December 11, 2008
A family group closely associated with the Graduate Division is well-represented in the trust-themed Fall '08 issue of Greater Good, in a feature called "Can I Trust You?".
November 19, 2008
Throughout his career, Richard Halkett has focused on technology, innovation, and education, in relation to foreign policy. He currently serves as the Director of Strategy & Research for Cisco Global Education. From 2006 to 2008, he was the Executive Director of Policy & Research at the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) in London, where he developed programs to enrich and strengthen innovation policy in the U.K. Before NESTA, he worked at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a large foreign policy think tank in Washington D.C.
Halkett graduated from Oxford University with a double first and a university prize from Merton College. After Oxford, he co-founded Boxmind, an Oxford—based technology company, which he ran from 2000 to 2003. He came to Berkeley in 2003 as a U.K.-U.S. Fulbright Scholar in the Goldman School of Public Policy. Not long after he arrived, he and a classmate founded PolicyMatters, the journal of the Goldman School.
October 21, 2008
Jimmy Lopez Toward the end of September 2008, the New York Times reviewed a concert by the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra and mentioned, in the same breath, music by Rachmaninoff, Respighi, and a new work, “Fiesta!” “by a young Peruvian composer, Jimmy López.” Mr. López, 29, noted…
October 21, 2008
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer told its readers on September 22, 2008, that University of Washington professor David Montgomery was one day into his sabbatical, wondering how to cut expenses while writing a book, when he was contacted by the MacArthur Foundation. “Montgomery, 47,” the paper said, “is one of 25 people…
September 24, 2008
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.”
September 24, 2008
In 2004, the United States Agency for International Development contacted Ashok Gadgil, of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, for help. Gadgil’s idea: design a fuel-efficient, portable stove for Darfur.
September 23, 2008
Few disciplines are as traditional, in every possible sense of the term, as the field of Classics. Indeed, it could be said that Classics – the intensive study of Greek and Roman literature, language, and culture – is an originary site for the notion and study of tradition. traditio (a noun: “handing over, delivery; the handing down of knowledge”) and its cognate tradere (a verb: “to hand over; to hand down”) are both Latin words. These two terms encode a double sense: first, the notion of making a present-time gift and second, the notion of wisdom handed down through time. One powerful example of this duality is the Homeric rhapsode, a bard who professes in each performed song to enact “Homer” – the ever-same, traditional poems by the ever-same poet. Yet each performance is a different event. Ancient evidence suggests that different performances produced drastically different, if structurally similar, poems. Each performance thus relies upon tradition (traditio), even while it delivers (tradit) the present-time gift of a new poem.
September 23, 2008
In February 1999 when I learned that I was being offered a Berkeley Graduate Fellowship, I had been a part-time English as a Second Language (ESL) instructor at a small community college in Washington state for 10 years. In 1997 I had been awarded a Part-time Faculty Award of Excellence at my college, based on both my teaching and program development work, and then in 1998, I was turned down for a full-time position. I was ready for something new, and excited about the idea of doing research on the social contexts of second language learning in immigrant communities. I also had a house, a husband, two children, and a large extended family in my town in Washington, and it was difficult to consider uprooting. Berkeley’s offer of a prestigious fellowship helped to reassure me that I wasn’t completely out of my mind.
September 23, 2008
Now an esteemed and controversial federal judge, Thelton Henderson came to Cal from Los Angeles on a football scholarship. The law was not on his mind.
May 2, 2008
Andrew Szeri savors his walk to work each day, winding through the scenic neighborhoods of Berkeley. He says the journey to Sproul Hall is peaceful and provides time to think before he dives into the emails and voicemails that await him.
April 30, 2008
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.
April 28, 2008
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 13, 2008
UC Berkeley Civil Engineering Ph.D. recipient elected as the Smithsonian's 12th Secretary.
April 8, 2008
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.
April 4, 2008
Students who were identified as members of the plaintiff class in the Kashmiri vs. The Regents of the University of California class action lawsuit should have received a notice regarding the fee overcharge judgment. That notice, provided by the Office of Registrar, can be downloaded/viewed online (PDF).
December 11, 2007
Big gulp: to drink in a good portion of tiny krill, a Fin Whale somehow more than doubles its size for a few seconds. Nicholas Pyenson studied how and why.
November 13, 2007
Reams of academic research abound across the country on how to raise happy children, but who has the time to read this myriad of findings, boil down the facts, and then turn them into practical parenting advice? The University of California, Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center is taking on the job with its new website on how to foster joy and avoid brattish behavior in children.
October 9, 2007
John Gofman in 1979. Photo: Egan O’Connor In mid-August, John Gofman died at the age of 88. He was widely known in a variety of roles: physician, cardiac researcher, radiation scientist, and nuclear safety advocate. While working for his Ph.D. here in the 1940s under Glenn T.
October 5, 2007
A stint as a day laborer on the star-studded Malibu coast launched Alvaro Huerta’s career in academia.
August 14, 2007
The State of California had a Swiss-cheese factor in all three of the electronic voting systems used in its elections, a team of UC Davis and UC Berkeley researchers found.