Berkeley's athletic teams compete in Division I of the NCAA, primarily in the Pac-12 Conference, and are collectively known as the California Golden Bears. The university's teams have won 107 national championships, and its students and alumni have won 207 Olympic medals.[21][22]
History
View from Memorial Glade of Sather Tower (the Campanile), the center of Berkeley—the ring of its bells and clock can be heard from all over campus.
Made possible by President Lincoln's signing of the Morrill Act in 1862, the University of California was founded in 1868 as the state's first land-grant university by inheriting certain assets and objectives of the private College of California and the public Agricultural, Mining, and Mechanical Arts College. Although this process is often incorrectly mistaken for a merger, the Organic Act created a "completely new institution" and did not actually merge the two precursor entities into the new university.[23] The Organic Act states that the "University shall have for its design, to provide instruction and thorough and complete education in all departments of science, literature and art, industrial and professional pursuits, and general education, and also special courses of instruction in preparation for the professions".[24][25]
Ten faculty members and 40 students made up the fledgling university when it opened in Oakland in 1869.[26]Frederick H. Billings, a trustee of the College of California, suggested that a new campus site north of Oakland be named in honor of Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkeley.[27] The university began admitting women the following year.[28] In 1870, Henry Durant, founder of the College of California, became its first president. With the completion of North and South Halls in 1873, the university relocated to its Berkeley location with 167 male and 22 female students.[29][30]
Beginning in 1891, Phoebe Apperson Hearst made several large gifts to Berkeley, funding a number of programs and new buildings and sponsoring, in 1898, an international competition in Antwerp, Belgium, where French architect Émile Bénard submitted the winning design for a campus master plan.
By 1942, the American Council on Education ranked Berkeley second only to Harvard in the number of distinguished departments.[42]
In 1952, the University of California reorganized itself into a system of semi-autonomous campuses, with each campus given its own chancellor, and Clark Kerr became Berkeley's first Chancellor, while Sproul remained in place as the President of the University of California.[42]
Berkeley gained a worldwide reputation for political activism in the 1960s.[43][44] In 1964, the Free Speech Movement organized student resistance to the university's restrictions on political activities on campus—most conspicuously, student activities related to the Civil Rights Movement. The arrest in Sproul Plaza of Jack Weinberg, a recent Berkeley alumnus and chair of Campus CORE, in October 1964, prompted a series of student-led acts of formal remonstrance and civil disobedience that ultimately gave rise to the Free Speech Movement, which movement would prevail and serve as precedent for student opposition to America's involvement in the Vietnam War.[45][46][47]
In the current century, Berkeley has become less politically active and more focused on entrepreneurship and fundraising, especially for STEM disciplines.[51][52]
Modern Berkeley students are less politically radical, with a greater percentage of moderates and conservatives than in the 1960s and 70s.[53][54] Democrats outnumber Republicans on the faculty by a ratio of 9:1.[55] On the whole, Democrats outnumber Republicans on American university campuses by a ratio of 10:1.[56]
In 2007, the Energy Biosciences Institute was established with funding from BP and Stanley Hall, a research facility and headquarters for the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, opened. The next few years saw the dedication of the Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences, funded by a lead gift from billionaire Li Ka-shing; the opening of Sutardja Dai Hall, home of the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society; and the unveiling of Blum Hall, housing the Blum Center for Developing Economies. Supported by a grant from alumnus James Simons, the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing was established in 2012. In 2014, Berkeley and its sister campus, UCSF, established the Innovative Genomics Institute, and, in 2020, an anonymous donor pledged $252 million to help fund a new center for computing and data science.[57]
Since 2000, Berkeley alumni and faculty have received 40 Nobel Prizes, behind only Harvard and MIT among US universities; five Turing Awards, behind only MIT and Stanford; and five Fields Medals, second only to Princeton. According to PitchBook, Berkeley ranks second, just behind Stanford, in producing VC-backed entrepreneurs.[58]
Organization and administration
Although the University of California system does not have an official flagship campus, many scholars and experts consider Berkeley to be its unofficial flagship. In some cases, it shares this unofficial status with the University of California, Los Angeles.[59]
Name
Officially the University of California, Berkeley, its name is often shortened to Berkeley in general reference or in an academic context (www.berkeley.edu, Berkeley Law, Berkeley Haas) or to California or Cal, particularly when referring to its athletic teams (California Golden Bears).[8][9][60]
Governance
