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The University of California, Berkeley (also known as UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, and by other names, see below) is the oldest and flagship campus of the ten-campus University of California system. Founded in 1868, the campus is located in Berkeley, California, occupying about 200 acres on a wooded slope, plus an additional 1000 acres (4 km²) of largely undeveloped land in the Oakland hills overlooking San Francisco Bay. Berkeley physicists played a key role in developing the atomic bomb during WWII and the hydrogen bomb soon afterwards, and the University has managed the nation's two principal nuclear weapons labs (now also used for more peaceful research) at Livermore and Los Alamos ever since. Berkeley scientists invented the cyclotron, discovered the anti-proton, played a key role in developing the laser, explained the processes underlying photosynthesis, isolated the polio virus, designed experiments that confirmed Bell's Theorem, and discovered numerous elements, including Seaborgium, Plutonium, Berkelium, Lawrencium and Californium. Berkeley computer scientists are also credited with creating BSD. But Berkeley faculty have a no less distinguished record in fields outside the sciences as well, including four Fields Medal winners in mathematics, and nine recipients of the prestigious James S. McDonnell Foundation award. Berkeley still enjoys a certain notoriety for its history of student activism. The Free Speech Movement (1964), a protest that began when the university tried to remove political pamphleteers from campus, and the People's Park riots (1969) were part of a wave of international student protest that took place during the 1960s, associated with an accompanying "hippie" counterculture. For all of its student activism and rebellious history, however, the Berkeley campus is remarkably serene, with numerous quiet, green areas on campus and many architecturally distinguished buildings.
History
Military history The military has been and continues to be an integral part of UC Berkeley's history since the university's birth. In fact, military training was compulsory at the university from 1870 to 1962. The University of California came into being in 1868 as a merger between the cash-strapped College of California (a private institution incorporated in 1855) and the Agricultural, Mining, and Mechanical Arts College (a public institution formed in 1866). The latter was created by the state legislature after it took advantage of the federal Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act of 1862, which offered states a grant of public land if they would establish a public college teaching agriculture, mechanical arts, and military tactics. Thus the precursor to the army's Reserve Officer Training Corps was born. In exchange for California's share of 150,000 acres (600 km²), the first male undergraduates at the new University of California were required to serve two hours per week for four years being trained in tactics, dismounted drill, marksmanship, camp duty, military engineering, and fortifications. North Hall, which no longer exists, housed an armory. The university president's report from 1902 states that "The University Cadets from last year numbered no less than 866. Appointments as second lieutenants in the regular army have been conferred upon several men who have distinguished themselves as officers in the University Cadets. It is very much to be hoped that the War Department will establish permanently the policy of offering such appointments to the graduates of each year who show the highest ability in military pursuits." In 1904, the service requirement was dropped to two years, and in 1917, Cal's ROTC was established more or less as it exists today with ROTC programs for the four main branches of the military. Commander Chester W. Nimitz established the Naval ROTC at Cal in the fall of 1926. Transfered in June 1929, Captain Nimitz left a unit of 150 midshipmen enrolled with a staff of six commissioned and six petty officers. Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz never lost his admiration of Cal, he retired in Berkeley. During World War II, the military increased its presence on campus to churn out recruits from the officer training corps. The army program took over Bowles Hall, a dormitory, and the naval program took over the International House and several fraternities for its trainees. By 1944, more than 1,000 navy personnel were studying at Cal, roughly one out of every four male Berkeley students. With the end of the war and the subsequent rise of student activism, the California Board of Regents succumbed to pressure from the student government and ended compulsory military training at Berkeley in 1962. Former secretary of defense Robert McNamara and former Army chief of staff Frederick C. Weyand are both graduates of Cal's ROTC program. To learn more about ROTC's history at UC Berkeley, visit Hearst Gymnasium's first-floor exhibits, which showcase historical photographs and memorabilia — including ship's wheels and antique machine guns. Campus architecture and architects The campus is approximately 1,232 acres (5 km²) in its entirety, though the main campus is on the western 178 acres (0.7 km²). The campus is bordered on the west by Downtown Berkeley, on the north by older neighborhoods, and on the east by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Berkeley Hills. The south campus area includes student housing and Telegraph Avenue, a raffish shopping strip that was heavily populated by "street people" during the 1990s. The campus is divided by 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 also contains numerous wooded areas; including: Founders' Rock, Faculty Glade, Grinnell Natural Area, and the Eucalyptus Grove, said to be the tallest stand of hardwood trees in North America. Several research units overlook the campus from the rugged eastern foothills, notably the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Space Sciences Laboratory, the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, and the Lawrence Hall of Science. Residential halls and administrative buildings dot the city of Berkeley, mostly south of the main campus. The campus and surrounding community are home to a number of buildings designed by early 20th century campus architect John Galen Howard, his peer Bernard Maybeck (best known for the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco), and Maybeck's student Julia Morgan. Later buildings were designed by architects