Profiles of Local Excellence: An Interview with Dawn Williams

Perhaps you are thinking that there should be more to your life than just what you are doing as a student. It certainly must seem daunting to invest ANY of your time into something not immediately applicable to your graduate career; maybe even impossible. This is, thankfully,not the case. Even as a full time student researcher or instructor, you can have a life outside of your department. And, sometimes, you can be making a difference in the lives of others. Keeping that in mind, we’ve interviewed a student who exemplifies one who can excel both academically in the community. Dawn Williams is a third year in the Language, Literacy, Society and Culture program in the Education department. The former External Affairs Vice President, she was a co-recipient of an award for graduate student excellence this year. If you thought reaching out locally would be impossible,perhaps this will prove that you too can be an active member of the Berkeley community.

Where are you from?
DW: Hoo, that's an interesting question. I've lived in Texas, Arizona, and California;but I was born in California. Newport Beach, and then I've lived most of my life hereabouts. In Newport Beach, Long Beach, Wilmington,Fresno,San Francisco,and Oakland.

Where did you do your undergraduate work?
DW: Arizona State.

Cool. Did you like it there?
DW: It was hot. AZ was also going through a lot of political climate changes. Evan Mecham was the governor when I was there;he was the one that was known for being a racist--there was no MLK holiday when all that stuff went down; and it was the Superbowl that changed it: when all the pro football players would refuse to play when the Superbowl was in Phoenix and the city was standing to lose a LOT of money. That's what changed it.So that was interesting.

Do you know how many years until you're going to get out of here?
DW: HA, that's another good question.Um,probably 3.

I'd imagine that's probably the average in most departments...maybe. So tell me about this award...
DW: I guess I got a graduate student uh...hehe, I'm not even sure what the award says;I'm in the process of moving,so I don't even know what's on the plaque because just kinda' got it and packed it in a box. I didn't even get to attend the award ceremony because I found out about it so late. But, I think what it has to do with is basically...many graduate students are too busy to do anything besides grad school,and I think that the undergrads in the the Black Recruitment and Retention Center in the African American Student Development Office were probably seeing that I was able to devote a lot of time to working with undergrads. There was a black movement class that was an independent class last fall semester, and in that capacity I sort of served as a mentor for black undergrad students along with Kofi Charu Nat Turner. In that process we talked a lot about going to graduate school and the importance of working collectively...I have also done a lot of work with education and incarceration, both in the community and the grad assembly,so I brought a lot of that to the class and was able to recruit some of the undergrads to go with me and teach at local high schools...so really I guess it was mostly about serving as a mentor.

How did you get involved with the BRRC initially?
DW:Um,you know,I think there was just some name dropping.I don't know who for sure... Dave Stark from Stiles hall was one of the people organizing
this class;...and Lamont Snare and Danika Thomas, they were undergraduates at Berkeley but then they graduated and were looking for some grad-
uate students who'd commit to joining this class and serving as mentors;and I have the feeling they got my name from Cynthia Molina who was
External Affairs Vice President before I took the position in January. I was working for the campus community organizer at the GA, so I think that
was how it was all hooked up.

So...and this is really my most important question: Where do you get your time from, in order to be able to go and mentor undergraduates and teach high school students and what not...Do you ever sleep?
DW: No, I don't sleep very much...let's see. In budgeting time, I tend to do what's close to my heart-- even in grad school,doing research,it's got to be close to my heart otherwise I can't devote the time or energy to it. There's got to be some passion in what I'm doing. I taught for 5 years before entering grad school at the middle school and high school level. And just knowing the importance of education and seeing these students in undergrad and where they're going with the choices that they're making and where they're going with their majors are...I know I did a lot of plugging for the school of education because I see that as a vehicle for change:too often,we as black students are pushed into these fields...to become business majors or whatever where you need to work for somebody else--we need to be able to work for ourselves and not choose a job that's going to pay all this money if we're going to be working for somebody else because I don't think that serves the community in the way that “...but these are things that I'm really passionate about and that is what enables me to just go do it, you know?” I firmly believe in supporting black economics and using our money to make our communities thrive.I feel that education is a vehicle for that change because we can be in the classrooms and we can rewrite history and just rethink the way that students are taught.

So you just put all your time into this then?
DW:Well, the cool thing was that it was a class,right,so we'd have a scheduled 2 or 3 hours every week to devote to an issue. I know Kofi did a lot talking about reparations and it was like we were teaching that class.I did a seminar on education and incarceration and there was the one on reparations and we had discussion groups on various issues; that was the main crux of time in that mentor capacity. Just trying to get it to all tie together,writing papers and making all these disparate ideas one take home message, that was the big challenge.

