family-friendly commencement

A walk with mom

Six-and-a-half-month-old twins Thomas and Camille shared the spotlight at the Public Health commencement in Zellerbach Auditorium while their mother, Mi-Suk Kang Dufour,…

Peace Corps - Meera Chary

The Peace Corps is very Berkeley

In the half century since the Corps was founded, UC Berkeley has supplied more volunteers than any other university in the U.S. — over 3,400 in more than 120 countries.

Susan Desmond-Hellmann

The head of UCSF, a Cal alum, is named in a fierce Top Ten list

The chancellor of UC-San Francisco since mid-2009, Susan Desmond-Hellmann, a Berkeley alumna (M.P.H.’88) who already has a passel of distinctions, has been named by the daily industry newsletter Fierce Biotech as one of the Top Ten Women in Biotech.

Michael P. Wilson, (M.P.H. ’98, Ph.D. ’03) Wins Coveted Switzer Prize

Michael P. Wilson has been a member of the Switzer Network since receiving a Switzer Foundation fellowship in 2002. He is on the cutting edge of the emerging field of green chemistry. A product of the environmental health sciences program at the School of Public Health (M.P.H. '98, Ph.D. '03), he has been a research scientist at the school's Center for Occupational and Environmental Health since receiving his doctorate.

Photo of Ellie Schindelman

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.

A portable tribute to Earl Warren

The name of one of Berkeley’s most distinguished alumni, Earl Warren (undergraduate class of 1912, law school class of 1914), three-term governor of California and history-making chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, graced a large building along Oxford Street for over half a century — until the structure was torn down in 2008 to make way for the badly-needed Li Ka Shing Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences, named for its lead donor.

Dominique Kerouedan

Between Africa, Asia and the European Union: My work in International Public Health

It’s very hot outside, the sun is burning, and the light is violent at noon. I walk alongside my sister on an earthy red path through sugar cane fields, on our way home from school. We are thirsty; the sugar cane is refreshing and delicious. This is Africa. This is Bouaké in the early 1960s when it still is in the middle of nowhere, a big village in the bush.

Public Health Hero is a Champion of Teens

Public Health Hero is a Champion of Teens

A summer job during high school proved to be life-changing for Barbara Staggers. The high achieving teen who aspired to be a ballerina or maybe a veterinarian was working for a recreation program for inner-city kids. “My job was to teach swimming and gymnastics so at the end of the day they’d be too tired to get into trouble,” she recalls. Among her youngsters was a quiet, beautiful 14-year old girl — until a man came to take her away. “He looked like the classic pimp from the movies and said he needed her to work,” recounts Staggers, who went to her supervisor. But when they phoned the girl’s mother, she said, “Let her go. We need the money.”