such as Charles Willard Moore (Haas School of Business) and Joseph Esherick (Wurster Hall). Very little of the original University of California (c. 1868–1903) remains, with the Victorian Second Empire-style South Hall and Piedmont Avenue (designed by Frederick Law Olmsted) being notable exceptions. Built in 1873, South Hall is the oldest university building in California. What is considered the historic campus today was the eventual 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, 1899). Much of the older campus is built in the Beaux-Arts Classical style, today referred to as the “classical core” of the campus. Howard designed over twenty buildings, which set the tone for the campus up until its expansion in the 1950s and 1960s. These included the Hearst Greek Theatre, the 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 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, such as North Gate Hall, Dwinelle Annex, and Stephens Hall. Many of these and other campus buildings are recognized California Historical Landmarks and are now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Chancellors The 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): Colleges and schools Berkeley's 130-plus academic departments and programs are organized into 14 unique colleges and schools. ("Colleges" are both undergraduate and graduate, while "Schools" are generally graduate only, though some offer undergraduate majors, minors, or courses): Labor unions representing UC Berkeley employees Names Even though Berkeley is the flagship campus of the University of California system, the term University of California is not applied to the campus outside of varsity sports. The official name of the campus is University of California, Berkeley. Informally, the campus is usually called Cal, UC Berkeley or just Berkeley, which are all official variations. Athletic teams are designated as California Golden Bears or simply Cal Bears, but the word "Berkeley" is never used in reference to them. Outside of athletics, University of California usually refers to the entire University of California system. The campus office for trademarks disallows the use of Cal Berkeley, though it is occasionally used colloquially. Unlike most University of California campuses, which are commonly known by their initials, usage of UCB is discouraged (as is University of California at Berkeley), and the registered domain name is berkeley.edu. Berkeley is sometimes confused but unaffiliated with Berklee College of Music, a private music school in Boston, Massachusetts, or Berkeley College, a private college with campuses in New York and New Jersey. Academics Berkeley's academic programs have been considered among the best in the world since the end of World War II, and surveys such as those by the National Research Council and the American Council on Education have praised the university for its broad range of academic strengths, not just in mathematics, science and engineering, but in the arts, humanities and social sciences as well. Berkeley is an exceptionally comprehensive university, offering over 7,000 courses in nearly 300 degree programs. The university awards over 5,500 bachelor's degrees, 2,000 master's degrees, 900 doctorates, and 200 law degrees each year. The student-faculty ratio is 15.5 to 1, among the lowest of any major public university, and the average class consists of 30 students (not including discussion sections led by graduate student instructors). However, introductory classes consisting of hundreds of students are not unusual, and some Berkeley professors are criticized for being more interested in research than in undergraduate teaching. Berkeley's faculty includes 221 American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellows, 83 Fulbright Scholars, 139 Guggenheim Fellows, 87 members of the National Academy of Engineering, 132 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 8 Nobel Prize winners, 3 Pulitzer Prize winners, 84 Sloan Fellows, and 7 Wolf Prize winners.. 61 Nobel Laureates are associated with the university, the sixth most of any university in the world. Twenty have served on its faculty. (see list of distinguished Berkeley faculty) Berkeley has graduated more students who go on to earn doctorates than any other university in the United States, and its enrollment of National Merit Scholars was third in the nation until 2002, when participation in the National Merit program was discontinued. Berkeley's acceptance rate to medical school of 63.4% is among highest of all public universities. Campus Enrollment The following statistics are calculated from the Fall 2005 enrollment and were released by the University of California system (the 2006 statistics will be released Fall 2007): Women: 12,640 Men: 10,842 Women: 4,643 Men: 5,433 African American: 3.5% Native American: 0.5% Asian/Pacific Islander: 41.4% Chicano/Latino: 10.6% White: 31% Other: 1.6% Not Stated: 8.1% International: 3.3% Rankings According to the National Research Council, Berkeley ranks first nationally in the number of graduate programs in the top ten in their fields (97%, 35 of 36 programs) and first nationally in the number of "distinguished" programs for the scholarship of the faculty (32 programs). Berkeley is the only university in the nation to achieve top 5 rankings for all its PhD programs in those disciplines covered by the US News and World Report graduate school survey. US News also consistently ranks Berkeley as the nation’s top public university and within the top three for both Undergraduate Business and Undergraduate Engineering. U.S. News & World Report recently ranked Berkeley's undergraduate program twentieth nationally in terms of "academic excellence." The World Universities Rankings performed in 2005 by the The Times Higher Education Supplement ranked Berkeley sixth in the world *, and the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Institute for Higher Education ranked Berkeley fourth in the world * in its 2005 and 2006 rankings. Those rankings were based upon alumni and faculty quality defined by academic reputation, as well as awards won, papers published, international presence, student to faculty ratio, frequency of citation by peers, and performance relative to size. Admissions
