Light the Way: The Campaign for Berkeley

When planning began for the Winter 2017 issue of The Promise of Berkeley, naturally we were inspired by the month of love to explore how Cal, like Cupid, awakens the passions we pursue in our lives. But events around the world demand a deeper look. In July, Berkeley lost two students in the terrorist attacks in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Nice, France. Following the U.S. elections, many in the community, especially students, expressed fear and anxiety about a seemingly uncertain and unwelcoming future. And in February, violence erupted when an outside group disturbed an otherwise peaceful protest of a controversial speaker. In almost every instance, the campus came together in profound and healing ways.

Taking all of this into account, we offer stories about how Cal, rooted in its love for learning and humanity, brings people, disciplines, and ideas together to push for progress — even during turbulent times. A set of questions originally developed to spark romantic intimacy is now being used to bridge the racial divide. A joint program between UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco helps students tap into the compassion they will need beyond medical know-how to address individual healthcare needs. A mentoring program pairs undergraduates with graduate students to help them feel more connected — to their studies, professors, and each other.

Regardless of the world’s uncertainties — and often because of them — Berkeley continues to unite the very best in new and heartening ways.

As questions go, this conversational icebreaker is popular among professionals. It is also the first of a 36-question “fast friends” procedure created by Arthur Aron ’67, M.A. ’68, a visiting scholar from Stony Brook, to study interpersonal closeness.

Popularized as an accelerant to romantic intimacy, the three-part Q&A has also had a disarming effect on cross-race relations in settings ranging from classrooms to police departments. Hundreds of studies — including several by Rodolfo Mendoza- Denton, faculty advisor to Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center — have shown its ability to reduce prejudice, improve health and well-being, and enhance academic performance among minority student populations.

“Research shows that human beings have a natural proclivity to make distinctions between ‘us’ and ‘them,’” says Mendoza-Denton, co-author of the book Are We Born Racist?. But in a multicultural society, this primitive instinct frequently leads to racism and discrimination. Cross-race friendship, he says, can be a powerful antidote. “It bridges boundaries where there’s trepidation about crossing.”

What’s at the heart of this fast friends phenomenon?

In the time it takes to watch a movie, participants experience a sense of connection that might otherwise take months to achieve. The key is in the questions, says Aron, who first introduced the method in 1997. Increasingly personal, they are designed to encourage self- disclosure and reciprocal sharing. Cue points in the process ask participants to identify shared commonalities and characteristics they like about each other. In other words, it’s an inherently friendly process despite whatever biases or expectations people might bring to the table.

“Familiarity breeds liking,” says Mendoza- Denton. “The more often and consistently people experience one another through intergroup contact, the less likely they are to be influenced by stereotypes and prejudices.” And this has a ripple effect, he says, reducing their bias overall.

Intergroup friendship also reduces cortisol levels, which is tied to increased risk of heart disease, he found. And students with stronger intergroup connections consistently performed better academically.

“At the end of the day, we are social creatures,” says Mendoza-Denton. “This process reifies how powerful our social relations are. In a short amount of time, you can develop positive feelings toward the other person, and it stays with you.”

As for who would grace his evening meal? “I’d love to have dinner with Obama and Biden.”

Curious about the fast friends method?

Here are just six questions to jumpstart your conversations. For a complete list, visit ggia.berkeley.edu.

What would constitute a perfect day for you?

If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?

What is your most treasured memory?

If you knew you were going to die in one year, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why?

Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life.

Share a personal problem and ask your partner’s advice on how he or she might handle it.

Since the 1990s, interdisciplinary courses and majors about food have emerged in colleges from coast to coast. Berkeley’s involvement in agriculture and food education dates to its founding in 1868, and more than 120 current courses touch on some aspect of food. So it’s fitting that food is the main course of a new minor that integrates knowledge and perspectives from the natural and social sciences, public health, and nutrition to provide a holistic view of contemporary food production and agriculture.

Since fall 2015, more than 50 undergraduates have enrolled in the food-systems minor, which was co-developed by the Berkeley Food Institute — a center for food-system research, education, and policy — and is hosted by the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management. Academic advisor Ginnie Sadil fields weekly inquiries from curious prospective students.