Hm...about time management:It's really hard.Because I feel...I taught in West Africa the year before graduate school and I became really conscious of a different way of living;a more simple way of living; and I was able to appreciate having a car and going to the farmers market eating fresh food,not boxed or canned or T.V.dinners...just recognizing that there's a different way to live-- more simply,more healthily,more conscientiously--that makes it really difficult because it's really easy to just go get some fast food or make it out of a box or whatever, but it takes a lot of time to really prepare things right...but these are things that I'm really passionate about and that is what enables me to just go do it, you know? I don't know where I get my time from... My little weekly trip to the farmers market,I'll read my book,or read the reader on the bus..it's all that kind of scheduling.I think the bus is great;you know, you can always read on the bus for a little bit.

Don't get me wrong,things DO suffer when you put too much into things, you know...I know my first semester...er..fall semester of this last
year wasn't so hot academically, but spring is better...you know, it's graduate school...grades don't matter SO much...I don't know if that should be
put in though.

Heh, of course it should. Well, cool. Thanks so much for agreeing to do this interview.

Status of GA Autonomy Bill

by Rebecca Rosen

Over the past four years,the Graduate Assembly (GA) has waged a campaign to gain autonomy from the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC) so that graduate students can have an independent governing body. Currently, it falls under the constitutional jurisdiction of the ASUC Senate, an organization primarily composed of undergraduates.

This is an important issue to the GA for several reasons. First, no other graduate governing body in the UC system is subordinate to an undergraduate governing body. The GA represents a diverse population of graduate students consisting of GSIs, parents, and many international students. As such, the graduate students generally have different interests than those
of the undergraduates.

Additionally, while the GA receives all graduate student fees, it is otherwise under the legislative and fiscal control of the ASUC.In this past,this relationship has fostered tension and debate between the GA and the ASUC Senate and has fueled the GA’s campaign for autonomy. For example, the GA was required to contribute $30,000 to the ASUC 2003 student government elections. GA members contend that the GA should not have to pay the full amount because it did not have a role in appointing the committee that coordinates the elections and because the Senate has repeatedly mismanaged its financial affairs in the past. For example,the Senate originally estimated the GA’s share of the election costs to be $9,000,but cost overruns led to the new, larger figure.

This past spring,ASUC Senator Eugene Chung proposed a bill that requested GA independence from the ASUC. The bill initially appeared to have the favor of the Senate. In the past, members of the ASUC Senate have opposed this action on the grounds that the GA has misused funds for large executive stipends and food. These issues have been at least partially resolved, and the GA was confident that the issue of the GA autonomy would be up for a campus-wide vote in the April 2004 elections.

However, the Attorney General of the ASUC, Ryan Powell, took over a month to approve the bill, stating that the language of “autonomy” was too vague and that it was unclear from the bill exactly how much of the commercial revenue from the ASUC store would go to the GA.This delay left little time for the GA to collect the required 1,000 signatures for the bill to appear on the ballot. The GA’s Autonomy Committee will spearhead the continued push this coming year to put the autonomy bill on the ASUC’s 2005 ballot by working with the Attorney General to clarify the language of the bill.

Profiles: Brendan Borrell

By Lee Drutman

Three years ago, integrative biology graduate student Brendan Borrell was in Costa Rica, trying to come up with a topic for his research. Nothing seemed to be working out.

“I was having a pretty depressing day,” Borrell relates. “I wasn't happy with what I was doing.”

Then he noticed a couple of Euglossia imperialis orchid bees, which he thought were interesting because they have tongues that, when fully extended, are four times their body length.

“I just started playing with these bees, getting them to drink sugar solutions,” Borrell says. “It was a pretty neat experience, to have this completely bizarre organism drinking sugar off my finger tip. That was the beginning.”

Now, three years and six trips to Costa Rica later, Borrell's research on big-tongued bees has been featured in The Royal Society Biology Letters and Science Magazine (see other article).

Good luck or hard work? Perhaps a little of both.

“The biggest thing is just never knowing what's really going to work when you try it,” Borrell says. “It's so hard to know what direction things are going to take, and if you're going to get lucky. I sort of stumbled on a neat system and a whole bunch of questions to answer.”

Then again, Borrell has never been short on leaving a lot of options open.“My philosophy has always been to come up with as many ideas as possible,” he explains. “If you come up with 10, 9 are not going to work. Always have a backup plan when you do field work.”

Professor Robert Dudley, Borrell's advisor in the Department of Integrative Biology, describes Borrell as “diligent.” “He's just hard-working,” Dudley said. “He's obviously well-traveled, and if you want to work in tropical biodiversity, you have to be just willing to come to terms with new flora and fauna.”