The University of California is governed by a 26-member Board of Regents, 18 of whom are appointed by the Governor of California to 12-year terms. The board also has seven ex officio members, a student regent, and a non-voting student regent-designate.[61] Prior to 1952, Berkeley was the University of California, so the university president was also Berkeley's chief executive. However, in 1952, the university reorganized itself into a system of semi-autonomous campuses, with each campus having its own chief executive, a chancellor, who would, in turn, report to the president of the university system. Twelve vice chancellors report directly to Berkeley's chancellor, and the deans of the 14 colleges and schools report to the executive vice chancellor and provost, Berkeley's chief academic officer.[62]
Twenty-five presidents and chancellors have led Berkeley since its founding.[63][42]
Berkeley receives funding from a variety of federal, state, and private sources. With the exception of government contracts, public support is apportioned to Berkeley and the other campuses of the University of California system through the UC Office of the President and accounts for some 12 percent of Berkeley's total revenues.[64] Berkeley has long benefited from private philanthropy, with considerable gifts from the Flood, Hearst, Durant, Strauss, Lick, Harmon, and Bacon families in the 19th century and from the Hearst, Doe, Sather, Rockefeller, Cowell, Haviland, Bowles, Boalt, and Stern families, among others, in the first half of the 20th century. More recently, alumni and their foundations have given to the university for operations and capital expenditures.[citation needed]
Berkeley has also benefited from the giving of individuals, corporations, and foundations, notable among which are Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan (pledged $600 million, shared with UCSF and Stanford University, to form the Biohub);[citation needed]BP (pledged $400 million to research biofuels); the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (over $68 million since the foundation's creation), billionaire Sir Li Ka-Shing (multiple gifts, most notably a $40 million gift in 2005), Israeli-Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, Thomas and Stacey Siebel, Sanford and Joan Weill, and professor Gordon Rausser ($50 million gift in 2020).[citation needed] Several significant gifts have been made anonymously, including a 1999 gift of $50 million to support molecular engineering, a 2018 gift of $50 million to support STEM faculty,[65] a $70 million gift in 2019 to support the BioEnginuity Hub,[66] and a gift in 2020 of $252 million to support data science.[67]
The 2008–13 Campaign for Berkeley raised $3.13 billion from 281,855 donors, and the "Light the Way" campaign, announced in early 2020, is scheduled to raise $6 billion by the end of 2023.[68]
Academics
Wheeler Hall, home to Berkeley's largest lecture hall, was the location of a Nobel Prize conferral during WWII.
Berkeley is a large, primarily residential Tier One research university with a majority of its enrollment in undergraduate programs but also offering a comprehensive doctoral program.[69] The university has been accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges Senior College and University Commission since 1949.[70] The university operates on a semester calendar and awarded 8,725 bachelor's, 3,286 master's or professional and 1,272 doctoral degrees in 2018–2019.[11]
The university's academic enterprise is organized into 14 colleges and schools, which, in turn, comprise 180 departments and 80 interdisciplinary units offering over 350 degree programs. Colleges serve both undergraduate and graduate students, while schools are generally graduate only, though some offer undergraduate majors or minors.
The four-year, full-time undergraduate program offers 107 bachelor's degrees across the Haas School of Business (1), College of Chemistry (5), College of Engineering (20), College of Environmental Design (4), College of Letters and Science (67), Rausser College of Natural Resources (10), and individual majors (2).[71] The most popular majors are Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Political Science, Molecular and Cell Biology, Environmental Science, and Economics.[72]
Requirements for undergraduate degrees are set by four authorities: the University of California system, the Berkeley campus, the college or school, and the department. These requirements include an entry-level writing requirement before enrollment (typically fulfilled by minimum scores on standardized admissions exams such as the SAT or ACT), completing coursework on "American History and Institutions" before or after enrollment by taking an introductory class, passing an "American Cultures Breadth" class at Berkeley, as well as requirements for reading and composition and specific requirements declared by the department and school.[73] Three-hour final examinations are required in most undergraduate classes and take place over a week following the last day of instruction in mid-December for the Fall semester and in mid-May for the Spring semester.[74]Academic grades are reported on a four-point, five-letter scale (A thru F) with grade points being modified by three-tenths of point for pluses and minuses, save for the A+, which carries just four points.[75] Requirements for academic honors are specified by individual schools and colleges, scholarly prizes are typically awarded by departments, and students are elected to honor societies based on these organizations' criteria.[76]
Graduate and professional programs
The Morrison Library, a reading room located in Doe Library, often is used to host speeches and panels on campus.
