The Graduate Assembly Faculty Mentoring Award

by Miguel Daal, GA Campus Affairs Vice President, and Yenhoa Ching, CAVP Chief of Staff

The Graduate Assembly Faculty Mentor Award, now in its fourth year, honors Senate and non-Senate members of the Berkeley faculty who have shown an outstanding commitment to mentoring, developing, and supporting graduate student researchers. Graduate students who have been the direct beneficiaries of the candidate's mentoring, relate their experiences first-hand in nomination letters. A committee of graduate students and previous Faculty Mentor Awardees select three winners based on these letters. The winners receive a $1,000 cash award and plaque at the Faculty Mentor Award recognition ceremony, which is open to the UC Berkeley community.

At this ceremony, Graduate Division's Sarlo Award for outstanding mentorship will also be conferred. The Sarlo Award differs form the Faculty Mentor Award mainly in that faculty nominate other faculty for the award.

Ceremony Details:
2:30pm - 5pm on Tuesday, April 22
McCollum Room (775A&B) Tan Hall

The event will be catered. Opening remarks by
Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost George Breslauer.

2008 Faculty Mentor Award Winners:

Carlos Daganzo
(Civil & Environmental Engineering)

Dru Dougherty
(Spanish & Portuguese)

Paola Bacchetta
(Gender & Women's Studies)

EWOCC: The Empowering Women of Color Conference

by Zeli Rivas, Women of Color Initiative Project Coordinator

The Empowering Women of Color Conference took place March 8, 2008. The Empowering Women of Color Conference (EWOCC) offers its participants the opportunity for discussion, exposure, and empowerment through awareness. We embrace women of different generations, ethnic and racial groups, socioeconomic levels, sexual orientations, gender identifications, spiritual beliefs and physical abilities. Our goal for the conference is to build bridges between graduate academic and community women of color, to assist them in sharing resources, strategies and visions that will empower them in their various realms of existence: individual, communal, national, and international. This process demands that we share our visions in order to build networks that empower women of color at all levels of society.

This year's theme, "decolonizing creativity: FIERY WOMYN, FIERCE EXPRESSIONS," explored the theme of creativity by focusing on art as an expression of a woman's life and identity. The 23rd Annual EWOCC Committee hoped to inspire and highlight the work of women of color who share their personal, political and professional voices through the arts. These women continuously put their effort towards building a world in which their work is foregrounded and esteemed.

The main conference included a panel of acclaimed Bay Area activists and leaders in community art discussing women's issues, as well as vendors, cultural performances, workshops on a variety of creativity and art-related topics. The keynote speakers, Climbing PoeTree, the tag-team, two-spirited, boundary-breaking artistic duo, Alixa Garcia and Naima Penniman were billed as "Delivering explosive lyrics that leave listeners outraged and inspired… on a mission to overcome destruction with creativity." They did not fail in this promise and even preformed at the end of the day.

The committee felt that their vision of creativity and art meant movement toward: an understanding of art that redefines the connection for women of color among mind, body, and spirit; artistic expressions as cultural resistance to oppression; a unity among women of color that allows for identity difference; exposing and exploring the ways in which institutions shape our access to art; listening to and advocating for the artistic needs of queer, intersex and transgender people; research and scholarship on artistic issues that are particularly significant for women of color; individual and community models of using artistic forms to heal from systemic violence and trauma; understanding the intersections among issues of art, poverty, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, militarism and imperialism; advocating for balance within personal and professional artistic boundaries; exploring the ways in which artistically minded amateur artists can transition into the professional world of art; and embracing women of color's familial roles and supporting the mother, wife, girlfriend, partner, daughter, niece, grandmother, and friend that is found in all of us.

EWOCC is recognized to be one of the longest running conferences in the nation that addresses the needs and concerns of women of color. The conference brings together cutting edge women of color activists with Bay Area community leaders and academics (especially students) to discuss and strategize ways of impacting the current issues facing women of color. EWOCC was founded in 1984 by a group of undergraduate students as their semester project for a DE-Cal (Democratic Education at Cal) class. The project, entitled "Women of Color in the United States," received an overwhelmingly positive response, and students decided to organize another event with the help of the Graduate Assembly (GA), Berkeley's graduate student government. In 1986, with the formation of the GA's Graduate Women's Project (GWP), it was decided to institutionalize this event and make the conference and annual project under the auspices of the GWP. EWOCC was one of the first conferences to present women of color with an opportunity to address the racial, class, and gender issues facing American Indian, African American, Asian American, and Chicana/Latina women.

Graduate Women’s Project: Past and Future Events

by Carmen Mitchell, Coordinator Graduate Women's Project

The Graduate Women’s Project (GWP) would like to thank everyone that participated in our fall 2007 events. We were busy with our Wine and Cheese Mixer, a conversation with Japanese Women Activists, our Self Defense Basics Workshops, and a Stress Management Workshop lead by Tang Counseling Center Staff and free massages from Cal Massage. It's time to get your calendars out and pencil these exciting events in for the rest of the academic year!

Graduate Women: Our Lives and Experiences Roundtable Discussion and Dinner
Thursday, April 17th, 2008 from 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm
440 Stephens Graduate Lounge* (near the Campanile and Moses Hall)

Join us for an informal discussion and dinner for graduate women from various disciplines, experiences, backgrounds and life phases at UC Berkeley. Let's get together to network, offer advice, mentorship and conversation. Delicious food and drinks provided. We hope to see you there!

If you are interested in talking about your experiences to other graduate women at this event, please email gwp@ga.berkeley.edu for more details.

*Interested attendees who need disability accommodations should contact gwp@ga.berkeley.edu to request accommodation, as far in advance as possible. Requests received less than three weekdays before the event may not provide sufficient time to arrange for accommodation, especially if wheelchair access is needed.

