,
weblink, Faculty Guide to Campus Life
, 2008-01-31
, University of California, Berkeley
, {{color box|#000066}}{{color box|#FFCC33}}|mascot =
OskiNational Collegiate Athletic Association>NCAA Division I
| California Golden Bears |free_label = Newspaper|free =
The Daily Californian|nickname =|free_label2 = Yearbook|free nickname2 = The Blue & Gold
University of California, Pacific-10 Conference>Pacific-10, International Alliance of Research Universities | , Association of American Universities>AAU|nobel_laureates = 61 | (3)Downtown Berkeley (BART station)>Downtown Berkeley BART|website =berkeley.edu|logo = }}
The | University of California, Berkeley (also referred to as
Cal,
Berkeley and
UC Berkeley) is a major research university located in
Berkeley,
California,
United States. The oldest of the ten major campuses affiliated with the
University of California, Berkeley offers some 300 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines. The university occupies {{convert|6651|acre|km2|0}}
(4)Berkeley student-athletes compete intercollegiately as the
California Golden Bears. A member of both the
Pacific-10 Conference and the
Mountain Pacific Sports Federation in the
NCAA, Cal students have won national titles in many sports, including football, men's basketball, baseball, softball, water polo, rugby and crew. In addition, they have won over 100 Olympic medals. The official colors of the university and its athletic teams are Yale blue and California gold.
History
missing image!
- Berkeley1940.jpeg -
UC Berkeley campus circa 1940
Founding
In 1866, the land that comprises the current Berkeley campus was purchased by the private
College of California. Because it lacked sufficient funds to operate, it eventually merged with the state-run Agricultural, Mining, and Mechanical Arts College to form the
University of California. The university's charter was signed by California Governor
Henry H. Haight on
March 23,
1868. Professor
John Le Conte was appointed interim president, serving until 1870 when the Board of regents elected
Henry Durant, the founder of the College of California. The university opened in September of 1869 using the former College of California's buildings in
Oakland as a temporary home while the new campus underwent construction.
(5) In 1871, the Board of Regents stated that women should be admitted on an equal basis with men.
(6) With the completion of North and
South Halls in 1873, the university relocated to its Berkeley location with 167 male and 222 female students.
(7)Early development
Starting in 1891,
Phoebe Apperson Hearst, mother of
William Randolph Hearst, made several large gifts to Berkeley, endowing a number of programs, sponsoring an international architectural competition, and funding the construction of Hearst Memorial Mining Building and Hearst Hall. In 1899, the University came of age under the direction of
Benjamin Ide Wheeler, the University's President until 1919. Its reputation grew as President Wheeler succeeded in attracting renowned faculty to the campus and procuring research and scholarship funds.
(8) these buildings form the core of UC Berkeley's present campus architecture.
Robert Gordon Sproul assumed the presidency in 1930 and during his tenure of 28 years, UC Berkeley gained international recognition as a major research university. Prior to taking office, Sproul took a six month tour of other universities and colleges to study their educational and administrative methods and to establish connections through which he could draw talented faculty in the future.
(9) The
Great Depression and
World War II led to funding cutbacks, but Sproul was able to maintain academic and research standards by campaigning for private funds. By 1942, the American Council on Education ranked UC Berkeley second only to
Harvard University in the number of distinguished departments.
(10)(11) Along with the descendant of the Radiation Lab, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the University of California originally managed and is now a partner in managing two other labs of similar age,
Los Alamos National Laboratory and
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which were established in 1943 and 1952, respectively.
1950s and 1960s political influences
During the
McCarthy era in 1949, the
Board of Regents adopted an anti-
communist loyalty oath to be signed by all University of California employees. A number of faculty members objected to the oath requirement and were dismissed;
(12) ten years passed before they were reinstated with back pay.
(13) One of them,
Edward C. Tolman—the noted
comparative psychologist— has a building on campus named after him housing the departments of psychology and education. An oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies, foreign and domestic" is still required of all UC employees.
(14)(15)In 1952, the University of California became an entity separate from the Berkeley campus as part of a major restructuring of the UC system. Each campus was given relative autonomy and its own Chancellor. Sproul assumed the presidency of the entire University of California system, and
Clark Kerr became the first Chancellor of UC Berkeley.
(16) An impromptu response to the university’s ban on campus political activity, the Free Speech Movement led to the formal establishment of students’ freedom of expression. Student protests continued through the Vietnam War era in the 1960s, as campuses across the nation spoke out against American involvement in the war.
Perhaps the most publicized event in Berkeley was the
People's Park protest in 1969, which was a conflict between the university and a number of Berkeley students and city residents over a plot of land on which the university intended to construct athletic fields. A grassroots effort by students and residents turned it into a community park, but after a few weeks, the university decided to reclaim control over the property. Law enforcement was sent in and the park was bulldozed, setting off a protest. California governor
Ronald Reagan — who had said in his gubernatorial election campaign that he would clean up the perceived unruliness at Berkeley and other university campuses — called in
National Guard troops and more violence erupted, resulting in over a dozen people hospitalized, a police officer stabbed, a bystander blinded, and the death of one student.
(17) The university ultimately decided not to develop People’s Park, though it remains the owner of the property.
Present day
Today, students at UC Berkeley are generally considered to be less politically active than their predecessors.
(18) In a poll conducted in 2005, 51% of Berkeley freshmen considered themselves liberal, 37% considered themselves moderate, and 12% identified as conservative. 43.8% have no religious preference compared to a national average of 17.6%. In 1982, 20.8% identified as conservative, 32.9% identified as liberals, and 46.4% identified as moderate.