Berkeley has a "comprehensive" graduate program, with high coexistence with the programs offered to undergraduates, and offers interdisciplinary graduate programs with the medical schools at UCSF (various masters and doctoral) and Stanford (MD/MPH). The university offers Master of Art, Master of Science, Master of Fine Art, and PhD degrees in addition to professional degrees such as the Juris Doctor, Master of Business Administration, Master of Public Health, and Master of Design.[69][77] The university awarded 963 doctoral degrees and 3,531 master's degrees in 2017.[78] Admission to graduate programs is decentralized; applicants apply directly to the department or degree program. Most graduate students are supported by fellowships, teaching assistantships, or research assistantships.[78] The 2010 United States National Research Council Rankings identified UC Berkeley as having the highest number of top-ranked doctoral programs in the nation.[79] Berkeley doctoral programs that received a #1 ranking include Agricultural and Resource Economics, Astrophysics, Chemistry, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computer Science, English, Epidemiology, Geography, German, Mathematics, Mechanical Engineering, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Genetics, Genomics, and Development, Physics, Plant Biology, and Political Science. Berkeley was also the #1 recipient of National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships between 2001 and 2010, with 1,333 awards.[78]
Berkeley's 32 libraries together contain more than 13 million volumes and cover over 12 acres (4.9 ha) of land, forming one of the largest library complexes in the world.[85][86]Doe Library serves as the library system's reference, periodical, and administrative center, while most of the main collections reside in the subterranean Gardner Main Stacks and Moffitt Undergraduate Library. The Bancroft Library, which has over 400,000 printed volumes and 70 million manuscripts, pictures, and maps, maintains special collections that document the history of the western part of North America, with an emphasis on California, Mexico and Central America. The Bancroft Library also houses the Mark Twain Papers,[87] the Oral History Center,[88] the Center for the Tebtunis Papyri[89] and the University Archives.[90]
Nationally, the 2019–20 U.S. News & World Report's "Best Colleges" ranks Berkeley second among public universities and 22nd among national universities.[102] The 2019 Forbes America's Top Colleges report ranks Berkeley the top public university and 13th among 650 universities and liberal arts colleges in the United States.[103]Washington Monthly ranked Berkeley 17th among national universities in 2020, with criteria based on research, community service, and social mobility. For 2020, QS World University Rankings places Berkeley fourth among all US universities and first among publics.[104] The 2018–19 Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) ranked the university the top public university in the nation and fourth overall based on quality of education, alumni employment, quality of faculty, publications, influence, and citations.[105] The Money Magazine Best Colleges ranking for 2015 ranked Berkeley 9th in the United States, based on educational quality, affordability and alumni earnings.[106] For 2015 Kiplinger ranked Berkeley the 4th best-value public university in the nation for in-state students, and 6th for out-of-state students.[107] In 2014, The Daily Beast's Best Colleges report ranked Berkeley 11th in the country.[108] The 2013 Top American Research Universities report by the Center for Measuring University Performance ranked Berkeley 8th over-all, 5th in resources, faculty, and education, 9th in resources and education, and 1st in education.[109] Berkeley produces more Nobel laureates and billionaires than any other public university in the United States. Berkeley was listed as a "Public Ivy" in Richard Moll's 1985 Public Ivies.[110]
For Fall 2019, Berkeley's total enrollment was 43,695: 31,780 undergraduate and 11,915 graduate students, with women accounting for 54 percent of undergraduates and 46 percent of graduate and professional students.[11] The acceptance rate for freshmen was 16.8 percent. Of enrolled freshmen, 55 percent were women. Enrolled freshman had an average unweighted GPA of 3.89 and an average SAT score of 1425. The interquartile range for SAT scores was 1330–1520. Berkeley and other campuses of the University of California do not superscore.
Berkeley students are eligible for a variety of public and private financial aid. Generally, financial aid inquiries are processed through the Financial Aid and Scholarships Office, although some schools, such as the Haas School of Business
Carcinogens – Identified chemicals that damage DNA. The Ames test was described in a series of papers in 1973 by Bruce Ames and his group at the University.
Covalent bond – Gilbert N. Lewis in 1916 described the sharing of electron pairs between atoms, and invented the Lewis notation to describe the mechanisms.
Berkeley alumni and faculty have founded many companies, some of which are shown below.[153][19] Berkeley has often been cited as one of the universities that have produced most entrepreneurs, and boasts its own startup incubator, Berkeley SkyDeck.[19][154][155][156][157]
The Berkeley campus encompasses approximately 1,232 acres (499 ha), though the "central campus" occupies only the low-lying western 178 acres (72 ha) of this area. Of the remaining acres, approximately 200 acres (81 ha) are occupied by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; other facilities above the main campus include the Lawrence Hall of Science and several research units, notably the Space Sciences Laboratory, the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, an 800-acre (320 ha) ecological preserve, the University of California Botanical Garden and a recreation center in Strawberry Canyon. Portions of the mostly undeveloped, eastern area of the campus are actually within the City of Oakland; these portions extend from the Claremont Resort north through the Panoramic Hill neighborhood to Tilden Park.[160]
To the west of the central campus is the downtown business district of Berkeley; to the northwest is the neighborhood of North Berkeley, including the so-called Gourmet Ghetto, a commercial district known for high quality dining due to the presence of such world-renowned restaurants as Chez Panisse. Immediately to the north is a quiet residential neighborhood known as Northside with a large graduate student population;[161] situated north of that are the upscale residential neighborhoods of the Berkeley Hills. Immediately southeast of campus lies fraternity row and beyond that the Clark Kerr Campus and an upscale residential area named Claremont. The area south of the university includes student housing and Telegraph Avenue, one of Berkeley's main shopping districts with stores, street vendors and restaurants catering to college students and tourists. In addition, the University also owns land to the northwest of the main campus, a 90-acre (36 ha) married student housing complex in the nearby town of Albany ("Albany Village" and the "Gill Tract"), and a field research station several miles to the north in Richmond, California.
The campus is home to several museums including the University of California Museum of Paleontology, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and the Lawrence Hall of Science. The Museum of Paleontology, found in the lobby of the Valley Life Sciences Building, showcases a variety of dinosaur fossils including a complete cast of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. The campus also offers resources for innovation and entrepreneurship, such as the Big Ideas Competition (Blum Center for Developing Economies), SkyDeck, the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology, and the Berkeley Haas Innovation Lab.[162] The campus is also home to the University of California Botanical Garden, one of the most diverse plant collections in the United States, famous for its large number of rare and endangered species, with more than 12,000 individual species.
Outside of the Bay Area, the University owns various research laboratories and research forests in both northern and southern Sierra Nevada.
