University of California, Berkeley
Cal Corps Public Service Center 2011 Annual Report
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Cal Corps Public Service Center
2011 Annual Report In 2011, the Center partnered with the community, student leaders, and faculty to engage over 6,000 students in 290,000 hours of service as volunteers, and through jobs, internships, and courses. We refined our mission “to connect people, ideas, and resources to act for social justice, build healthy communities, and foster life-long commitments to public service�. In the past year, the Center expanded our work to build upon our successes and plan for the future through three initiatives: the development of the new Lower Sproul Student Center, increased support for faculty and graduate students, and deepening our educational impact. Cal Corps is thriving in difficult times through the generous financial support of individuals and organizations and our unique model of engaging students and partners. This support has enabled us to grow and deepen our work on campus and in the community.
Lower Sproul Initiative UC Berkeley is revitalizing a historic heart of student life: Lower Sproul Plaza. As part of this important project, Eshleman Hall (Cal Corps’ current home) will be razed and replaced with a more spacious building where student leaders will work together in new, flexible spaces designed for collaboration. Cal Corps’ new office will span an entire floor in the new Eshleman Hall, and will showcase the University’s commitment to public service and tell the story of student, faculty, and alumni engagement around the Bay Area and across the globe. When the building opens in 2015, our hope is to have endowed a Center Faculty Director as well as a minimum of 100 needbased scholarships for student leaders of public service. “UC Berkeley is about excellence in all that we do, including serving the greater good. The new Lower Sproul will place public service — very literally — at the heart of campus life.” — Jonathan Poullard, Dean of Students
publicservice.berkeley.edu/annualreport
CAL CORPS EVENTS Leadership & Social Justice Conference In October, more than 700 students, alumni, community members, faculty, and staff from area colleges and universities attended the 3rd Annual Leadership and Social Justice Conference “Moving From Passion to Action”. Universities included UC Berkeley, Saint Mary’s College of California, Santa Clara University, Sonoma State University, and University of San Francisco. The conference explored effective leadership and the root causes of underlying social issues in the community by tapping into the campus and community-based expertise of 60 presenters, covering topics from inequities in educaiton to the financial crisis in low-income communities. Local leader Brahm Ahmadi of the People’s Community Market spoke to students about the evolving forms of leadership and inspired students to reconnect and recommit to working towards social justice. Oakland Mayor Jean Quan emphasized the importance of local government’s role in addressing pressing social issues, sharing how her years at Cal and her identity as an Asian-American woman have shaped her vision of leadership.
Cal Renews the Call UC Berkeley commemorated the Peace Corps’ 50th Anniversary with a symposium and celebration. Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, many of them UC Berkeley alumni, filled International House and attended workshops and panel discussions reflecting on Peace Corps through the decades and looking ahead to the future of the Peace Corps. Cal Day’s theme this year was Cal Renews the Call – celebrating its legacy of public service and connection to the Peace Corps. Over the 50 years, more than 3,400 alumni of Berkeley have served overseas, ranking the campus #1 in the nation for producing Peace Corps volunteers.
ACTIVE... ON CAMPUS Shinnyo-en Peacebuilding & Leadership Program The Shinnyo-en Foundation has expanded its partnership with the Public Service Center, enabling Cal Corps to establish the Shinnyoen Peacebuilding and Leadership Program. The year-long program launched this fall with a course in Peace in Conflict Studies exploring “Leadership, Actualization and Dialogue”. All class participants had the chance to apply for mini-grants up to $2,500 to carry out their projects. Recipients of the Shinnyo-en Grants will receive intensive advising and support in launching and sustaining their projects.
AmeriCorps Each year, Cal Corps supports and recruits 185 UC Berkeley students for AmeriCorps programs. The Bonner Leader program provides leadership development through internships with local non-profits and Cal Corps’ programs. Other AmeriCorps programs include: Campus Compact’s Students in Service program, Destination College, Coaching Corps, and JusticeCorps. Together, these programs provide more than $150,000 as education awards for students to apply towards education expenses.
Graduate Students Cal Corps hosted a series of meetings to gauge graduate students’ interest and needs in pursuing community-based scholarship. As a result, Cal Corps dedicated staff time to graduate student support and hosted an engaged scholarship panel discussion on funding, publishing and best practices in spring and another on community-based research in the fall. Cal Corps will continue to host a series of engaged scholarship workshops in 2012.
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IN THE BAY AREA CREATE Art in Schools CREATE responded to budget cuts threatening arts education in the public schools with an innovative partnership that places Cal student artists in residencies at local after school programs. CREATE students teach visual arts, dance, creative writing, and theatre classes, and ensure that hundreds of local youth have access to free arts enrichment. CREATE also partnered with the Kala Art Institute of Berkeley which received a grant from the Chancellor’s Community Partnership Fund to teach math through art at Berkeley middle schools. As part of the project, CREATE students are interning alongside artist-teachers to design and present creative projects that explore principles in mathematics.
Alleviating Poverty This past year, 60 students were certified as tax preparers to assist low-income individuals and families with their taxes through the VITA program. Students participated in a student led course exploring the US tax system, earned income tax credit and how their volunteering worked to address poverty in families living in Alameda county. Funding from Learn and Serve America, through California Campus Compact, provided seed funding for the program. Despite the loss in federal funding, Cal Corps is continuing the program due to its great success.
