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One for the Rhodes
After a 13-year hiatus, Berkeley has another Rhodes Scholar. In December, senior Ankur Luthra became Cal’s 22nd student to win the prestigious scholarship and the opportunity to study at Oxford University.
Like all Rhodes Scholars, Luthra has an impressive academic record. He maintains a 4.0 grade point average in both his majors, electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) and business administration; he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa; and he has a string of other awards and scholarships.
But Rhodes Scholars are not chosen just for their academic achievement. The selection committee looks for “excellence in qualities of mind and in qualities of person,” and selects applicants who “offer the promise of effective service to the world in the decades ahead.”
Luthra impressed the judges with his extracurricular activities, which include setting up Computer Literacy 4 Kids, a nonprofit that provides computers, software, and training for high school students who wouldn’t otherwise have access to a computer at home. In 1999, his freshman year, he created the music portal YourMP3Guide.com. Although it went the way of so many other dot-coms the following year, Luthra calls it “a learning experience” that motivated him to pursue business administration as a second major.
Luthra is also editor-in-chief of the Berkeley EECS Research Journal, which publishes undergraduate papers. His own research includes studies in artificial intelligence, and he is currently working with Professor Stuart Russell to train a robot to throw a ball. “Once you can train robots to do complex motor tasks, you’ve made a big step in ‘assistive robotics’--robots that can do things like help the disabled,” he explains.
The judges, former Rhodes Scholars themselves, are known for asking challenging and unpredictable questions. “They asked me ten questions about technology, and then, out of the blue, ‘What lessons did you learn from Hamlet?’” says Luthra.
Michele de Coteau ‘88, one of Berkeley’s last students to win the Rhodes Scholarship, knows how tough the process can be, having served on several selection committees herself. “Being on the committee, you meet these amazing young people who make you want to work harder, read more books, be a better person,” she says. After earning her D.Phil. at Oxford and teaching for a short time, de Coteau returned to Berkeley, where she is now director of the Multicultural Engineering Program. That program helped her enormously in getting the scholarship, she says. These days, she helps minority students navigate a degree in engineering as well as supporting those who plan to apply for the Rhodes Scholarship.
De Coteau’s advice to Luthra on going to Oxford? “I guess it would be to not run around in a big pack of American Rhodes Scholars-to make as many different kinds of friends as possible. Travel if he can while he’s there. And don’t eat the steak and kidney pie!”
--Ayala Ochert
Novartis reviewed
An internal review of the controversial five-year, $25-million agreement between Novartis and the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology has concluded that “virtually none” of the negative consequences predicted materialized.
The review, conducted by the office of Robert Price, associate vice chancellor for research, says that the agreement brought “considerable benefit” to the department, and that the only problems stemmed from the negative publicity the deal received. Such publicity, says the report, “was based, for the most part, on misunderstandings, misperceptions, and erroneous predictions.”
But Anne MacLachlan, of the Center for Studies in Higher Education, who is in charge of coordinating an ongoing external evaluation of the agreement, wonders why the internal review was conducted at all. “[Price’s report] is very positive, but would you expect anything else from the office which negotiated the deal?” she asks, noting that the review was only supposed to make sure that all of the conditions of the contract were being met, “which is something quite different from what the report does.”
The external evaluation, which is being led by sociologist Lawrence Busch of Michigan State University, is expected by August and, says MacLachlan, will include a broader assessment of the agreement and why it created such a backlash. “Everyone agrees it was a public relations disaster,” she says. “I feel that in the future there should be a great deal more openness about such agreements.”
The internal review notes that faculty involved would like to “continue the existing arrangement” but, in November, Syngenta let pass a deadline for renewing the contract, which means that in all likelihood it will end. Members of the department say that this is because of economic conditions in agricultural biotechnology.
Harassment policies questioned
On November 27, John Dwyer, the dean of Boalt Hall, announced his resignation after a former student in the law school filed a charge of sexual harassment against him. Law professor Robert Berring has been appointed as interim dean.
The female student claimed that Dwyer molested her in her home after a night of drinking with several other students two years ago. In his letter of resignation, Dwyer claimed the encounter was consensual, but acknowledged that it “reflected a serious error in judgment on my part and was inappropriate.”
Dwyer’s resignation brought the investigation to a close. A second investigation into campus sexual harassment policies, which the student also charges are inadequate, was due to be completed by the end of January.
The Faculty Code of Conduct does not outlaw all consensual relationships between faculty and students--only those where a supervisorial relationship exists. But Jan de Vries, vice provost for academic affairs and faculty welfare, acknowledges that the language is open to interpretation. “This case raises the question of whether the statement [in the Faculty Code of Conduct] made some years ago by the Academic Senate is today adequate, and whether it needs amplification or even some changes that draw a more conspicuous line between what’s permissible and what’s a violation,” he said.
Many on campus believe the current system needes to be changed. History professor Richard Abrams, who took part in a campus panel on the issue of consensual relationships a decade ago, says that there is a general lack of education among faculty on campus policies. Several dozen staff training sessions are conducted each year by the campus Title IX officer, but last year no sessions were held with faculty groups. “The issue isn’t so much our policies but how they’re conveyed to the faculty,” de Vries says.
Some would like to see a blanket ban on all sexual relationships between students and faculty, as has happened eleswhere, but de Vries says such a policy would be unenforcable. He does, however, see merit in Stanford’s new policy of “registering” sexual relationships.
In response to the Dwyer case, the University of California as a whole is assessing whether it should adopt a systemwide policy against sexual harassment.
Hey, squirt!
In December, the lowly sea squirt, Ciona intestinalis, became the seventh organism to have its genome sequenced. The draft genome was published in the journal Science by geneticists at Berkeley, the Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute, and several Japanese institutions.
Though it resembles a plant, the sea squirt actually belongs to the chordate family, a group of animals that first appeared 550 million years ago. While chordates don’t have a backbone, they do have a notochord--a nerve cord surrounded by cartilage--suggesting that vertebrates may have evolved from chordates. “In a sense, in Ciona we are seeing our ancestral genes,” says one of the paper’s authors, Michael Levine, director of Berkeley’s Center for Integrative Genomics. “We are seeing, at the genomic level, the evolutionary biology we have been talking about for 130 years.”
Blues in the News
On January 1, 2003, Jennifer Granholm ‘84 was sworn in as the 47th governor of the state of Michigan.
Former foreign correspondent for Time magazine David Jackson ‘72 took over as the 26th director of the Voice of America.
Daniel Kahneman, Ph.D. ‘61, won the 2002 Nobel Prize for economics. Currently a professor at Princeton University, he was recognized for “integrating insights from psychological research into economic science.”
Cal football coach Jeff Tedford was picked Pac-10 Coach of the Year in December for leading the biggest turnaround in the nation among Division I schools.
Psychologist Carol Tomlinson-Keasey, Ph.D. ‘64, has been named the first chancellor of UC Merced, the newest campus in the UC system.
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Rhodes Scholar
Ankur Luthra |
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