360-degree-view of the UC Berkeley campus
Architecture
South Hall (1873), one of the two original buildings of the University of California, still stands on the Berkeley campus
What is considered the historic campus today was the result of the 1898 "International Competition for the Phoebe Hearst Architectural Plan for the University of California", funded by William Randolph Hearst's mother and initially held in the Belgian city of Antwerp; eleven finalists were judged again in San Francisco in 1899.[163] The winner was Frenchman Émile Bénard, however he refused to personally supervise the implementation of his plan and the task was subsequently given to architecture professor John Galen Howard. Howard designed over twenty buildings, which set the tone for the campus up until its expansion in the 1950s and 1960s. The structures forming the "classical core" of the campus were built in the Beaux-Arts Classical style, and include Hearst Greek Theatre, Hearst Memorial Mining Building, Doe Memorial Library, California Hall, Wheeler Hall, (Old) Le Conte Hall, Gilman Hall, Haviland Hall, Wellman Hall, Sather Gate, and the 307-foot (94 m) Sather Tower (nicknamed "the Campanile" after its architectural inspiration, St Mark's Campanile in Venice), the tallest university clock tower in the United States.[164] Buildings he regarded as temporary, nonacademic, or not particularly "serious" were designed in shingle or Collegiate Gothic styles; examples of these are North Gate Hall, Dwinelle Annex, and Stephens Hall. Many of Howard's designs are recognized California Historical Landmarks[165] and are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Built in 1873 in a VictorianSecond-Empire-style, South Hall, designed by David Farquharson, is the oldest university building in California. It, and the Frederick Law Olmsted-designed Piedmont Avenue east of the main campus, are two of the only surviving examples of the nineteenth-century campus. Other notable architects and firms whose work can be found in the campus and surrounding area are Bernard Maybeck[166] (Faculty Club); Julia Morgan (Hearst Women's Gymnasium and Julia Morgan Hall); William Wurster (Stern Hall); Moore Ruble Yudell (Haas School of Business); Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects (C.V. Starr East Asian Library), and Diller Scofidio + Renfro (Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive).
Flowing into the main campus are two branches of Strawberry Creek. The south fork enters a culvert upstream of the recreational complex at the mouth of Strawberry Canyon and passes beneath California Memorial Stadium before appearing again in Faculty Glade. It then runs through the center of the campus before disappearing underground at the west end of campus. The north fork appears just east of University House and runs through the glade north of the Valley Life Sciences Building, the original site of the Campus Arboretum.
Trees in the area date from the founding of the university. The campus features numerous wooded areas, including: Founders' Rock, Faculty Glade, Grinnell Natural Area, and the Eucalyptus Grove, which is both the tallest stand of such trees in the world and the tallest stand of hardwood trees in North America.[167] The campus sits on the Hayward Fault, which runs directly through California Memorial Stadium.[168]
The official university mascot is Oski the Bear, who debuted in 1941. Previously, live bear cubs were used as mascots at Memorial Stadium until it was decided in 1940 that a costumed mascot would be a better alternative. Named after the Oski-wow-wow yell, he is cared for by the Oski Committee, whose members have exclusive knowledge of the identity of the costume-wearer.[169]
The University of California Marching Band, which has served the university since 1891, performs at every home football game and at select road games as well. A smaller subset of the Cal Band, the Straw Hat Band, performs at basketball games, volleyball games, and other campus and community events.[170]
The UC Rally Committee, formed in 1901, is the official guardian of California's Spirit and Traditions. Wearing their traditional blue and gold rugbies, Rally Committee members can be seen at all major sporting and spirit events. Committee members are charged with the maintenance of the five Cal flags, the large California banner overhanging the Memorial Stadium Student Section and Haas Pavilion, the California Victory Cannon, Card Stunts and The Big "C" among other duties. The Rally Committee is also responsible for safekeeping of the Stanford Axe when it is in Cal's possession.[171] The Chairman of the Rally Committee holds the title "Custodian of the Axe" while it is in the Committee's care.
The Cal Mic Men, a standard at home football games, has recently expanded to involve basketball and volleyball. The traditional role comes from students holding megaphones and yelling, but now includes microphones, a dedicated platform during games, and the direction of the entire student section.[172] Both men and women are allowed to fulfill the role, despite the name.Overlooking the main Berkeley campus from the foothills in the east, The Big "C" is an important symbol of California school spirit. The Big "C" has its roots in an early 20th-century campus event called "Rush", which pitted the freshman and sophomore classes against each other in a race up Charter Hill that often developed into a wrestling match. It was eventually decided to discontinue Rush and, in 1905, the freshman and sophomore classes banded together in a show of unity to build "the Big C".[173] Owing to its prominent position, the Big "C" is often the target of pranks by rival Stanford University students who paint the Big "C" red and also fraternities and sororities who paint it their organization's colors. One of the Rally Committee's functions is to repaint the Big "C" to its traditional color of King Alfred Yellow.
