Student Excellence
Upon becoming UC Berkeley's ninth chancellor, Robert Birgeneau said, "I hope we can have a student population that is genuinely inclusive and serves the entire state of California, not just a portion of it."
Higher fees, due to California's budget woes, are making it far more difficult to attract the best students to the UC Berkeley School of Public Health and to provide equal access to students from varied backgrounds. Total annual tuition is $10,092 for in-state residents and $22,337 for out-of-state residents. The School frequently loses some of its accomplished applicants to other schools who offer greater financial support. This is particularly the case for talented minority students. As a school, we are committed to increasing student diversity.
In order to address this challenge we propose a "Campaign for Student Excellence" with a goal of $10 million of endowment support. The annual interest from such an endowment would enable the School to provide at least some financial support to an additional 125-200 students to raise the overall percent of students receiving at least some financial support to approximately 75 percent. Specific items include:
- Scholarships for masters and doctoral students;
- Scholarship support for upper division undergraduate public health majors;
- Funds for nonprofit agencies to provide internships to students and "one year" job transition support;
- Travel funds for student recruitment;
- Teaching Fund for University-Community Partnership designed to provide support for community-based leaders to teach courses. This is a lectureship fund to expose students to community leaders.
- Funds to develop a career counseling and placement center.
