University of California, Berkeley

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
Main article: History of the University of California, Berkeley
In 1866, the private College of California purchased the land comprising the current Berkeley campus. 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 first full-curriculum public university in the state.

Ten faculty members and almost 40 students made up the new University of California when it opened in Oakland in 1869. Frederick H. Billings was a trustee of the College of California and suggested that the college be named in honor of the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkeley. In 1870, Henry Durant, the founder of the College of California, became the 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 and held its first classes.

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. In 1905, the University Farm was established near Sacramento, ultimately becoming the University of California, Davis. By the 1920s, the number of campus buildings had grown substantially, and included twenty structures designed by architect John Galen Howard.

Robert Gordon Sproul served as president from 1930 to 1958.[37] By 1942, the American Council on Education ranked UC Berkeley second only to Harvard University in the number of distinguished departments.


Berkeley students participate in a one-day peace strike opposing U.S. involvement in World War II on April 19, 1940
In 1930s, Ernest Lawrence helped establish the Radiation Laboratory (now Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) and invented the cyclotron, which won him the Nobel physics prize in 1939. Based on the cyclotron, UC Berkeley scientists and researchers, along with Berkeley Lab, continued to discover 16 chemical elements of the periodic table – more than any other university in the world. In particular, during World War II and following Glenn Seaborg's then-secret discovery of plutonium, Ernest Orlando Lawrence's Radiation Laboratory began to contract with the U.S. Army to develop the atomic bomb. UC Berkeley physics professor J. Robert Oppenheimer was named scientific head of the Manhattan Project in 1942.[39][40] Along with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley is now a partner in managing two other labs, Los Alamos National Laboratory (1943) and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (1952).

During the McCarthy era in 1949, the Board of Regents adopted an anti-communist loyalty oath. A number of faculty members objected and were dismissed; ten years passed before they were reinstated with back pay In 1952, the University of California became an entity separate from the Berkeley campus. Each campus was given relative autonomy and its own Chancellor. Then-president Sproul assumed presidency of the entire University of California system, and Clark Kerr became the first Chancellor of UC Berkeley.


Sather Tower (the Campanile) looking out over the San Francisco Bay and Mount Tamalpais
Berkeley gained worldwide reputation for student activism in the 1960s with the Free Speech Movement of 1964 and opposition to the Vietnam War. In the highly publicized People's Park protest in 1969, students and the school conflicted over use of a plot of land; the National Guard was called in and violence erupted. Then governor of California Ronald Reagan called the Berkeley campus "...a haven for communist sympathizers, protesters, and sex deviants". Modern students at Berkeley are less politically active, with a greater percentage of moderates and conservatives.Democrats outnumber Republicans on the faculty by a ratio of 9:1.

In 1982, the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) supported by National Science Foundation was founded on Berkeley campus, under the request of three Berkeley mathematicians, Shiing-Shen Chern, Calvin Moore and Isadore M. Singer.The institute was later moved to the peak of Berkeley hills. The institute is now widely regarded as a world leading mathematical center for collaborative research, drawing thousands of visiting researchers from around the world each year.

Entering 21st century, as state funding declined, Berkeley turned to private sources: BP donated $400 million over 10 years to develop biofuels, the Hewlett Foundation gave $113 million to endow 100 faculty chairs, and Dow Chemical gave $10 million to research sustainability. The BP grant has been criticized for diverting food production to fuel production. The 2008–13 Campaign for Berkeley raised $3.13 billion from 281,855 donors.

Name

View of campus from Evans Hall, as San Francisco and Oakland are seen in the background
The original name University of California was frequently shortened to California or Cal. UC Berkeley's athletic teams date to this time and so are referred to as the California Golden Bears, Cal Bears, or just Cal. Today, the term "University of California" refers to the statewide school system of which UC Berkeley is a part. The university discourages referring to the University of California, Berkeley as UCB, University of California at Berkeley, Cal Berkeley, U.C. Berkeley, and UC-Berkeley.  Berkeley is unaffiliated with the Berklee College of Music or Berkeley College.

Controversies

Originally, military training was compulsory for male undergraduates and Berkeley housed an armory for that purpose. In 1917, Berkeley's ROTC program was established and its School of Military Aeronautics trained future pilots, including Jimmy Doolittle, who graduated with a B.A. in 1922. Both Robert McNamara and Frederick C. Weyand graduated from UC Berkeley's ROTC program, earning B.A. degrees in 1937 and 1938, respectively. In 1926, future fleet admiral Chester W. Nimitz established the first Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps unit at Berkeley. During World War II, the military increased its presence on campus to recruit more officers, and by 1944, more than 1,000 Berkeley students were enrolled in the V-12 Navy College Training Program and naval training school for diesel engineering. The Board of Regents ended compulsory military training at Berkeley in 1962.

Various human and animal rights groups have conflicted with Berkeley. Native Americans conflicted with the school over repatriation of remains from the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology. Animal-rights activists have threatened faculty members using animals for research. The school's response to tree sitters protesting construction caused controversy in the local community.