Cal students invented the college football tradition of card stunts. Then known as Bleacher Stunts, they were first performed during the 1910 Big Game and consisted of two stunts: a picture of the Stanford Axe and a large blue "C" on a white background. The tradition continues today in the Cal student section and incorporates complicated motions, for example tracing the Cal script logo on a blue background with an imaginary yellow pen.[174]
The California Victory Cannon, placed on Tightwad Hill overlooking the stadium, is fired before every football home game, after every score, and after every Cal victory. First used in the 1963 Big Game, it was originally placed on the sidelines before moving to Tightwad Hill in 1971. The only time the cannon ran out of ammunition was during a game against Pacific in 1991, when Cal scored 12 touchdowns.[175]
Berkeley students are offered a variety of housing options, including university-owned or affiliated residences, private residences, fraternities and sororities, and cooperative housing (co-ops).
The university runs twelve different residence halls: seven undergraduate residence halls or complexes, both with and without themes; family student housing; re-entry student housing; and optional international student housing at the International House, built with a gift from John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and the erstwhile home of six Nobel laureates. Undergraduate residence halls are located off-campus in the city of Berkeley. Units 1, 2 and 3, located on the south side of campus, offer high-rise accommodations with common areas on every other floor. Units 1 and 2 share a common dining hall, Crossroads. The oldest unit, Unit 3, has its own dining hall, Café 3, on the first floor.[176] At the beginning of the 2018–2019 school year, a new building called Blackwell Hall, was opened across the street from Unit 3. These buildings share a dining hall. Further away and also on the south side of campus is Clark Kerr, an undergraduate residential complex that houses many student athletes and was once a school for the deaf and blind.
In the foothills east of the central campus, there are three additional undergraduate residence halls: Foothill, Stern, and Bowles. Foothill is a co-ed, suite-style hall reminiscent of a Swiss chalet. Just south of Foothill, overlooking the Hearst Greek Theatre, is the all-women's traditional-style Stern Hall, which boasts an original mural by Diego Rivera. Because of their proximity to the College of Engineering and College of Chemistry, these residence halls often house science and engineering majors. They tend to be quieter than the southside complexes but often get free glimpses of concerts owing to their proximity to the theater.
Bowles Hall, the country's oldest residential college, is located on the north side of campus between California Memorial Stadium and the Hearst Greek Theater. Gifted by Mary McNear Bowles in 1929 to honor her late husband, Regent Philip E. Bowles, the college began as a student-governed residence hall.[177] The hall was originally all male until its reopening in 2016 following a $45 million renovation.[178] Bowles is known for its Collegiate Gothic architecture, its sense of community, and its unusual traditions and pranks.[179]
The Channing-Bowditch and Ida Jackson apartments cater to re-entry students,[180][181] while the 58-acre University Village, located some 3 miles (4.8 km) northwest of campus, provides housing for students with families.
About three percent of undergraduate men and nine percent of undergraduate women—or 3,400 of total undergraduates—are active in Berekeley's Greek system.[183] University-sanctioned fraternities and sororities comprise over 60 houses affiliated with four Greek councils.[184][185]
Wellness Room sleep pods: part of a program created by the ASUC, UC Berkeley's official student association
The Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC) is the official student association that controls funding for student groups and organizes on-campus student events. It is considered[by whom?] the most autonomous student government at any university in the U.S. due to its independent funding model, level of university involvement and resources.[citation needed] The two main political parties are "Student Action"[187] and "CalSERVE."[188] The organization was founded in 1887 and has an annual operating budget of $1.7 million (excluding the budget of the Graduate Assembly of the ASUC), in addition to various investment assets. Its alumni include multiple State Senators, Assemblymembers, and White House Administration officials.[189][circular reference]
The ASUC's Student Union Program, Entertainment, and Recreation Board (SUPERB) is a student-run, non-profit branch dedicated to providing entertainment for the campus and community. Founded in 1964, SUPERB's programming includes the Friday Film Series, free Noon Concerts on Lower Sproul Plaza, Comedy Competitions, Poker Tournaments, free Sneak Previews of upcoming movies, and more.
Media and publications
Berkeley's student-run online television station, CalTV, was formed in 2005 and broadcasts online. It is run by students with a variety of backgrounds and majors. Since the mid-2010s, it has been a program of the ASUC.[190]
Berkeley's independent student-run newspaper is The Daily Californian. Founded in 1871, The Daily Cal became independent in 1971 after the campus administration fired three senior editors for encouraging readers to take back People's Park. The Daily Californian has both a print and online edition. Print circulation is about 10,000. The newspaper is an important source of information for students, faculty, staff, and the surrounding City of Berkeley.
Berkeley's FM Student radio station, KALX, broadcasts on 90.7 MHz. It is run largely by volunteers, including both students and community members.
