In 1998-99 one new department was formed and at least five existing major programs were revised to improve the quality of the educational experience for their students. The new department, Bioengineering, which we praised earlier in this report for its creative solution to the problem of ensuring the availability of classes, was formally established in the fall of 1998. The curriculum for the new Bioengineering undergraduate major meaningfully integrates biology with engineering, both at the level of individual courses (which the department is gradually introducing) and in sets of courses describing an emphasis area.

The curriculum of the Forestry major was revised to streamline the major and provide more free electives at the upper-division level. The new major was accredited by the Society of American Foresters. The Department of Italian Studies overhauled both its major and its minor program, creating new courses and making the requirements more flexible, to better reflect the interdisciplinary nature of current literary studies and to deepen the students’ knowledge of Italian culture as a whole. The Chair finds that the new programs are improved both in quality and in rigor. The Department of Linguistics reviewed its major and minor programs, dropping the lower-division prerequisite for both programs. The upper-division prerequisite was revised to better meet the needs of majors and minors, while the former lower-division prerequisite was re-tooled with a target audience of non-Linguistics majors in mind. The Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies changed the requirements for the major and minor programs to make the programs more attractive and effective. In addition, the two lower-division courses in South Asian Studies were combined, making it possible for a professor to teach the new combined course, with the assistance of several Graduate Student Instructors. And the Materials Science and Engineering major curriculum was restructured: undergraduates are now required not only to complete a core curriculum but also to choose one of five options for specialization. This change was the culmination of two years of intense work by the faculty and discussions with students.

Berkeley’s Coalition for Excellence and Diversity in Mathematics, Science and Engineering was recognized by a special award–the Presidential Award for Mentoring Programs–from the White House in September 1998. The Coalition, which has been highlighted in previous iterations of this report, is made up of seven campus programs–the Biology Scholars Program, the College of Chemistry Scholars Program, the McNair Scholars Program, the Multicultural Engineering Program, the Physics Scholars Program, the Professional Development Program, and the Student Learning Center–which joined forces in 1992 to work more effectively to retain women and underrepresented minorities in math, science, and engineering. Each year, the Coalition works with some four hundred students, providing them with undergraduate mentors as well as faculty and staff role models who follow them through four years of college. Accompanying the Presidential Award is a $10,000 grant from NSF to enhance mentoring activities.

Also in September 1998, Berkeley received $1.6 million from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to continue our campus efforts to improve undergraduate education in the field of biology. A third of the money from the four-year grant was earmarked for the Biology Fellows Program, which provides undergraduates with the financial freedom to engage in scientific research. The remainder of the grant goes to the Biology Scholars Program, one of the seven member programs in the Coalition described in the paragraph above. The Biology Scholars Program was designed to create a private-college environment within our large public university. Results from the first five years of the program demonstrate how well the concept works. African American and Hispanic students who participated in the Biology Scholars Program graduated with a degree in biology at the same rate (60%) as Asian and white students who were not in the program, and at more that twice the rate of minority students who did not participate in the program (24%). Asian American and white students who participated in the program also raised their graduation rates (to 86%). The Biology Scholars Program currently supports more than 350 undergraduates, with fifty to sixty new freshmen entering the program each year.