(19) Although Republicans are in the minority, the Berkeley College Republicans is the largest student organization on campus.
(20) Democrats outnumber Republicans on the faculty by a ratio of nine to one, leading to some conservative student criticism of the faculty for teaching with a liberal bias.
(21) missing image!
- Tightwad Hill.jpg -
Tightwad Hill
Although considered a liberal institution by some, various human and animal rights groups have protested the research conducted at Berkeley.
Native American groups contend that the university's dismantling of the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology's repatriation unit demonstrates unwillingness to comply with the
Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, while Berkeley officials say the museum's reorganization complies with the law and will involve all museum staff in the repatriation process.
(22) Animal-rights activists have taken to committing various acts of vandalism and intimidation against faculty members whose research involves the use of animals.
(23) Additionally, the university's response to a group of
tree sitters protesting the construction of a new athletic center has galvanized some members of the local community, including the city council, against the university.
(24) Plans to renovate Memorial Stadium in a way that would eliminate a view of the field from the surrounding hills also have encountered opposition from alumni and others who have regularly watched Cal football games for free.
(25) As of 2006, the 32,347-student university needed more capital investment just to maintain current infrastructure than any other campus in the UC system, but as its enrollment is at capacity, it often receives less state money for improvement projects than other, growing campuses in the system.
(26) As state funding for higher education declines, Berkeley has increasingly turned to private sources to maintain basic research programs. In 2007, the oil giant
BP donated $500 million to Berkeley and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to establish a joint research laboratory to develop
biofuels, the Hewlett Foundation gave $113 million to endow 100
faculty chairs, and
Dow Chemical gave $10 million for a research program in
sustainability to be overseen by a Dow executive.
(27)(28)British Petroleum / BP Deal
The $500 million ten-year
contract between UC Berkeley, the
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and
BP (formerly British Petroleum), one of the world’s largest energy production companies, officially went into effect Wednesday
November 14,
2007 following approval by a majority of the faculty.
(29) The grant is the largest in the University’s history. The deal has garnered criticism from some
students and
faculty who claim the agreement was negotiated in secret, and that it threatens Berkeley’s reputation as an autonomous and democratic institution of higher learning.
(30) Supporters of the deal, on the other hand, assert that the infusion of capital from the venture will benefit the campus as a whole at a time when public universities are dealing with increasing cuts in State and Federal funding. They also point out that the BP deal focuses on developing alternative energy, an important issue in today's world.
(31)Nuclear physicist and BP Chief
Scientist Steve Koonin began the process that led to BP’s selection of Berkeley as a co-recipient of the grant.
(32)In March of 2007 the UC Regents, who signed the deal, voted to build a new research facility to house the
Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI), BP’s chosen name for the project. University officials describe it as “the first public-private institution of this scale in the world.”
(33)Campus
missing image!
- Berkeley Campus from Big C.JPG -
View of the Berkeley Campus from the Big C on the foothills to the east
The Berkeley campus encompasses approximately 1,232 acres (5 km²), though the "central campus" occupies only the low-lying western 178 acres (0.7 km²) of this area. Of the remaining 1000 acres (4 km²), approximately {{convert|200|acre|km2|1}} 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 undeveloped {{convert|800|acre|km2|1}} ecological preserve, the
University of California Botanical Garden and a recreation center in
Strawberry Canyon. 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{{Fact|date=October 2007}}; situated north of that are the upscale residential neighborhoods of the
Berkeley Hills, where many faculty members live{{Fact|date=October 2007}}. 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 some land to the northwest of the main campus, a 90 acre married student housing in nearby town of Albany ("Albany Village" and the "Gill Tract"), a field research station several miles to the north in Richmond, California. Outside of the Bay Area, the University owns various research laboratories and research forests in both northern and southern Sierra Nevada.
Architecture
missing image!
- South Hall--UC Berkeley--Panoramic.jpg -
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.
(34) The winner was Frenchman Emile Bernard, 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 {{convert|307|ft|m|0|sing=on}}
Sather Tower (nicknamed "the Campanile" after its architectural inspiration,
St Mark's Campanile in Venice). 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 and are listed on the
National Register of Historic Places. Built in 1873 in a Victorian Second-Empire-style,
South Hall is the oldest university building in California. It, and the
Frederick Law Olmsted-designed
Piedmont Avenue east of the main campus, are the only remnants from the original University of California before John Galen Howard's buildings were constructed. Other architects whose work can be found in the campus and surrounding area are
Bernard Maybeck(35) (best known for the
Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco), Maybeck's student
Julia Morgan (Hearst Women's Gymnasium),
Charles Willard Moore (
Haas School of Business) and
Joseph Esherick (Wurster Hall).
Natural features
missing image!
- Strawberry Creek near Dwinelle Hall.jpg -
Strawberry Creek, as seen between Dwinelle Hall and Lower Sproul Plaza.
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 in the 1870s. The campus, itself, contains 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.
(36)The campus sits on the
Hayward Fault, which runs directly through
California Memorial Stadium.
(37)Organization
ChancellorsThe position of Chancellor was created in 1952 during the reorganization and expansion of the University of California; there have since been nine inaugurated chancellors (one was acting chancellor):
{| border="2" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaa solid; border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 95%;"! !! Chancellors of UC Berkeley !! Years as Chancellor