On May 1, 2014, Berkeley was named one of fifty-five higher education institutions under investigation by the 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. The investigation comes after 31 female students made three federal complaints: first, a Clery Act complaint was filed in May 2013 and then after a lack of response from the University a second Clery Act Complaint and Title IX complaint were filed on February 26, 2014. Investigations have 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.

Academics

Valley Life Sciences Building

A T-Rex replica at the UC Museum of Paleontology

Wheeler Hall

Hearst Mining Building

From left to right: Stanley Hall, Tan Hall and College of Chemistry Plaza
Berkeley is a large, primarily residential research university with a majority of enrollments in undergraduate programs but also offers a comprehensive doctoral graduate program. The university has been accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges Senior College and University Commission since 1949. The university is one of only two UC campuses operating on a semester calendar, (the other is UC Merced). Berkeley offers 106 Bachelor's degrees, 88 Master's degrees, 97 research-focused doctoral programs and 31 professionally focused graduate degrees. The university awarded 7,565 Bachelor's, 2,610 Master's or Professional and 930 Doctoral degrees in 2013–2014.

Berkeley's 130-plus academic departments and programs are organized into 14 colleges and schools in addition to UC Berkeley Extension. Colleges are both undergraduate and graduate, while Schools are generally graduate only, though some offer undergraduate majors, minors, or courses.

Undergraduate programs

The four-year, full-time undergraduate program has a focus on the arts and sciences with a high level of co-existence in undergraduate and graduate programs. Freshman admission is selective but there are high levels of transfer-in. 107 Bachelor's degrees are offered across the Haas School of Business , College of Chemistry , College of Engineering , College of Environmental Design , College of Letters and Science , College of Natural Resources , and other individual majors . The most popular majors are Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Political Science, Molecular and Cell Biology, Environmental Science, and Economics.

Requirements for undergraduate degrees come from four sources: 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. 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. Academic grades are reported on a five-letter scale (A,B,C,D,F) with grade points being modified by three-tenths of point for pluses and minuses. 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.

Graduate and professional programs

Morrison Library
Berkeley has a "comprehensive" graduate program with high coexistence with the programs offered to undergraduates, but no medical school. The university offers graduate degrees in Master's of Art, Master's of Science, Master's of Fine Art, and Ph.D.s in addition to professional degrees such as the Juris Doctor and Master of Business Administration. The university awarded 887 doctoral degrees and 2,506 Master's degrees in 2012. Admission to graduate programs is decentralized; applicants apply directly to the department or degree program. Most graduate students are supported by fellowships, teach assistantships, or research assistantships. The 2010 United States National Research Council Rankings identified UC Berkeley as having the highest number of top-ranked doctoral programs in the nation. UC 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. UC Berkeley was also the #1 recipient of National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships between 2001 and 2010, with 1,333 awards.

Faculty and research

Main articles: List of UC Berkeley faculty; Research centers and laboratories at UC Berkeley; and List of Nobel laureates associated with University of California, Berkeley

The College of Natural Resources: Wellman Hall, flanked by Giannini and Hilgard Halls

The north side of Doe Library with Memorial Glade in the foreground
Berkeley is a research university with a "very high" level of research activity. In fiscal year 2015, Berkeley spent $789 million on research and development (R&D). There are 1,620 full-time and 500 part-time faculty members dispersed among more than 130 academic departments and more than 80 interdisciplinary research units.  Berkeley's current faculty includes 235 American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellows, 3 Fields Medal winners, 77 Fulbright Scholars, 139 Guggenheim Fellows, 73 members of the National Academy of Engineering, 149 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 8 Nobel Prize winners, 4 Pulitzer Prize winners, 125 Sloan Fellows, 7 Wolf Prize winners and 1 Pritzker Prize winner. 94 Nobel laureates have been affiliated with the university as faculty, alumni or researchers, the most of any public university in the United States and fourth most of any university in the world.

Faculty at UC Berkeley are more likely to register as Democrats than Republicans. This is similar to findings at Stanford University.

Library system

Main article: University of California, Berkeley Library System
Berkeley's 32 libraries tie together to make the fourth largest academic library in the United States surpassed only by Harvard University Library, Yale University Library and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library. However, considering the relative sizes and ages of these University libraries, Berkeley's collections have been growing about as fast as those at Harvard and Yale combined: specifically, 1.8 times faster than Harvard, and 1.9 times faster than 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 11 million volumes and maintains over 70,000 serial titles.[89] The libraries together cover over 12 acres (4.9 ha) of land and form one of the largest library complexes in the world.[90] Doe Library serves as the library system's reference, periodical, and administrative center, while most of the main collections are housed in the subterranean Gardner Main Stacks and Moffitt Undergraduate Library. The Bancroft Library, with holdings of over 400,000 printed volumes and 70 million manuscripts, pictorial items, maps and more, 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, The Oral History Center, the Center for the Tebtunis Papyri and the University Archives