 |
| University of California |
The University of California, Berkeley (also referred to as UC Berkeley or just Berkeley or "Cal") is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, US. Ranked second in the world overall by the Academic Ranking of World Universities, Berkeley also has the highest number of distinguished graduate programs ranked in the top 10 in their fields by the United States National Research Council. Moreover, a meta-analysis of subject/departmental data over the last sixteen years from the United States National Research Council, the US News & World Report, and Times Higher Education shows that UC Berkeley is the most consistently well-ranked University in the world. Among other honors, University faculty, alumni, and researchers have won 66 Nobel Prizes, 9 Wolf Prizes, 7 Fields Medals, 15 Turing Awards, 43 MacArthur Fellowships, 20 Academy Awards, and 11 Pulitzer Prizes. UC Berkeley and its researchers are associated with six elements of the periodic table, Californium, Seaborgium, Berkelium, Einsteinium, Fermium, and Lawrencium, more than any other university in the world.
Known as the flagship campus of the University of California, the university occupies 6,651 acres (2,692 ha) with the central campus resting on approximately 200 acres (80.9 ha) in the San Francisco Bay Area. Berkeley offers approximately 300 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines. The oldest of the ten major campuses affiliated with the University of California (UC), Berkeley was the result of an 1868 merger of the private College of California and the public Agricultural, Mining, and Mechanical Arts College. Since its founding, Berkeley has been charged with providing both "classical" and "practical" education for the state's people.
Berkeley co-manages three United States Department of Energy National Laboratories, including the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy. Berkeley was a founding member of the Association of American Universities. Berkeley physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was the scientific director of the Manhattan Project that developed the first atomic bomb in the world, which he personally headquartered at Los Alamos, New Mexico, during World War II.
Berkeley student-athletes have won over 100 Olympic medals. Known as the California Golden Bears (often abbreviated as "Cal Bears" or just "Cal"), the athletic teams are members of both the Pacific-12 Conference and the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation in the NCAA. Cal athletes have won national titles in many sports, including football, men's basketball, baseball, men's gymnastics, softball, water polo, rugby, and crew. The official colors of the university and its athletic teams are Yale Blue and California Gold.
History
In 1866, the land comprising the current Berkeley campus was purchased by the private College of California. 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. The university opened in September 1869. Frederick 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.[12] 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 222 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 Emile Bernard 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. By 1942, the American Council on Education ranked UC Berkeley second only to Harvard University in the number of distinguished departments.
During World War II, 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. Along with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (formerly the Radiation Lab), Berkeley is now a partner in managing two other labs, Los Alamos National Laboratory (1943) and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (1952).
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. During World War II, the military increased its presence on campus to recruit more officers, and by 1944, the student body at Berkeley included more than 1,000 Navy personnel. The Board of Regents ended compulsory military training at Berkeley in 1962.
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.
Berkeley gained a reputation for student activism in the 1960s with the Free Speech Movement in 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. 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.
Various human and animal rights groups have recently 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.
As state funding (now about 25%) has declined, Berkeley has turned to private sources: BP donated $500 million 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 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, University of California refers to a statewide school system. Referring to the University of California, Berkeley as UCB or University of California at Berkeley is discouraged[34] and the domain name is berkeley.edu.
Moreover, the term "Cal Berkeley" is not a correct reference to the school, but is occasionally used. Berkeley is unaffiliated with the Berklee College of Music or Berkeley College. However, UC Berkeley does share academic ties with Yale University; not only were many original Berkeley founders Yale graduates (see below), but the names, University of California, Berkeley and Berkeley College (Yale), were inspired by the intellectual contributions of the western philosopher, George Berkeley.
Visit Sotokan for Daily Updated Hairstyles Collection
No comments:
Post a Comment