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Back to school
 Students are working harder than ever to get in to Berkeley, and they're paying more for the privilege. This fall's 3,640 new undergraduates had higher standardized test scores, higher grade-point averages, and had taken more honors and advanced placement courses than any previous entering class.
But with the 30 percent fee increases approved by UC's Board of Regents in July, along with increases in the cost of living, these new students are having to pay significantly more to attend Cal. The overall cost of two semesters at Berkeley has risen from $17,676 a year ago to $20,066 this year.
The students themselves look much as they have in recent years. A little more than half, 54 percent, are women; 44 percent are Asian American, 30 percent are white, 11 percent are Latino, and 4 percent are African American. The youngest freshman is just 12 years old; the oldest is 77.
The campus is still reeling from the budget cuts that went along with the fee increases, both the result of the state's own financial crisis. But Chancellor Robert Berdahl expressed confidence that the quality of student education at Cal would remain unaffected. The ratio of teachers to students will remain the same and most classes will continue to be offered.
As a result of the budget cuts, and the potential for deeper ones in the coming years, there has been speculation over whether UC may have to cap enrollment growth--even ending its guarantee of a place for the state's top 12.5 percent of high school graduates, as promised in the California Master Plan. Berdahl said that possibility could not be ruled out, but added that it would be "tragic if the promise that's been part of California higher education for nearly a half-century were to be broken."
Berdahl bids farewell
 In a surprise to the Berkeley family, Chancellor Robert Berdahl announced in late September that he will resign in June 2004. An expert in German history who has served as Berkeley's chancellor since 1997, Berdahl says he plans to take a one-year sabbatical from the University and then return as a professor in history and public policy.
During his tenure, Berdahl oversaw an unprecedented rebuilding of the campus and helped return Berkeley's library to the top rank among public research universities. Berdahl also oversaw the launching of three major research units: the Health Sciences Initiative, the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS), and the California Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research (QB3).
CAA president Nadesan Permaul '72, M.A. '73, Ph.D. '90 said of Berdahl: "In my 25 years as a campus employee, I have never known a chancellor with a better understanding of the complexities of administration."
On campus, Berdahl is known for his personal warmth, his quiet but firm voice, his scholarly manner and eloquence, and his determination to uphold academic freedom. Last March, in an unusual step for a modern university leader, he spoke out against U.S. foreign policy and the country's flouting of international agreements.
"It has been the greatest privilege and honor of my life to serve as chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley," the 66-year-old Berdahl said when he made his announcement September 25.
 Fight on and on and on: Cal delighted more than 51,000 fans in Memorial Stadium, shocked the country's third-ranked team, and was the lead story on ESPN's Sports Center the evening of September 27 after a triple-overtime victory over USC, 34-31. This marks the first time since 1951 that Cal has beaten a team ranked that high. Joyous celebrations ensued, including the one shown here, with reserve Wale Forrester (left) and a very happy Old Blue embracing quarterback Robbie Robertson.
Writing in code
Berkeley researcher Deborah Anderson has launched an initiative to protect an endangered species--written scripts. Writers of the most widely used written scripts can communicate easily through e-mail and the Internet because those scripts are encoded in the universal format Unicode. But the characters of nearly 100 lesser-known scripts are yet to be encoded, effectively shutting out the millions who speak those languages.
"A lot of attention has been given to endangered languages," says Anderson, a linguist, "but it is not just languages that are endangered. The scripts used to write those languages are also in danger of extinction because, if not usable on computers, they are not usable in very important arenas of modern life."
Anderson became aware of the problem through her work as editor of the Indo-European Studies Bulletin, when she discovered that it was impossible to type certain letters of an ancient Italic script. She then learned how widespread the problem was, for both modern and ancient scripts, and last April launched the Script Encoding Initiative-"the largest multilingual project in history," she says.
The effort involves getting academics and others familiar with the scripts to write proposals for them to be included in the Unicode Standard and raising money for the project to continue. The project has already had some successes: thanks to its efforts, the latest version of Unicode now includes Linear B and Cypriot scripts. Over the summer, Buginese, Glagolitic, Coptic, and Old Persian cuneiform were all approved for inclusion in the standard.
It's not glamorous work, Anderson admits, but it is still important. If these scripts are not encoded over the next few years, they won't be included in the final version of Unicode. "Users of many of those scripts will be locked out of the information economy, probably more or less permanently," says Anderson.
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On September 13, a dinner was held in San Francisco to honor former NCAA All-American soccer star Bob DiGrazia '50 for his service to Cal, including 38 years as coach of the men's soccer team. |
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Dolores Huerta, cofounder of the United Farm Workers of America, was appointed on September 9 to a six-month term on UC's Board of Regents. She hopes to increase the diversity of students, faculty, and administration of the University. |
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Peggy Lemaux, a specialist in plant biology at Berkeley, won the Dennis Robert Hoagland Award from the American Society of Plant Biologists for her "outstanding plant biological investigations in support of agriculture." |
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Associate professor of earth and planetary science Michael Manga was named one of Popular Science magazine's "Brilliant 10" for his work modeling the evolution of planets. |
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Justices Richard Paez, Boalt '72 (left), and Harry Pregerson, Boalt '50,, were part of the three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that ruled September 15 to delay the October 7 recall election of Governor Gray Davis. The decision was reversed one week later by the same court. |
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