A required community engagement internship empowers students to apply what they learn in the classroom to an organization committed to food-system change. Danielle Weitzman ’17 spent last summer working with Project Open Hand, which delivers daily meals to clients with a chronic illness. She wrote in a blog post, “The community I have built … makes me want to come in every single day to help others learn how to eat healthfully and to provide them with adequate sustenance.”

Food also brings multiple disciplines to the table in a graduate-level course called “Eat.Think.Design.” Using food systems to inspire design innovation for public health, this course — the only one of its kind in the country — has drawn participants from more than 30 academic programs across campus.

Course co-creator and lecturer Jaspal Sandhu Ph.D. ’08 describes innovation as a team sport. So each cohort assembles into teams with an array of expertise and experience, the better to brainstorm multiple solutions to design problems. Last year, Grace Lesser M.B.A./M.P.H. ’16 took the course to grow her idea for Farmcation, a hands-on farming opportunity targeted at millennials that also promotes farm-to-consumer produce delivery.

Berkeley’s curriculum will continue to provide plenty of food for thought.

More intellectual feasting

A taste of interdisciplinary courses offered this spring by the College of Letters & Science:

• “Sense, Sensibility, and Science” — A philosopher, psychologist, and Nobel laureate astrophysicist probe the nature of critical thinking
• “Consciousness” — Conjoins the perspectives of a neurobiologist and Buddhist scholar
• “Collaborative Innovation” — Combines business, theater, and art practices to provoke the creative process

A dose of seminars that bring freshmen closer to the campus and local community:

• “Arts and Culture at Berkeley and Beyond” — Introduces first- year students to local poets, painters, and performing artists
• “Berkeley through the Lens” — Engages students in politics via documentary photography
• “Discovered, Invented, or Perfected at Berkeley” — Surveys ideas and everyday objects originating from campus research
• “Natural History of the Bay Area by Bicycle and Public Transit” — Local explorations led by a biologist

Berkeley’s Global Urban Humanities Initiative brings together experts in wildly disparate disciplines to discuss the human experience in an age of rapidly expanding built environments. Through the initiative, dancers have worked with urban planners to explore how bodies move in space and in response to the structures we create. Musicologists and historians have pondered the evolution and implications of urban sounds such as passing cars, sirens, and voices. And architects have brought their skill at the drafting table to such art forms as film and fiction.

In one project supported by the initiative, Neyran Turan, an assistant professor of architecture, recently created STRAIT, “a geographic fiction” set in Istanbul in 2025 about a giant oil tanker that gets stuck in the Bosphorus. Inspired by real-life misadventures of large vessels navigating a busy and narrow passage, Turan created a stop-motion film and installation to explore architectural responses to a challenging passageway. In the film, a trapped tanker is incorporated into the city’s shoreline, skyline, and culture scape.

The initiative’s courses and symposiums help distinct modes of inquiry feed one another and spawn the creativity we need to respond to an increasingly complex world. Confronting the pressures presented by ever-expanding urban populations and limitations on natural resources, the initiative stresses the importance of aesthetic pleasure and play in problem solving. As it turns out, architecture and the humanities have a lot to offer each other!

For Stephanie Fong M.S. ’16, a humanistic approach to a medical degree is the key to success. As part of her training in the UC Berkeley/UC San Francisco Joint Medical Program (JMP), she invited young men of color to photograph themselves and record their personal stories. Her project, a collaboration with UCSF’s children’s hospital and a youth center, brought together young men at risk with those who support them for a culminating exhibition.

In her post about the exhibition on Oakland Local, Regina Jackson of the East Oakland Youth Development Center said the young men expressed frustration, yet: “They also shared stories of resiliency and perseverance, revealing a commitment that they would be part of the new statistic: the successes Stephanie and her team are just beginning to analyze.”

Fong’s project is but one example of the uniquely human approach of the JMP, a five-year pathway to a medical degree that is grounded in student-centered, experiential education. Graduate students spend their first three years at Berkeley, where they conduct interdisciplinary research while earning an M.S. in public health. Then they move across the Bay to complete their M.D. at UCSF, a top-tier medical research institution.

