um, said in an immediate prior post that CChrist and Hillman needed to start making clear any plans because narratives are being formed...
now we have
this just out:
"Berkeley launches one-year residential program at Mills College"
https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/03/25/berkeley-launches-one-year-residential-program-at-mills-college/
some excerpt:
Mills College will be the site of UC Berkeley’s first one-year residential program for 200 first-year students starting in fall 2021
--through UC Berkeley Extension, which runs FPF
-- the announcement features pictures of male students and in the press coverage of the Mills closure/transition to non degree institute - some of the coverage and response has noted the students who fought against admissions of male students, so?? Why is Cal featuring male student photos in the announcement?
also in the announcement is this: "Another fall program, Berkeley Global Edge in London, a one-semester international experience for newly admitted students, began in 2015, but was suspended in 2020, and will be suspended again in fall 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic. The 2019 London cohort had 90 students.
Mills College has a current student body of just over 960; UC Berkeley Changemaker in Oakland will also be a small group — 150 incoming students from the College of Letters and Science and 50 from the Rausser College of Natural Resources.
Berkeley’s new program has an ideal location at Mills College, said Chinyere Oparah, provost and dean of the faculty at Mills."
..."We see ourselves in a relationship with Oakland — as a partner, not as an institution where we’re there to rescue or save anyone: " (like?)..."with our working group of Berkeley faculty and programmers" (programmers? for online?)
[Adding this in here:
In re-reading the UC Berkeley - Mills announcement on plans designed by a "task force", it came to mind that in Fall Winter 2020, a few months ago, announcement that ISSI was being deconstructed and parceled out to different parts of Cal campus --and over a thousand, including several senior faculty who said they were surprised by the plan for closing ISSI, signed a petition asking CChrist to stop her plan for ISSI -- and now it is clear that CChrist and UC Berkeley admin were in talks at that same time with the provost at Mills about the UC Berkeley-Mills program announced today. Is/was the plan all along to move ISSI to Mills? Its strange so many were left out of the discussion esp because apparently that Mills Faculty provost spoke at UC Berkeley ISSI events, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awZtAKcdNy0
- its a helluva way to treat the host of your talk...or, was ISSI leadership in the loop and when?
All the headlines throughout Fall Winter over ISSI and CChrist was talking to Mills during that entire time was ISSI in anyway part of the planning on Cal-Mills?
The bad headlines come at a cost for Cal in terms of impressions on future applicants etc when they read:
"UC Berkeley students, faculty, alumni fight closing of Institute for the Study of Societal Issues"
https://www.dailycal.org/2020/10/21/uc-berkeley-students-faculty-alumni-fight-closing-of-institute-for-the-study-of-societal-issues/
"UC Berkeley shutting down rare pipeline for doctorates of color. Its supporters are fighting back"
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/UC-Berkeley-shutting-down-rare-pipeline-for-15828740.php
and
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?id=411773755549053&story_fbid=3536293363097061
"Cal reverses plan to disband institute that has supported students of color"
https://www.ktvu.com/news/cal-reverses-plan-to-disband-institute-that-has-supported-students-of-color
"Berkeley Social-Justice Institute to Be Shuttered, but Not Without a Fight
Petitioners say its closure shows a lack of commitment to marginalized communities"
https://www.chronicle.com/article/berkeley-social-justice-institute-to-be-shuttered-but-not-without-a-fight
]
Today' announcement on Mills goes on:
...
Unlike FPF, UC Berkeley Changemaker in Oakland will be residential, with Berkeley students living in Mills College residence halls in single occupancy rooms; they also can choose to have a Berkeley roommate. They will have their own instructors with academic appointments through UC Berkeley Extension, each vetted by Berkeley academic departments and the Academic Senate. The students’ academic adviser will be from the Berkeley campus...
If they wish, the first-year Berkeley`students at Mills can take one course on the Berkeley campus each semester...
-- and Both Mills and UC Berkeley have failed within the region to highlight to gen public these prior connections and perhaps that is why Mills is in the state it is in right now- but that may be by design to get to this point?? But is the Mills community onboard with this:
"The new Berkeley program at Mills is open to all first-year Berkeley students, not just self-identified women or people who are gender nonbinary." - cuz that means: men.
Berkeley Haas also has had Mills Fast Track Business Programs that allow Berkeley students and alumni to earn a Master of Management degree from Mills in as little as one semester or a Master of Business Administration in as little as two semesters."
"Berkeley has been in conversation with Mills College on a plan for a program on the Mills campus, in part because it would enable Berkeley to enroll more students when it doesn’t have room for them on the main campus,"...