Berkeley also features an assortment of student-run publications:
Berkeley Dance Marathon, one of the campus's student-led fundraising events
Zellerbach Hall, home of the Cal Performances theater group
There are some 94 political student groups on campus, including MEChXA de UC Berkeley, Berkeley ACLU, Berkeley Students for Life, Campus Greens, The Sustainability Team (STEAM), the Berkeley Student Food Collective, Students for Sensible Drug Policy, Cal Berkeley Democrats, and the Berkeley College Republicans.[191]
The Residence Hall Assembly (RHA) is the student-led umbrella organization that oversees event planning, legislation, sponsorships and other activities for over 7,2000 on-campus undergraduate residents.[192]
Berkeley students also run a number of consulting groups, including the Berkeley Group, founded in 2003 and affiliated with the Haas School.[193] Students from various concentrations are recruited and trained to work on pro-bono consulting engagements with actual nonprofit clients. Berkeley Consulting, founded in 1996, has served over 140 companies across the high-tech, retail, banking, and non-profit sectors.[194]
Democratic Education at Cal, or DeCal, is a program that promotes the creation of professor-sponsored, student-facilitated classes.[197] DeCal arose out of the 1960s Free Speech movement and was officially established in 1981. The program offers around 150 courses on a vast range of subjects that appeal to the student community, including classes on the Rubik's Cube, blockchain, web design, metamodernism, cooking, Jewish art, 3D animation, and bioprinting.[198]
The campus is home to several a cappella groups, including Drawn to Scale, Artists in Resonance, Berkeley Dil Se, the UC Men's Octet, the California Golden Overtones, and Noteworthy. The University of California Men's Octet was founded in 1948 and features a repertoire of barbershop, doo-wop, contemporary pop, modern alternative, and fight songs. Hewing to tradition, the groups perform weekly under Sather Gate on alternating days. Berkeley hosts a myriad other performing arts groups in comedy, dance, acting and instrumental music, and include jericho!, Improv & Sketch Comedy, The Movement, Taiko drumming, BareStage student musical theater, the Remedy Music Project, Main Stacks, AFX Dance, and TruElement.
Since 1967, students and staff jazz musicians have had an opportunity to perform and study with the University of California Jazz Ensembles. Under the direction of Dr. David W. Tucker, who was hired by the Cal Band as a composer, arranger, and associate director, but was later asked to direct the jazz ensembles as it grew in popularity and membership, the group grew rapidly from one big band to multiple big bands, numerous combos, and numerous instrumental classes with multiple instructors. For several decades it hosted the Pacific Coast Collegiate Jazz Festival, part of the American Collegiate Jazz Festival, a competitive forum for student musicians. PCCJF brought jazz luminaries such as Hubert Laws, Sonny Rollins, Freddie Hubbard, and Ed Shaughnessy to the Berkeley campus as performers, clinicians, and adjudicators. The festival later included high school musicians. Michael Wolff and Andy Narell are just a couple of its more famous alumni.
Berkeley student organizations also hosts many other conferences, seminars, and musical and theatrical performances, including the annual Sociological Research Symposium.
Engineering Student Teams
Given UC Berkeley's excellent STEM education and its proximity to Silicon Valley, there are a variety of student-run engineering teams that focus on winning design and engineering competitions.
Members of UC Berkeley's rocketry team, known as Space Enterprise at Berkeley (SEB), have developed and launched 3 solid-fuel sounding rockets and are currently developing a liquid bi-propellant rocket.[199]
Berkeley has two Formula SAE teams: Berkeley Formula Racing[200] and Formula Electric Berkeley.[201] Both of these teams participate in Formula SAE–run competitions, with the former focusing on internal combustion engines and the latter on electric motors.
The university's athletic teams are known as the California Golden Bears (often shortened to "Cal Bears" or just "Cal") and are primarily members of the NCAA Division IPac-12 Conference (Pac-12). Cal is also a member of the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation in several sports not sponsored by the Pac-12 and the America East Conference in women's field hockey. The first school colors, established in 1873 by a committee of students, were Blue (specifically Yale Blue) and Gold.[202][203] Yale Blue was originally chosen because many of the university's inaugural faculty were Yale graduates, including Henry Durant, its first president. Blue and Gold were specified and made the official colors of the university and the state colors of California in 1955.[202][204] However, the athletic department has recently specified a darker blue, close to but not the same as the Berkeley Blue now used by the university.[205][206]
The California Golden Bears have a long history of excellence in athletics, having won national titles in football, men's basketball, baseball, softball, men's and women's crew, men's gymnastics, men's tennis, men's and women's swimming, men's water polo, men's Judo, men's track, and men's rugby. In addition, Cal athletes have won numerous individual NCAA titles in track, gymnastics, swimming and tennis. On January 31, 2009, the university's Hurling club made athletic history by defeating Stanford in the first collegiate hurling match ever played on American soil. Berkeley teams have won national championships in baseball (2), men's basketball (2), men's crew (15), women's crew (3), football (5), men's golf (1), men's gymnastics (4), men's lacrosse (1), men's rugby (26), softball (1), men's swimming & diving (4), women's swimming & diving (3), men's tennis (1), men's track & field (1), and men's water polo (13). Cal students and alumni have also won 207 Olympic medals.[207]
California finished in first place[208] in the 2007–08 Fall U.S. Sports Academy Directors' Cup standings (Now the NACDA Directors' Cup), a competition measuring the best overall collegiate athletic programs in the country, with points awarded for national finishes in NCAA sports. Cal finished the 2007–08 competition in seventh place with 1119 points.[209]
Most recently, California finished in third place in the 2010–11 NACDA Directors' Cup with 1219.50 points, finishing behind Stanford and Ohio State. This is California's highest ever finish in the Director's Cup.[210]
The Golden Bears' traditional arch-rival is the Stanford Cardinal, and the most anticipated sporting event between the two universities is the annual football match dubbed the Big Game, celebrated with spirit events on both campuses. Since 1933, the winner of the Big Game has been awarded custody of the Stanford Axe. Other sporting games between these rivals have related names such as the Big Splash (water polo) or the Big Kick (soccer).[211]
One of the most famous moments in college football history occurred during the 85th Big Game on November 20, 1982. In what has become known as "the band play" or simply The Play, Cal scored the winning touchdown in the final seconds with a kickoff return that involved a series of laterals and the Stanford marching band rushing onto the field.