For Fong and other JMP students, the program is a means to hone analytical skills and think on their feet. Most importantly, it helps them tap into the receptivity and compassion that will serve them in addressing the particular needs of individual human beings.

Last year, an estimated 500 Berkeley students suffered a concussion. Bicycles, cars, and intramural sports were the worst offenders, with athletics responsible for just a fraction of those fumbles. With 10,000-plus students on campus, including 850 student-athletes, that may seem like a statistical win, but it could reflect hidden losses.

According to Dr. Jacqueline Theis OD ’13, clinical instructor in the School of Optometry and researcher in the Sports Vision Institute, concussions are often challenging to diagnose. “If left untreated, even a mild concussion can lead to cognitive and visual problems that impact a student’s ability to learn.”

Concussions lack clear indicators to accurately gauge their presence. Telltale signs include dizziness, nausea, headaches, and confusion, but reporting is subjective, and athletes eager to get back on the field may downplay their symptoms. The ability to objectively diagnose — then treat — a concussion would be a game changer, says Theis.

Since the eyes and brain are closely interconnected, subtle visual disturbances can point to a problem. Using optometry tools to examine visual function pre- and post-impact may reveal what the naked eye can’t: measurable evidence of a concussion. Theis and Dr. Lindsay Huston, head team physician for Cal Athletics, have been examining hundreds of Cal athletes, who generally have 20/20 vision, to determine “normal” eye activity. Already, their research has improved diagnosis and treatment of campus-based concussions, helping more students get back into the game — both on the field and in the classroom.

“Clinical services for concussions are scarce,” says Huston. “We’re hoping to provide a valuable resource to the campus community.”

Farmworkers laboring in California’s Central Valley fields are exposed to more than just the sun each day. Most commercial crops, including strawberries, grapes, and artichokes, require pesticides to bear financial fruit, but it can come at a cost to the mostly Latino families living and working in the region. Research on community populations has linked in-utero and childhood pesticide exposure to ADHD, lower IQ, asthma, and neurological disorders.

Professor Brenda Eskenazi, director of the School of Public Health’s Center for Environmental Research and Children’s Health (CERCH), has been carefully documenting the pre- and post-natal impacts of these contaminants for nearly two decades. The longitudinal study includes 600-plus children and is conducted through the Center for the Health Assessment of Mothers and Children of Salinas (CHAMACOS), which CERCH manages with regional community members and campus colleagues.

Regulatory action against pesticides often moves at a snail’s pace, but thanks to the CHAMACOS data, organophosphates have been drastically cut in California. CERCH will now participate in a National Institutes of Health (NIH) program investigating environmental influences on children’s health nationwide.

“This endeavor will produce a rich database of information,” says Eskenazi, “as well as cross-country collaborations among students and faculty.”

A seven-year NIH grant will allow CHAMACOS — which means “little children” in Mexican Spanish — to continue monitoring children as they transition to adulthood.

“We hope to remain active members of this community,” adds Eskenazi. “We want to improve the health and well-being of Latino farmworker families in California.”

“I knew it!” exclaimed Sahil Sheth ’19. The words just slipped out of his mouth.

During an exercise in which history students were asked to grade academic papers written by “previous undergraduates,” Sheth’s team gave one paper a scathing B-. As they were citing its issues, Sheth noticed that their graduate student mentor was suppressing smiles, revealing that she had written the paper they were tearing apart. The students quickly learned that even Ph.D. candidates have to build their skills over time.

The incident could have gone down as one of Sheth’s most embarrassing moments. Instead, it highlights the lively engagement, camaraderie, trust, and even humor that are hallmarks of a mentoring program called Berkeley Connect. Since its launch in 2010, more than 7,700 undergraduates and 140 graduate students have participated.