Spring Fiesta 2008 End of the Semester Mixer: Save the Date!
Thursday, May 8th, 2008 from 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm
Graduate Assembly, Anthony Hall Patio

The Graduate Women’s Project presents this popular festive mixer to celebrate the end of the semester with friends, old and new. Enjoy drinks and food in a relaxed atmosphere. Complimentary catered cuisine by a local Mexican restaurant along with complimentary Mexican beer and Central and South American wines. By and for graduate women but all are invited to attend!

The Graduate Women’s Resource Guide 2008-2009 Edition:
Ideas and Suggestions Needed
The Graduate Women’s Resource Guide is a free booklet available to everyone! It strives to include numerous campus and community resources with diverse listings such as women-owned businesses, religious organizations, health groups, social and artist spaces, political groups, and more. The Graduate Women's Resource Guide is updated every two to three years. The next guide revision will occur this summer. As noted in the current resource guide, while we try to ensure that all information is accurate, contact information often changes very quickly and we apologize for any out-of-date numbers or addresses.

We welcome all graduate students, staff and community member's input or suggestions for this upcoming revision! For a copy of this guide, please contact the GWP coordinator. Email: gwp@ga.berkeley.edu Web: www.ga.berkeley.edu

The Balancing Act: An Assessment of the Child-Care Options Available to UCB Graduate Student Parents

By Katrinell M. Davis, on behalf of the Graduate Student Parent Project

“I am considering scrapping my academic career because if I put family first, my colleagues won't consider me competitive and the job options get even scarcer. I can't travel for conferences, attend lectures and groups, etc. I just don't think it's likely that I can expect a decent job after taking the ‘time off’ (teaching & writing part-time for a few years) to raise my son. I can't choose the job over the child. I didn't understand how bad this dilemma would be when I started grad school.”
---UCB Graduate Student Parent


Due to the increasing number of women and older students entering graduate programs in recent years, colleges and universities have made efforts to address the changing needs of their student populations. However, despite the fact that schools including the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) have developed a variety of services for “non-traditional” students, many are left wondering if the available resources are effective in helping students finish their programs while raising children.

Amidst rising housing costs and the reduction of resources needed to help balance work and family, it has become necessary that we examine how graduate student parents are affected by the affordability and availability of child care at UCB. In response to this crisis, the Graduate Assembly and Graduate Division commissioned this study in 2007 in order to learn more about the child care hurdles UCB graduate student parents confront in their attempts to balance parenting and the work of preparing for an academic or professional career.

There were four distinctive goals of the 2007 Graduate Student Parent Survey, which is the primary data source for this report.1 The first goal was to learn more about child care expenses, and which forms of child care arrangements graduate student parents generally use. The second goal was to learn more about the school-related factors that limit their ability to balance work and family. The third goal was to learn more about which University sponsored programs most benefited this population, and also which programs seem to under-serve graduate student parents. Finally, the fourth goal was to learn more from graduate student parents about the services they need to be productive parents and students.

When UCB graduate student parents were surveyed almost ten years ago by Alice Jordan, the current director of the Student Parent Center, they were asked what the university should consider as top priorities in its attempts to help student parents balance work and family. At the time, most students reported that the university should consider expanding its services to include summer child care, sick child care, and short-term or drop-in child care.

The results from the 2007 survey indicate that, despite the change in times, the resources graduate students require are very similar to what they needed in the past. In fact, graduate student parents in this sample (n=299) overwhelmingly agreed that greater efforts must be made by the university to find innovative ways of addressing the child care problems they face. Specifically, most UCB graduate student parents contend that the university should expand its efforts to create affordable housing. Many also report that the administration should help facilitate a change in the affordability and accessibility of UC childcare. Furthermore, others ask that the proper steps be made to ensure that family-friendly policies are acknowledged within departments and implemented in ways that meet the needs of all graduate student families.

The full report is available as of March 14, 2006. You can find it at the graduate assembly webpage at http://ga.berkeley.edu at the Graduate Student Family Researcher Page under the heading “Resources”.


1 -Anonymous surveys for graduate student parents & graduate student assistants were distributed via email. There were 299 graduate students that participated in this survey, & 38 UCB graduate student assistants that responded to this questionnaire. Telephone interviews & online surveys were sent to family resource center staff at schools that are members of the Association of American Universities, a organization that helps its members develop national policy positions on topics relating to academic research as well as graduate & professional education. Overall, 6 out of the 60 American members of the AAU responded to this survey.

Focus the Nation

by Becca Jones, on behalf of the Environmental Sustainability Committee

On January 31, 2008, UC Berkeley joined the other UC campuses and over 1900 other institutions to take part in Focus the Nation (http://www.focusthenation.org/index.php), a national teach-in on solutions to climate change.

At UC Berkeley, the International House hosted hundreds of faculty, staff and students for a series of panel discussions and keynote lectures, as well as interactive breakout sessions. Graduate students took part in the day's activities, and the graduate student group Students for a Greener Berkeley organized the breakout sessions. The five breakout sessions were held in the early afternoon in two tracks, Policy Debates and Local Action. The Policy Debates track had a session on sustainable transportation, and a mock Presidential debate, where the audience was divided into groups with each representing one of the remaining Democratic or Republican candidates. The Local Action track had sessions on Cal's climate impact, reducing our individual carbon footprint, and a speed dating session for The Green Initiative Fund.

While Focus the Nation lasted only a day, the emphasis on solutions to climate change will be long-lasting at UC Berkeley, where we have committed to reducing our carbon footprint to 1990 levels in the next six years (by 2014).