Nancy D. Erbe Former faculty and visiting professor (1998-2003). Professor, Fulbright Scholar (Four Fulbright Awards including Fulbright Distinguished Chair), and expert in conflict resolution. Founding Director, Rotary Center for International Studies in Peace and Conflict Resolution, University of California, Berkeley
Turing Award laureate Ken Thompson (left), BS 1965, MS 1966, and fellow laureate and colleague Dennis Ritchie (right), created Unix together
Berkeley alumni have developed a number of key technologies associated with the personal computer and the Internet.[265]Unix was created by alumnus Ken Thompson (BS 1965, MS 1966) along with colleague Dennis Ritchie. Alumni such as L. Peter Deutsch[266][267][268] (PhD 1973), Butler Lampson (PhD 1967), and Charles P. Thacker (BS 1967)[269] worked with Ken Thompson on Project Genie and then formed the ill-fated US Department of Defense-funded Berkeley Computer Corporation (BCC), which was scattered throughout the Berkeley campus in non-descript offices to avoid anti-war protestors.[270] After BCC failed, Deutsch, Lampson, and Thacker joined Xerox PARC, where they developed a number of pioneering computer technologies, culminating in the Xerox Alto that inspired the Apple Macintosh. In particular, the Alto used a computer mouse, which had been invented by Doug Engelbart (BEng 1952, PhD 1955). Thompson, Lampson, Engelbart, and Thacker[271] all later received a Turing Award. Also at Xerox PARC was Ronald V. Schmidt (BS 1966, MS 1968, PhD 1971), who became known as "the man who brought Ethernet to the masses".[272] Another Xerox PARC researcher, Charles Simonyi (BS 1972), pioneered the first WYSIWIGword processor program and was recruited personally by Bill Gates to join the fledgling company known as Microsoft to create Microsoft Word. Simonyi later became the first repeat space tourist, blasting off on Russian Soyuz rockets to work at the International Space Station orbiting the earth.
The XCF, an undergraduate research group located in Soda Hall, has been responsible for a number of notable software projects, including GTK+ (created by Peter Mattis, BS 1997), The GIMP (Spencer Kimball, BS 1996), and the initial diagnosis of the Morris worm.[276] In 1992, Pei-Yuan Wei,[277] an undergraduate at the XCF, created ViolaWWW, one of the first graphical web browsers. ViolaWWW was the first browser to have embedded scriptable objects, stylesheets, and tables. In the spirit of Open Source, he donated the code to Sun Microsystems, inspiring Java applets( Kim Polese (BS 1984) was the original product manager for Java at Sun Microsystems.) ViolaWWW also inspired researchers at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications to create the Mosaic web browser,[278] a pioneering web browser that became Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Robert Penn Warren, MA 1927 – novelist and poet, who received the Pulitzer Prize three times
Alumni have collectively won at least 25 Emmy Awards: Jon Else (BA 1968) for cinematography; Andrew Schneider (BA 1973) for screenwriting; Linda Schacht (BA 1966, MA 1981), two for broadcast journalism;[295][296] Christine Chen (dual BA's 1990), two for broadcast journalism;[297] Kristen Sze (BA), two for broadcast journalism;[298]Kathy Baker (BA 1977), three for acting; Ken Milnes (BS 1977), four for broadcasting technology; and Leroy Sievers (BA),[299] twelve for production. Elisabeth Leamy is the recipient of 13 Emmy awards.
[300][301][302]
Cal's seismically unsafe Memorial Stadium reopened September 2012 after a $321 million renovation. The university incurred a controversial $445 million of debt for the stadium and a new $153 million student athletic center, which it planned to finance with the sale of special stadium endowment seats. However, in June 2013 news surfaced that the university has had trouble selling the seats.[316] The roughly $18 million interest-only annual payments on the debt consumes 20 percent of Cal's athletics' budget; principal repayment begins in 2032 and is scheduled to conclude in 2113.[317]
On May 1, 2014, Berkeley was named one of fifty-five higher education institutions under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights "for possible violations of federal law over the handling of sexual violence and harassment complaints" by the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault.[318] Investigations continued into 2016, with hundreds of pages of records released in April 2016, showing a pattern of documented sexual harassment and firings of non-tenured staff.[319]
^ abOffice of Communications and Public Affairs (June 2019). "Our Name". The Berkeley Brand Manual(PDF). Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley. p. 34. Retrieved June 23, 2020.
^"History of UC Berkeley". University of California, Berkeley. Archived from the original on November 23, 2010. Founded in the wake of the gold rush by leaders of the newly established 31st state, the University of California's flagship campus at Berkeley has become one of the preeminent universities in the world.
^Berdahl, Robert (October 8, 1998). "The Future of Flagship Universities". University of California, Berkeley. Archived from the original on May 11, 2011. The issue I want to talk about tonight is the future of "flagship" universities, institutions like the University of Texas at Austin, or Texas A&M at College Station, or the University of California, Berkeley. This is not an easy topic to talk about for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that those of us in "systems" of higher education are frequently actively discouraged from using the term "flagship" to refer to our campuses because it is seen as hurtful to the self-esteem of colleagues at other institutions in our systems.