“It's easy to work in well-tempered ecosystems,” adds Dudley.“But the tropics are amazing and confounding. Most biologists are not tropical biologists. It takes a certain open-mindedness to put in the time and have the breadth of appreciation for these sort of faunas.There are hundreds of thousands of species. It's a bigger playground, and you have to be willing to work and play in that playground.”

There are also logistical difficulties of operating in the tropics. “Last time I was there, we had a huge flood at the station where we were working and one of the houses we were working in had a tree fall on it,” Borrell says. “Someone else had his data stolen on a bus. Two years of work on his laptop, and somebody came and stole his laptop.”

Then there's all the stuff that Borrell has to bring down there every time he goes-basically his entire experiment, power supply and all. It means that he has to be prepared for anything.


FROM BOOKS TO BEES

As a kid, Borrell played with lizards and snakes. But it was literature that really got him going, and as an undergraduate at the University of California at Santa Barbara, he started out as a literature major. Then, halfway through, he made a fateful switch.

The formative experience, he says, was doing computer animation in a geology lab that was modeling the ocean floor.A semester later, tired of taking literature classes and inspired by his newfound interest in science, he switched to biology.

As for his interest in bees, Borrell says,“They're very smart and they have personality, individual differences. For example, in my artificial flower study, I had ten bees, all marked with a color, and I'd say, here comes the pink bee, and I'd know what it was going to do. It would look at the
flower longer than the others and sometimes probe it.Whereas the blue bee would just charge toward to flower and feed quickly and leave.”

Holding a preserved bee from a set, Borrell says,“Right now it's just a piece of insect cuticle on a stick, but when it's alive, it's just incredible. How does something that small work?”

Though most people think of honeybees or bumblebees when they think of bees, orchid bees are in many ways quite different. Native to a range of tropical countries from Mexico to Argentina, they pollinate about 20 percent of the world's species of plants. Unlike honeybees, orchid bees
are not social-they have no hives.

Most are solitary, except for the mating part. They also live longer than honey bees-up to 8 months, compared to just one month for honeybees. In particular, Borrell has focused his energy on one specific orchid bee, the Euglossa imperialis (Euglossa means good tongue), which has the
remarkably long proboscis.

When he's not working with bees, Borrell enjoys mountain biking in Tilden Park, hanging out in San Francisco, and playing on the Integrative Biology ultimate Frisbee team.

And eating breakfast, which lab mate Matt Medeiros called the secret of Borrell's success. “He likes to get his day going,” Medeiros says.“Waffles, eggs, things with cream cheese. Breakfast is an important part of life. Unlike many graduate students, Borrell always takes time out of the day to pay attention to his physical health. He's a tremendous ultimate player, a racquetball player. He eats healthy food, exercises and does science.”

“Breakfast is important,” Borrell says. “Breakfast is a critical part of the day. Waffles. Cream cheese. Smoked salmon.”

Of course, there's a scientific reason for it, too.“Your brain consumes 20 percent of your metabolic expenditures,” explains Borrell. “It's critical!”

From the Editor: Summer 2004

In science it often happens that scientists say, "You
know, that's a really good argument; my position is
mistaken," and then they would actually change
their minds and you never hear that old view from
them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as
often as it should, because scientists are human and
change is sometimes painful. But it happens every
day. I cannot recall the last time something like
that happened in politics or religion.
--Carl Sagan, astronomer and writer

The University of California at Berkeley wouldn't be such a highly esteemed (and highly ranked) place if we weren't chock full of great innovators, great researchers, and great thinkers. That being said, Berkeley is also host to a terrible case of incestuous amplification. That is to say, because this place is such a haven for “free thinkers” (because there is such a draw to be among likeminded intellectuals), it is often the case that there is that much more of a reinforcement of the “standard Berkeley beliefs”: and this reinforcement can occasionally cause errors in individual and collective judgments.

In order to avoid the onslaught of the lynchmob rising up among you, let me assure you that I'm not necessarily reprimanding you for what you might have recently said or done in your blue-hot rage. While you can feel free to think about such things, I'm not touching that. What I mean to say is that, often, people find themselves critical of everybody but themselves. What have you done to really change things for the better today? If you've got an answer that you feel you could confidently and comfortably tell your boss, your peers, or your students, maybe you're on the right track, and you can feel free to discuss what's wrong with everyone else (for at most the next couple hours,) until tomorrow. If, however, you find yourself drawing a blank…perhaps it's time to cut the carping and get your nose back to the grindstone. Or go watch some delightful internet cartoons. Either way.

This issue of The Berkeley Graduate not only includes the expected news and information about the Graduate Assembly's recent activities, but also a look at some of the compelling research of your peers and an examination of some of the local problems that might have been escaping the purview of your usual criticism. Do your best to keep an open mind…and keep reading!