Center for Educational Partnerships, UC Berkeley

UC President Michael V. Drake reflects on the Black workers, scholars, artists and activists who have propelled the University of California and the world forward, and the work that remains to be done to achieve our ideals of equality, inclusion and justice. https://youtu.be/uqkXeA3z4Lg

The UC Berkeley Upward Bound Math & Science (UBMS) Program now accepting applications for 2020-2021 > 6 Week Virtual Summer Program >Academic Advising >Tutoring... >STEM related Career & Major support >College & Financial Aid Application support > And Many More! The UC Berkeley UBMS program is a federally funded program designed to motivate and prepare students with academic potential for success in math or science education and careers beyond high school. Students accepted into the program receive services for free, and are expected to make a serious commitment to both their academic education and the UC Berkeley UBMS Program. 1. Must be a U.S. Citizen or Permanent Resident or in the process of becoming a resident. 2. Must be First Generation (neither parent/guardian has a BA/BS or 4 yr college degree) and/or 3. Family's Taxable Income must meet Federal TRIO Low-income levels in table below or family receives federal or state assistance such as food stamps, free lunch, AFDC, Cal-Works, Section 8, etc. 4. Attend one of our target schools or TRIO Sending Projects. 5. In grades: 9, 10, or 11th at the time of application. If you have any questions, please contact the UBMS Office at 510-642-2322. Application deadline: March 21, 2021 (or until filled) Click here to apply: https://berkeley.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_5C5UYjzTA3JKBsp

UC system plans resume in-person instruction by fall 2021 Chancellor Carol Christ and A. Paul Alivisatos, executive vice chancellor and provost, sent the following message to the campus community on Monday: University of California President Michael Drake announced today in this message that the University of California is planning for a return to primarily in-person instruction systemwide in fall 2021.... This is exciting and represents light at the end of what has been a difficult and challenging time for all of us. We assure you that we will proceed toward this goal with our eye on what has been our number one priority all along: protecting the health and safety of members of our campus community. We will continue to strongly encourage prevention measures and will require and provide regular COVID-19 testing for anyone who will be on campus. We expect the COVID-19 vaccine will be more broadly available on campus and in the community between now and the start of fall semester, which will offer further protection against disease spread. And we will continue to work in close concert with and at the direction of local public health authorities. We realize this announcement is likely to elicit questions and concerns along with a cautious sense of optimism. Our eventual recovery will most assuredly be a new normal. Our Recovery Management Teams will continue to work through issues over the next weeks and months and we will keep you informed every step of the way. Thank you for all you have done and continue to do to preserve our mission of education, discovery and serving the people of California and the world.

UC Berkeley Professors Post Lectures Online For Free Public Access.... Some UC Berkeley professors are choosing to offer their class lectures online and free of charge to the public on platforms such as the UCTV YouTube channel and edX, a website for free online classes. David Wagner, campus electrical engineering and computer sciences professor, teaches Data 8 and Data 8X a free online course based on Data 8 with customized assignments. The campus course contains some mate...Continue reading

Berkeley CEP Leader Marsha Jaeger Retires After Over 30 Years On Campus... Vice Chancellor for Equity & Inclusion Oscar D. Dubón shared the following message with the campus community Friday: After more than 32 years on the Berkeley campus and 21 years of leading the Center for Educational Partnerships (CEP) within the Division of Equity & Inclusion, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Educational Partnerships Marsha Jaeger is retiring on November 1, 2020.... I have had the honor and privilege to both work closely with Marsha and benefit from her experience, wisdom, and talent. She has been an invaluable adviser and a champion for CEP and the division. I am thrilled for her as she pursues a new journey and will miss her as a thought partner and colleague. Marsha began her tenure at CEP in 1999 and has devoted her career to educational equity and college access for underrepresented, low-income, and first-generation-to-college students. Over the last two decades, CEP has become a national leader in college access and developed innovative, highly successful college-preparation service models. CEP partners with more than 135 schools and 70 community colleges to provide programming and services to over 75,000 students and their families each year while engaging with thousands of counselors, teachers, and school administrators. CEP builds a college-going culture within its partner schools and districts to support students as they pursue their goal of attending the University of California and other institutions of higher education. More broadly, CEP has supported thousands of students and families on successful pathways to and through postsecondary education. In addition to her role as AVC, for most of the past three years, Marsha has served as Interim Chief Financial Officer and Divisional Finance Leader (DFL) for the Division of Equity & Inclusion. She took on these additional responsibilities to help preserve divisional resources for direct student services and guided the division through the past four campus budget development cycles. Please join me in thanking Marsha for her years of dedicated service and her immeasurable contributions to the field of college access and to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion here at Berkeley and beyond.