^Wollenberg, Charles (2002). "Chapter 2: Tale of Two Towns". Berkeley, A City in History. Berkeley Public Library. Archived from the original on June 12, 2009. Retrieved June 6, 2009.
"You've Heard of Berkeley. Is Merced the Future of the University of California?". The New York Times. Retrieved June 22, 2020. The disparity between the state’s population and its university enrollment is most stark at the state’s flagship campuses: at University of California, Los Angeles, Latinos make up about 21 percent of all students; at Berkeley, they account for less than 13 percent.
^"The Top American Research Universities"(PDF). The Center for Measuring University Performance. The Center for Measuring University Performance. Archived from the original(PDF) on January 29, 2016. Retrieved November 7, 2015.
^Kell, Gretchen; August 19, Media relations|; 2016August 26; 2016 (August 19, 2016). "Residential college redux: Bowles is back". Berkeley News. Retrieved February 14, 2020.CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
^"Her Norwegian heritage drew her to projects with the Norwegian Consulate in San Francisco and the Norwegian American Cultural Society, and she hosted a party for Crown Prince Haakon Magnus when he graduated from UC Berkeley in 1999."Carolyne Zinko (July 3, 2008). "Sigrun Corrigan, Bay Area arts patron, dies". San Francisco Chronicle.
^Harris, Reviewed By Harold H. (November 1, 1999). "A Biography of Distinguished Scientist Gilbert Newton Lewis (by Edward S. Lewis)". Journal of Chemical Education. 76 (11): 1487. Bibcode:1999JChEd..76.1487H. doi:10.1021/ed076p1487. ISSN0021-9584.
^The Gap was founded by Donald Fisher (BS 1951), who served as its inaugural president and chairman of the board. "Business Visionary Don Fisher, BS 51". Obituaries. Cal Business. University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business (Fall 2009). Archived from the original on April 17, 2016. Retrieved January 16, 2015.
^RedOctane was cofounded by brothers Charles Huang (BA 1992 ) and Kai Huang (BA CS 1994). Don Steinberg (October 1, 2008). "Just Play – Guitar Hero". Inc Magazine.
^VMware was cofounded by Edward Wang (BS EECS 1983, MS 1988, PhD 1994), along with Diane Greene (MS CS 1988) and her husband Mendel Rosenblum (MS 1989, PhD 1992). "VMware Leadership". VMware.
^KeyHole Inc (known now as Google Earth) was cofounded by John Hanke (MBA 1996). "Haas Alumnus Maps the Future at Google Earth". University of California, Berkeley. Archived from the original on January 18, 2010. Retrieved February 18, 2010.
^Eric Schmidt (MS 1979, PhD 1982) has been the CEO of Google since 2001. Pescovitz, David (May 27, 2014). "Eric Schmidt Searches and Finds Success (Again)". Lab Notes: Research from the Berkeley College of Engineering. College of Engineering, University of California, Berkeley. 3 (1 (Jan/Feb 2003)). Retrieved January 16, 2015.
^Shantanu Narayen (MBA 1993) has been the CEO of Adobe Systems since 2007. University of California Berkeley, Haas School of Business (2009). "Shantanu Narayen MBA 93". University of California Berkeley, Haas School of Business.
^Paul Jacobs (BS 1984, MS 1986, PhD 1989 EECS) has been the CEO of Qualcomm since 2005. Abby Cohn (November 2008). "Mobile Phone Metamorphosis". "Innovations" by UC Berkeley College of Engineering. Archived from the original on June 9, 2010. Retrieved May 17, 2010.
^"Berkeley Unix worked so well that DARPA chose it for the preferred 'universal computing environment' to link Arpanet research nodes, thus setting in place an essential piece of infrastructure for the later growth of the Internet. An entire generation of computer scientists cut their teeth on Berkeley Unix. Without it, the Net might well have evolved into a shape similar to what it is today, but with it, the Net exploded." Andrew Leonard (May 16, 2000). "BSD Unix: Power to the people, from the code". Salon.com. Archived from the original on December 4, 2005.
^L. Peter Deutsch is profiled on pages 30, 31, 43, 53, 54, 66 (which mentions Deutsch beginning his freshman year at Berkeley), and page 87 in the following book: Steven Levy (January 2, 2001). Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. Penguin Books. ISBN0-385-19195-2.
^Pei-Yuan Wei's contributions are profiled on pages 56, 64, 68, and 83, in the World Wide Web creator's autobiography (Tim Berners-Lee (November 7, 2001). Weaving the Web. Collins Business. ISBN0-06-251586-1.)
^"General Walton H. Walker had ordered her out of Korea..... Like many another soldier, old and young, General Walker was convinced that women do not belong in a combat zone... General Douglas MacArthur reversed Walker's ruling. To the Herald Tribune, MacArthur sent a soothing telegram: 'Ban on women correspondents in Korea has been lifted. Marguerite Higgins is held in highest professional esteem by everyone.'" "The Press: Last Word". Time. July 31, 1950.
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