Equity Through Literacy In response to the significant racial inequity in K-12 education in Berkeley, Cal Corps made the strategic decision to expand our already large BUILD Literacy tutoring program. In partnership with the Berkeley Unified School District and the City of Berkeley, the “Build Equity through Literacy Initiative” expanded literacy tutoring to all 11 public elementary schools in Berkeley to help ensure that all Berkeley youth can read by 3rd grade. Cal student tutor teams provide one-on-one reading help and work with District Literacy Coaches who lead tutor trainings and oversee tutor-tutee matching. In total, over 160 Cal students are tutoring in Berkeley and Oakland as part of the initiative, and an additional 70 students provided reading support in the summer. The expansion was made possible by support from the Chancellor’s Community Partnership Fund, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Irene S. Scully Foundation, BUSD, and the City of Berkeley.
Oakland Community Builders This year, 30 students participated in community organizing internships throughout Oakland. Along with the internship, students enrolled in the School of Social Welfare’s community organizing class taught by Claudia Albano.
Cal in Local Government This spring, 18 students from Cal in Local Government presented their work in a Public Policy Showcase. Each student participated in a 200-hour internship in Berkeley, Oakland, Albany or Emeryville and worked in council member offices, city departments, and commissions.
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IN THE CLASSROOM Spring Seminar Education In spring, Cal Corps sponsored a five-part series exploring inequities in education. Speakers helped students consider the achievement gap and identify systemic inequities in public education. Speakers included teens from Berkeley High School, education policy analysts, an Oakland elementary school principal, and panelists who shared their own career paths in youth work and education. The series attracted 200 attendees.
Engaged Scholarship Cal Corps is committed to helping faculty and graduate students engage in teaching and research that strengthens student learning while addressing significant community needs. We provide training, technical assistance, and student support to enable faculty to develop and sustain community-based research and community-based learning experiences for undergraduate and graduate students. We also provide workshops, resources, and assistance to graduate students who are interested in community-based learning and engaged scholarship.
American Cultures Engaged Scholarship Program(ACES) In January 2010, Cal Corps and the American Cultures department were awarded a five-year, $900,000 grant from the Haas Jr. Foundation through UCB’s Division of Equity and Inclusion to develop 30 new American Cultures courses with community-based components. ACES launched its first courses in Spring 2011. Three-hundred seventy five students took classes with an engaged scholarship focus. Two of the four courses were:
• Interracial Justice at Law
In the spring semester, Professor Marc-Tizoc Gonzalez (Ethnic Studies) taught Interracial Justice at Law. Students interned at local legal advocacy organizations to learn about advocacy, the history of interracial justice movements and ongoing social justice work in the Bay Area.
• Islamophobia
Professor Hatem Bazian (Near Eastern Studies), taught Asian American Studies 132. Students explored the marginalization of Islam and Muslims today. Using the platform of oral histories, the class compared the experience with three US racial groups: Native Americans, African Americans and Asian Americans.
ACTIVE... STUDENTS
Student Initiated Community Projects
Cal Corps supports 29 student organizations by providing program funding and advising.
The People’s Test Preparation Services (PTPS) PTPS worked with Bay Area teens to provide free SAT prep, making accessible high quality test preparation to increase access to higher education
Stop The Traffick Stop the Traffick worked to raise awareness of sex trafficking and modern day slavery.
Volunteer Health Interpreters Organization (VHIO) VHIO served in San Francisco providing interpretive services at health clinics to raise awareness among Asian and Pacific Islander populations about Hepatitis B.
Berkeley Engineers and Mentors (BEAM) BEAM students led mentoring programs to teach science in fun and creative ways in twelve Bay Area Schools. This past year BEAM partnered with Lawrence Hall of Science to teach K-12 students about science on Saturdays through Ingenuity Labs.
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BEYOND THE BAY Washington DC Through Cal in the Capital, 66 students spent the summer in Washington DC working at internships in congressional offices, nonprofit organizations, federal departments, and media outlets. This year, the student-led course was redesigned to better support students in their internship search and prepare them for life in Washington DC. The program provided one-on-one advising for participants for professional development and hosted an alumni event in DC. Cal in the Capital has received generous donations from alumni and the University of California that make the program possible for students from across campus to participate.
New Orleans This summer, through Magnolia Project, 40 students travelled to New Orleans to work in solidarity with Gulf Coast communities. Students worked closely with Lower 9th Ward Village, a community center that empowers community members to be self-sufficient and to sustain an equitable quality of life. To date, 300 Magnolia Project volunteers and interns have contributed more than 35,000 hours to relief, rebuilding and recovery.
Cal Corps Staff In 2011, Cal Corps added two positions to support the growing work of the Center. Angela Taylor supports service-based internship programs including Magnolia Project, Cal in the Capital and Cal in Local Government. Jacque Roby supports BUILD as the BUILD Equity Fellow, a new post-graduate fellowship. She has served as a Bonner Leader, BUILD Tutor, and BUILD Student Director. We said good-bye to two beloved staff but they didn’t go far: Minh Dang is now pursuing a joint Masters/PhD at UC Berkeley’s School of Social Welfare and Dana Brown is now a full-time Ministry Intern at the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship near campus.
Carrie Donovan, Jacque Roby, Suzan Akin, Nurredina Workman, Brendan McVeigh, Damali Burton, Megan Voorhees, Angela Taylor, Mike Bishop, Mong Vang 505 Eshleman Hall & 102 Sproul | Berkeley, CA 94720-2430 phone: 510-642-3916 | fax: 510-643-0326 email: publicservice@berkeley.edu
publicservice.berkeley.edu