Making Berkeley Home: NavCal Creates Community For Nontraditional Students....for full story click link https://news.berkeley.edu//making-berkeley-home-navcal-cr/

Take A Tour Of Blockeley University, A Replica Of UC Berkeley Campus! Take a campus tour of Blockeley University! Blockeley is a virtual replica of the UC Berkeley campus in the popular Minecraft video game, built by more than 100 Berkeley students. This past May, hundreds of graduating students attended a virtual, mock commencement ceremony at Blockeley. You’ll experience avatars walking through campus and see Doe Library, Sather Gate, and other iconic places in a whole new way. Let there be light. And let there be blocks! https://youtu.be/QLv7gkc784Y

Latinx Heritage Month recognizes, honors, and celebrates the resilience, contributions, and cultures of Latinx, Chicanx, and all Latinx-identified folx from America and with ancestors from Mexico, the Caribbean, Spain, and Central and South America. It began in 1968 when then-President Lyndon Johnson signed Proclamation 3869 designating National Hispanic Heritage Week. In 1988 it expanded to a month, running each year from September 15 - October 15. Click this link for more information https://diversity.berkeley.edu/celebrating-latinx-heritage-

This UC Berkeley Student Is Making College A Reality For Central Valley Teens.... UC Berkeley student Michael Piña (she/he) grew up in California's Central Valley, dreaming of going far away for college to escape years of bullying and exclusion for her queer identity. Now she's co-founded Central Valley Scholars, an organization providing college prep workshops, scholarships, and themtorships - a word it finds more inclusive than mentorships - to make higher education a reality for Central Valley teens. www.light.berkeley.edu www.centralvalleyscholars.org Video produced by Stephen McNally

Stupski Foundation Announces $5 Million Investments To Support Counseling Across 13 High Schools For Over 3,000 12th-Grade Students............ SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 21, 2020 At a time when high school seniors are navigating their college and career options during the pandemic, today the Stupski Foundation announced nearly $5 million in student advising grants to community-based organizations that partner with the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) and the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD). The investments will bolster academic and financial aid advising across 13 high schools................Click the below link for full story... https://stupski.org//oakland-and-san-francisco-unified-sc/

National Hispanic Heritage Month is a Time for Honoring & Thanking Hispanic Americans.... Every year, from September 15 through October 15, Americans take the dedicated time to thoughtfully honor, celebrate, and thank prominent Hispanic Americans for their many contributions to the country and culture of the United States. But this year, in the midst of a global pandemic and a relentless news cycle, Hispanic Heritage Month 2020 takes on a whole new meaning. Last year, the cou...ntry endured the deadliest attack on Latinx people in history, and more than half of all Latinx people living in the U.S. say it's become less safe to exist as a Latinx person since Donald Trump took office. And given that the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted Latinx and Black communities, taking the time to recognize how the country has been made better by the work, dedication, and love of Latinx people is to pay homage to not only influential Latinx lives, but the countless Latinx lives lost to racism, hatred, and a public health crisis. Hispanic Heritage Month is important because it highlights the work and the accomplishments of the Latino community, recently as well as throughout the years, Brenda Camarillo, Manager of Programs at the Hispanic Heritage Foundation, tells Woman's Day. Click the below link to read full story.... https://www.womansday.com//national-hispanic-heritage-mon/

A DACA Student's Journey To Medical School And His Remaining Obstacle... Edgar Velázquez is a second-year medical student at the UC Davis School of Medicine. He’s also one of more than 650,000 young people nationwide who are protected from deportation as long as the federal DACA program remains in effect. Learn how Edgar beat the odds to get into medical school and how he manages the biggest obstacle from getting in the way of his dreams. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K163xjrzB-A