..."“Even with the Fall Program for Freshmen and Global Edge London, we still are overrun in our freshman gateway courses, and there just aren’t enough classrooms; London came up to create more capacity for freshmen,” he said. “By creating this cohort program at Mills, we will be able to educate 200 freshmen for a year, without overtaxing the main campus. The impact is lighter for sophomore year.”
The FPF program was created in the ‘80s, when Berkeley offered spring semester admission to a group of students who were filling seats that otherwise would be empty because some students leave after fall semester and others graduate. These so-called spring admits “needed an academic home” in the fall, said Nagappan, “so Extension created FPF.”"...
..."Russo added that the new program at Mills College is ideal “for a family that wants their student on a campus with less density, for a student who wants a single room instead of a double at the same cost, for a student who hoped to attend a liberal arts college but wasn’t offered admission to it, and a student who is really interested in the Berkeley Changemaker curriculum, which is meant to connect with many majors.”"...--which majors?
"Students in UC Berkelely Changemaker in Oakland will take an online Summer Sessions course from July 6 to Aug. 13 called “The Berkeley Changemaker.” They’ll meet other incoming Berkeley students from around the world and be introduced to 22 of the campus’s most distinguished faculty members, from 16 departments and schools across Berkeley’s campus, who will share how they think about change-making and leadership, and how they put those skills into action.
Guest faculty will include Chancellor Carol Christ,
-so there's some of the CChrist positioning...
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen ...
-Yellen is gonna bring that huge entourage to Mills -
à la memories of Mnuchin at UCLA and the issues of that too or its gonna be online?
it goes on:
and nine Distinguished Teaching Award winners at Berkeley."..."Berkeley “decided very deliberately to lean into Oakland as a place and a site for this program,” he said, “We have lots of ambitions and initial ideas for this freshman program, and we’ve had lots of conversations with Mills’ faculty and leadership.”
The connection between the two schools originated “with our past president, Alecia A. DeCoudreaux, who believed strongly in public-private partnerships in higher education and started the Berkeley-Mills Task Force,” said Opharah. “This new program really is a natural building on that rich partnership of creativity and mobilizing strengths.”"
- see in full: https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/03/25/berkeley-launches-one-year-residential-program-at-mills-college/
initial thoughts:
--One additional aspect not spoken to in the announcement is that it is being run through UC Berkeley Extension. So, it now raises the years long issue of 'campaign for fee waivers for UC staff' who want UC to pay their tuition for attending UC to complete degrees.-- Currently UC Berkeley admin offer staff discounted rates and some free UC Berkeley Extension courses. Now it raises the question of why can't staff be included in the above w/ discounted or free tuition/fee waiver agreements as well? And wouldn't that extend to UC systemwide also since Mills and Cal have online courses etc.? Certainly, UCOP employees would also want to partake since they get their training many times at Cal as well. And the UC Regents had to approve all the above at some point right?
In the above there is :"Koshland agreed that the intellectual strength of the Mills College community and the network it has built over time with Oakland’s artists, activists and educators “will add to the richness of Berkeley students’ experience in this new residential program.”"
It does not explain who or what a "Koshland" is but the piece is likely referring to :
https://vcue.berkeley.edu/about/catherine-p-koshland
Who is a very learned and kind person but who in the last few years has struggled to fully communicate list off the tenets of new initiatives on instruction of undergrads and during one campus conversation tried in several remarks to say that it really isn't all that bad in terms of financial and other stressors on students. Then CChrist came out with what sounded like back track comments and with new initiatives and CChrist new comments about how Cal was just learning there are some inequities and added challenges for students of color at middle class level and lower mid class poor, as well as transfer students etc...
And Koshland as in Koshland-Hellman is also a thing as well- what's been a juggernaut of power and influence at UC...
OK, so let's now cover the tie in of the Koshland-Hellman group of influence at UC and at Mills:
which we did not get into in earlier post on Mills
Two families outta SF history of what's coined 'societal influence'- some reportage at Berleyside can get deep into the details..
Heck, having a li'l fun Cal and Mills-they could rename some of the buildings, degrees : Lehmanns or Hardly Strictly or Bluegrass or Crucible or Dunsmuir?
Lets go full Koshland Hellman -or naw not really Let's just allude to some of it from the 2000s --the aughts decade
... first for Mills, see a bon vivant and patriarch who was a donor to both UC and Mills and is missed now at each new annual Hardly Strictly music festival he started:
"In memory of Warren Hellman"
January 21, 2012
http://www.thecampanil.com/in-memory-of-warren-hellman/
"She said Hellman would boast, “Look at what my Mills women gave me.”"