At a big university, students often feel lost in the shuffle and long for more personal conversations about their academic and career paths. Berkeley Connect — now operating in 13 departments and growing — pairs undergraduates with graduate student mentors, who provide one- on-one advising and lead small-group discussions, fieldtrips, and other activities to strengthen the bonds between the students and their peers, professors, and alumni. The result is that participants — 92 percent last semester — report an increased sense of belonging and confidence that they can succeed at Cal.

Berkeley Connect’s motto — “You belong here” — captures the feeling many undergraduates seek. Wrote one student, “I cannot stress how much this program and my mentor have guided me and made me feel like so much more than a number."

Linnae Schroeder ’19 was a bundle of nerves when she first entered a local kindergarten class to teach art. She wondered how she would get through her lesson plan with 20 squirmy children. Instead, she has learned a few things herself.

Schroeder is a member of CREATE, a student-led program in which undergraduates pair up to teach empowerment-based art, dance, and theater classes — using curriculums they develop themselves — in local schools and community groups. CREATE’s 35 student-teachers also meet weekly to share ideas, make art, or hear from professional artists.

Last semester, Schroeder and her partner incorporated diverse disciplines into their art projects, including making South American-inspired mosaics to examine culture, working with natural materials to probe environmental themes, and building miniature pop-up cities to understand architecture. Schroeder says the children rose to every challenge.

“Kids are fun and have a lot to say!” she says. “If they expressed any self- doubt, I’d remind them that there was no such thing as good art or bad art.” Reflecting on the power of mentoring, she says, “It’s really important to know someone who believes in you until you can believe in yourself.”

CREATE also helps student-teachers like Schroeder develop new collaboration, organizational, and communication skills. Most importantly, they gain a supportive community.

“I’m sticking with CREATE for the long run,” she says. “It’s the best thing for me to grow and to feel at home at Cal.”

Border walls are intended to provide security. But do they work? In the documentary The Other Side of Immigration, two American women scaled the U.S.–Mexican border in less than 18 seconds to demonstrate its futility.

Ronald Rael, associate professor of architecture and art practice, uses his expertise as a designer to question how existing border walls can be reimagined not only as security measures, but also as opportunities to bring people together.

“A wall is full of meaning,” says Rael. “The range of things it can do… reveals the positive power of architecture.”

His upcoming book, Borderwall as Architecture, shares real-life stories of people who are transforming the 700- mile U.S.–Mexico border in remarkably creative ways. In Arizona, for example, a musician creates ethereal compositions by “playing” the fence with a mallet or cello bow.

Rael also proposes ideas, from the practical to the satirical, that suggest the necessity for economic, environmental, and social benefits in borderlands.“Can we create solar farms, since the greatest potential for solar development is along the southern border? Can we collect rainwater or treat wastewater from nearby rivers? Can we build public parks or libraries?”

Rael has been exploring this issue for years, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York recently featured his work in an exhibition on immigration. His book is timely and may help us rethink our nation’s relationship to its neighbor. In all of his inquiries, he says, the existing border wall is “less a divider and much more a facilitator for exchange.”

While the “People’s Republic of Berkeley” can claim its share of “multi-culti” cred, nothing beats foreign travel to gain appreciation of other cultures. Through Berkeley Study Abroad (BSA), students have many options to pursue their education from afar for a summer, a semester, or an entire year.

After 25 years with BSA, assistant director of advising Barbara Tassielli ’89 knows that, “The [study abroad] experience really changes you. You have to allow for new possibilities.” Students often return with new plans for their careers and lives.

Senior Nadja White ’17, for instance, spent a recent spring at the Jordan Institute of Diplomacy in Amman. Then she changed her major to Middle Eastern Studies and became a BSA peer advisor to guide other prospective participants. Fellow peer advisor Alex Lopez was drawn to being a pioneering participant in the new Global Edge program in London for incoming freshmen.

While the United Kingdom and France are perennially popular choices, the potential programs span dozens of locales from Cuba to Korea. For students with a recurring case of wanderlust, BSA could be the cure.

Study Abroad at a glance

• 1,700 students study in more than 50 countries each year
• Provides cultural immersion or practical work experience
• Open to students from all majors at all stages of their educational
• Earn UC credit in a foreign land