Library system Berkeley’s 32 libraries together tie for fourth largest academic library in the United States with University of Illinois, surpassed only by the Library of Congress, Harvard, and Yale. In 2003, the Association of Research Libraries ranked it as the top public and third overall university library in North America based on various statistical measures of quality.As of 2006, Berkeley’s library system contains over 10 million volumes and maintains over 70,000 serial titles. The libraries together cover over 12 acres of land and comprise one of the largest library complexes in the world. Doe Library serves as the library system's reference, periodical, and administrative center, while most of the main collections are now housed in the subterranean Gardner Main Stacks and Moffitt Undergraduate Library. The Bancroft Library an outstanding collection of: the western part of North America, with emphasis on California, Mexico and Central America. The holdings of the Bancroft Library, over 400,000 printed volumes. Contributions to computer science
Distinguished Berkeley people Nobel Prizes have been awarded to nineteen past and present faculty, among the 60 Nobel laureates associated with the university. See also: Student life Athletics and traditions Cal's sports teams compete in intercollegiate athletics as the California Golden Bears. They participate in the NCAA's Division I-A as a member of the Pacific Ten Conference. The official school colors, established in 1873 by a committee of students, are Yale Blue and California Gold. Yale Blue was chosen because many of the university's founders were Yale University graduates, (Henry Durant, Yale, Class of 1827, first university president) while California Gold was selected to represent the Golden State of California. Cal has 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 track, and rugby. In addition, Cal athletes have won numerous individual NCAA titles in track, gymnastics, swimming and tennis. The official university mascot is Oski the Bear, who first debuted in 1941. Previously, live bear cubs were used as mascots at Memorial Stadium. It was decided in 1940 that a costumed mascot would be a better alternative to a live bear. Named after the Oski-wow-wow yell, he is cared for by the Oski Committee, who have exclusive knowledge of the identity of the costume-wearer. The Golden Bears' traditional arch-rivalry is with the Stanford Indians/Cardinal. The most anticipated sporting event between the two universities is the annual football game dubbed the Big Game, and it is celebrated with spirit events on both campuses. Since 1933, the winner of the Big Game has been awarded custody of the Stanford Axe. One of the most famous moments in Big Game history occurred during the 85th Big Game on November 20, 1982. In what has become known simply as 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. 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. 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, 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. The Chairman of the Rally Committee holds the title "Custodian of the Axe" while it is in the Committee's care. Overlooking the main Berkeley campus from the foothills in the east, the Big C is an indelible 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 ensued in 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. 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 pen. 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 the Pacific in 1991, when Cal scored 12 touchdowns. California finished in seventh place* in the NACDA Director's Cup standings (Formerly the Sears Cup), which measures the best overall collegiate athletic programs in the country, with points awarded for national finishes in NCAA sports. With 865.5 points, Cal's seventh place finish is the highest in the school's history. Cal National Champions 1 NIT Championship (1999) 21 individual NCAA champions 42 individual NCAA champions 12 NCAA relay championships 2 NCAA relay championships 2 NCAA singles champions (1925, '26) 9 NCAA doubles championships (1925, '26, '30, '35, '37, '39, '52, '90, '91) 1 NCAA singles champion (2006) 30 individual NCAA champions Total NCAA Team Championships 66 Student housing
Student groups UC Berkeley has over 700 established student groups. UC Berkeley has a reputation for student activism, stemming from the 1960s and the Free Speech Movement. Today, Berkeley is known as a lively campus with activism in many forms, from email petitions, presentations on Sproul Plaza and volunteering, to the occasional protest. Political student groups on campus numbered 94 in 2006-2007 school year, including Berkeley ACLU, Berkeley Students for Life, Campus Greens, Cal Berkeley Democrats, and the Berkeley College Republicans. Berkeley sends the most students to the Peace Corps of any university in the nation. The IDEAL Scholars Fund was established by four alumni to increase the number of qualified, underrepresented students of color at UC Berkeley. The Fund tries to counter the effects of California Proposition 209, which ended Affirmative Action in California and in the University of California system. The consequent reduction in the numbers of Latino, African American and Native American students rekindled activism on campus concerning issues of race. However, supporters of Proposition 209 have noted that the number of Asian American students has dramatically increased following its passage. Racial preferences remain a controversial topic, with some students supporting them while others are opposed. The Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC) is the student government organization that controls funding for student groups and organizes on-campus student events. It is considered one of the most autonomous student governments at any public university in the U.S. UC 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. Berkeley's FM radio station, KALX, broadcasts on 90.7 MHz. It is run largely by volunteers, including both students and community members. Democratic Education at Cal, or DeCal, is a program that promotes the creation of professor-sponsored, student-facilitated classes through the Special Studies 98/198 program. DeCal arose out of the 1960's Free Speech movement and was officially established in 1981. The program offers some 150 courses on a vast range of subjects that appeal to the Berkeley student community, including classes on The Simpsons, Poker, South Park, conspiracy theories, political debate and DJing.* Greek Life Alpha Kappa Lambda, the only men's fraternity founded west of the Mississippi river, was founded at Berkeley in 1914. Many other fraternities and sororities have existed at Berkeley over the years: Notes Further reading See also Official websites Other | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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