Now UC..
- There is some mention of the extended family and affiliates who continue to serve on the board there at Mills and that influence has also been at Cal's California Hall and UCOP headquarters...
When Drake mentioned in earlier days of his UCOP presidency former President Atkinson it can appear to some as signal of a return to the time of Atkinson's appointment and promotion of Dynes and Birgeneau at UCSD and Cal and then led to UCOP...which extends also to some earlier history at Bell Labs...
And, there are members of the family who continue to have influence, positions at Cal. In the early aughts they had very open connection on a relationship chart to recruitment of at least one chancellor position and one UC president postion --along with some personal relationships that influenced career positons for some lower on the rungs of UCOP and UCSD leadership in the intervening years. Some of the details based out of UCSD and Cal and UCOP resulted in scandal or fraught headlines in newspapers and got swept up in other unfortunate situations at individual UC campuses like Davis and UCSC. -Some of the other details at other campuses didn't. Even to this day there are some programs where it can appear to those familiar with the history that there are influences involved in vendor picks for things like contracted out services of set aside minority staff leadership programs that are separate from other established mainstream leadership programs for staff etc which can perhaps continue a trickle of the rumor mill of the early and mid 2000's/ aughts and perhaps prove somewhat demoralizing for staff and even students who observed it. But most folks who know those details opted out of UC awhile back, right? Perhaps b/c they were sitting in meetings where staff and student workers were openly discussing it as part of decision making. For Title IX complainants some of the details can be triggering or dissuade folks from believing in UC support programs like what is now called Path to Care at Cal etc. Dunno if those types of scenarios play out at Mills as well - but at Mills it would be esp. ironic...
Raise this here also b/c there was a section of the KQED Forum interview, that still lingers in the mind, where the host lamented with Mills' Hillman that there are so many Bay Area billionaires who could easily just resolve Mills' problems, comments from both to that effect-- but be careful what Higher Ed wishes for on billionaire donations because they can come with influence peddling sometimes-- And also remember that Cal struggles with budgets every year now it seems-- even pre-pandemic, and loads of high rollers/ whales donate to UC. It still is not enough.
Also, from Fall 2020 there was this:
"Mills students anticipate an expanded partnership with UC Berkeley in the future"
October 19, 2020
http://www.thecampanil.com/mills-students-expect-a-merge-with-uc-berkeley-in-the-near-future/
"“Earlier this year, motivated by a mutual desire to build on the strengths of each institution for the benefit of our students, faculty, and staff, we began conversations to consider deepening Mills’ long-standing partnership with UC Berkeley,” President Hillman said via email. “While our discussions are preliminary and remain in early stages, our vision is to sustain the socially driven mission of Mills College and enable UC Berkeley to serve more California undergraduate students.”
Students remained on mute during the entirety of the town hall and were asked to send questions ahead of time to Dr. Martin or utilize the Zoom chat function. The majority of the questions students asked were related to seeking clarity about “deepening” the relationship with UC Berkeley, what changes they could expect in the near future, and why this decision is being made.
In 2017, UC Berkeley and Mills established a partnership to aid both institutions with challenges they were facing: Mills has enrollment issues while UC Berkeley struggles with capacity issues. In this partnership, Mills students were able to cross-register for certain courses, and access study abroad and internship programs at UC Berkeley. Students at UC Berkeley would also have access to housing on-campus as well as accelerated graduate programs."
The logistical details of academic and admission changes due to a merge with UC Berkeley have not yet been defined.
“Our academic leaders from both Mills and UC Berkeley are in conversation about the potential for a stronger integration between our campuses. And as these discussions between Mills and UC Berkeley continue, we’ll probably have a much clearer picture of what those academic programs might look like and what potential opportunities would be there for Mills students, faculty and staff,” Dr. Oparah said during the town hall. “So I’ve sort of seen a lot of questions that are very much like ‘What exactly is happening?’ and ‘When is it happening?’ And I wish I had clearer answers for you that gave those kinds of details. President Hillman really wanted to give you an advance notice of things that are underway, conversations that are happening. It’s not something that’s been finalized at this point. There’s no firm timeline on these discussions. No dates are set.”
UC Berkeley is a co-ed university with a student population of over 40,000 compared to the 961 students at Mills. One of the most favorable aspects of the liberal arts college is it’s 8:1 student to professor ratio, with classes averaging eleven students. Undergraduate students are concerned about a great change in their campus life with the entry of new professors who are not familiar with the unique community created at Mills and co-ed student admission, especially co-ed housing.
