans, were given special awards for mentoring grad students, an activity that historically has received little fanfare but is seen as vital by its recipients, often leading to key intellectual breakthroughs and providing the motivation to persevere despite daunting obstacles.

Four mentoring award winners pose with plaque

April 28, 2008

What makes the wheel go around

When I was a graduate student, I was a teaching assistant (more than once) for a very inspiring mentor, a man named Manos Vakalo. His teams of teaching assistants had remarkable autonomy. He never questioned a grade we gave, and he always treated us as respected equals. In retrospect, we could be dumb at times; I remember bringing beer to a critique for our undergraduates, and Manos simply raising an eyebrow in reprimand. That, however, was enough. He had remarkable expressions, every one of which I think I could still imitate perfectly today, nearly 20 years later.

April 8, 2008

2008 Mentoring Awards Announcement

We are pleased to announce the 2008 recipients of the Sarlo Distinguished Graduate Student Mentoring Awards. These awards have been made possible by a grant from the Sarlo Foundation of the Jewish Community Endowment Fund. They are administered by the Graduate Division in collaboration with the Graduate Council of the Academic Senate.