Historic $24 Million Gift Lights Path For Underrepresented Students, Diversity At UC Berkeley............. Daisy Boeckmann always dreamed of being a UC Berkeley student and proudly walking on campus through iconic Sather Gate, with its Fiat Lux emblem at the center. But her path there wasn’t easy. When she was nine, her father, a Guatemalan immigrant to the United States, died in a traffic collision while visiting his native country. A year later, her mother was diagnosed w...ith breast cancer. As one of three sisters without their father, and with a mother fighting cancer, Boeckmann said money was always an issue. She had to grow up fast, but despite the family’s hardships, she excelled in school. Education is something that is valued in our family, said Boeckmann. I wanted to accomplish all the things my parents, my father, never had the chance to. It is what pushes me to persevere. In 2016, the Carson, California native graduated near the top of her high school class. She was accepted to Berkeley and won the Fiat Lux Scholarship, an award that, throughout the years, has been granted to hundreds of high-achieving, low-income and first-generation Berkeley students around the state. Click here to read full story: https://news.berkeley.edu//historic-24-million-gift-light/

Berkeley Caring for Families... A new campus website called Caring for Families has launched to connect families to dependent care resources. In the near future the website will include an online parent-to-parent resource for supporting one another with dependent. For more information follow this link https://family.berkeley.edu/

Activists are commemorating Black August. Here's the history behind the month-long celebration...... (CNN)Activists and social justice organizations are celebrating the history of Black resistance this month in what's known as Black August. This year's commemoration follows months of ongoing nationwide protests over systemic racism and the killings of Black people at the hands of police.... And no, it's not a second Black History Month. "During Black August, we honor Black freedom fighters, many of whom were killed by the state or imprisoned for defending Black lives," Monifa Bandele with the Movement for Black Lives said in a statement to CNN. "This month is a time to reflect and learn about the legacies of Black revolutionaries, while we rededicate ourselves to the protracted struggles against white supremacy, colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism. We study, plan, and pledge to continue the work and fight for Black liberation." Black August is a tradition that originated in California's prisons in the 1970's after the deaths of brothers Jonathan and George Jackson as well as other incarcerated Black men who sought freedom. Here's what you need to know about Black August. To read the full story, Follow this link: https://www.cnn.com//what-is-black-august-expla/index.html

What New UC Berkeley Students Need To Know About Fall 2020..... A panel of UC Berkeley staff discussed the new student student experience in a livestreamed conversation Wednesday evening. (UC Berkeley video..see bottom of article for video link) Each year, it’s a UC Berkeley tradition to welcome incoming students with a plethora of live tours, outings, information sessions, artistic performances and resource fairs that help connect new Golden Bears to each other and to a camp...Continue reading

Latino students make up largest ethnic group of students admitted to UC..... As universities across the state consider how to increase diversity on campus, the University of California’s fall admission class has the highest percentage ever of Latino students. UC announced Thursday that it had offered a record number of Latino students admission to its nine undergraduate campuses for this fall. The students now comprise UC’s largest ethnic group of admitted freshmen, increasin...Continue reading

Biden and Sanders's Joint Higher Ed Recommendations.. By Kery Murakami of Insider Higher Education July 10, 2020... The attempt by Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, to unify his party with former challenger Bernie Sanders brought no major surprises in higher education policy. A 110-page set of policy recommendations on a range of issues from climate change to education, crafted by representatives of both campaigns, called for canceling up to $10,000 in student debt relief per borrower during the coronavirus pandemic. That’s far short, though, of Sanders’s plan to cancel all of the nation’s $1.6 trillion in student debt. In addition, the joint proposal repeated Biden's previous proposal to excuse those making less than $25,000 from making monthly payments on student loans, without interest. For those making more, payments would be capped at 5 percent of their discretionary income. For both groups, any remaining loan balances will be forgiven after 20 years. The task force also recommended that borrowers be able to have their students loans discharged through bankruptcy. And the recommendations reiterated Biden’s call to make tuition at community colleges and four-year universities free for those making less than $125,000, including undocumented students. Democrats believe that everyone should be able to earn a degree beyond high school, if they choose to, without money standing in the way, the recommendations said. The task force also recommended doubling the size of federal Pell Grant awards, another position Biden had already taken. In addition, the task force vowed to increase federal funding for programs that help first-generation college students, students with disabilities, veterans and other underrepresented groups apply to and complete college. It also called for providing grants to historically Black colleges and other institutions serving minorities.