 We welcome you here, thank you so much for coming. My name is Steve Sutton and I am the Interim Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, so it's a real pleasure to be with you here today and we have the dream team here of campus leaders up here on the stage. So I want to give them a moment just to introduce themselves, but really this session is designed to give you an opportunity to ask us some questions. Each of these folks here has extensive experience with the student experience here at UC Berkeley. They are strong student advocates. They spend a lot of time each and every day doing what they can to make the student experience better. So why don't we just pass the microphone here and give my colleagues a chance to tell you who they are. You want me to start on this side? Good afternoon, good afternoon everybody. My name is Fabrizio Mejia, I'm the Assistant Vice Chancellor for Student Equity and Success and what that is, it's just a fancy title, meaning that I oversee a number of the equity programs at Berkeley. A cluster of programs called the Center for Equity and Excellence which oversee, as programs like Veteran Services, Transfer Student Services, EOP, et cetera, et cetera, basic needs efforts which is focusing on food security, housing security efforts, the Disabled Students Program and also STEM equity programs. So those programs all report to me. Hi everybody, I'm Kathy Koshel and I'm the Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate Education and a faculty member. I've been on the Berkeley faculty since 1984 and I am a proud Cal past parent, two of my kids went to Cal and proud current Cal parent because my son is getting his MBA at Hawes. So I have lived the student experience on this campus in a variety of ways over the last several years. My responsibilities are really to bring together all of the academic experiences for the undergraduate population. So a number of programs report up through me like summer sessions and study abroad, the American Culture Center, Berkeley Connect, Arts and Design, the Collegium and Educational Technology Services and Research IT. So there's a big portfolio of units that support all of your education, learning management system, many, many things like that. But what I really love is the efforts that we put into thinking about the actual experience, what kinds of things we can do better. Our goal right now is to be able to get every Cal student into some sort of research or discovery experience. And many of you will have that opportunity. Many of you will get a bit frustrated until we get to expand that, but we encourage you to look at all those kinds of opportunities on this campus and we can talk about that more later. Hi, my name is Margo Bennett. I'm the Chief of Police at the University of California Police Department at UC Berkeley. I've been here for 15 years. I've been in law enforcement for much, much longer than that. My granddaughter tells me I'm old and so I'm beginning to believe her. But I came out to Cal from the East Coast, from Virginia. I'm originally from Alabama, grew up in Georgia. And I came out here because I had the opportunity to work at Cal, and my goodness, who wouldn't want to do that? This place is renowned for all aspects of the academics, the research, and the living experience as well. My focus here is to provide quality law enforcement to support the mission of the university and to do it with individuals, officers who are connected to our community. And we have a police department, 59 sworn officers. We're certified by the state of California. We patrol this area. We patrol in the city streets. We respond to calls. Many of you, I hope, never have to call us for anything but I do encourage you to get to know us. We have a pretty robust night safety system that we employ about 60 students. So if you want a job, come on by. We pay $16 an hour. So line up, you know, and put in your application. But we'll talk more about our safety services later. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Marissa Rainoso. I use she, her pronouns. And I work in the LEED Center, and I am the Director for Student Organization Advising and Leadership Development. And in the LEED Center, we are part of the division of Student Affairs, of which Steve is our Vice Chancellor. And in the division of Student Affairs, we basically are looking at and supporting you in all the ways you can get involved and find community outside of the classroom. So whether that is in your residence hall communities, whether that's in a student organization, getting involved with public service, we really want to help you find a holistic way of nurturing yourself and your soul here. In addition to what you do in the classroom and making your classroom experience illuminating that through your co-curricular experience. So how many of you are involved with a student organization or sports or student government currently? Right? Many of you. I imagine that is the very reason why you're admitted to Cal was the way that you've given back to your communities. And that's the reason how many of you want to get involved here with a student organization? Fabulous, that's what I thought too. And so I oversee the team that advises our roughly 1,000 plus student organizations on here on campus. So if you can't find a group that aligns with something that you love, we can help you start one. And then we can have, you know, 1,201 student organizations on campus. But I guarantee there's many ways to find community on campus. And we want to help you do that here today. Okay. I know we have a mix of folks here. We've got some of you that have already decided for sure that you're coming to Cal in the fall. And some of you are probably still on the fence trying to make that important decision. And we may even have others that are still just beginning that college exploration process. So I think during our conversation here, we'll be able to touch on all those different areas. Maybe we could start by having the panelists give one or two tips of ways that you think folks can be successful here at Cal. Well, I'll start. The first and most important thing you can do if you're a student here is meet with your academic advisor. And that is more, that is something that you sort of have to be proactive about. But it makes a huge difference if you can start to talk to someone early about what your passions are, what your interests are, what the opportunities are academically on this campus. And the reason I say that's so important is too many students I think come in and start to aim just for the things that they've heard about in high school. And depending on your high school, that may be a wide variety of things or it could be pretty limited. So we have departments of linguistics. We have department of Southeast Asian studies which covers language and culture. We have the music department that has disciplines in it like ethnomusicology. We have anthropology, psychology, sociology, political economy, economics, history, bioengineering, organic cell biology. And in that department there are six different undergraduate majors, genetics, neuroscience, chemical biology, the college of chemistry has three majors. There's a huge variety of studies you can do. There's American studies. There's cognitive science. We have 64 departments and about 101 majors. If you don't talk to somebody you're not going to discover perhaps the very thing that you care the most about. And I think I get most sad when I hear a senior saying, if only I had known, don't be that senior. Be that freshman who really begins to explore and find out about the variety of things that you can be studying. Yeah, I would say two things come up for me is one is, how do I put this, become friends with your inner voice, your self-talk. There's this whole, there's a lot of research around emotional intelligence and that whole concept. How it connects to this is if you're not aware of the messages that are happening to you as you come to Cal or choose to come to Cal around your fear, around your insecurities, around what happens when you get a grade that you're not used to getting that's below your standard. How does that work in your head? What is the voice telling you? What does that recorder saying about your value, about whether or not you're going to succeed, about what this means for your future? I think the more you become connected to that and understand how to balance that self-talk, the healthier you will be for that process. And the other thing I would say is you're going to be in a situation to get to choose to come to Cal because you planned very carefully. I think you should, as my colleague was saying, me with an advisor and plan carefully, but also be open to the possibility and probability that things will change either because you found something that now interests you more or life circumstances have caused you to have to change your track or to take a little bit of a fork in the road. That's okay, but I think a lot of times students feel like when their plan that they mapped out when they were six years old is different that all of a sudden the world fell apart. It transitions what happened, changes what happened. I think the sooner that you embrace that, the healthier you will be when that transition happens. I would add, I love that. Thanks for that, Fab. I think that inner talk is really important and having people and asking for help is also really important and know that while Berkeley seems and feels huge and it is, there are many ways to find smaller communities on this campus if you look for them and if you ask for help. And in every turn, if you just turn to somebody and say, I don't know where to find a building. I don't know where this building is. Or I don't know how to get involved. Or I need help studying. Do you have tips? Not being afraid to ask those questions and to ask for help. I think it's critical for your success here. And then also really finding those communities. So if you find it within your living community, that's great. You're going to find many homes here and both physically but both spiritually and in terms of student organizations that you join, whether you get involved with the student government or you choose to tutor or do public service, there are many ways that you're going to find communities on this campus. So what I would say is find community, find ways to belong. And then once you've experienced that, turn around and do that for somebody else. Thanks, Marissa. I can only echo what the others have said. I spent 13 years in the FBI and when I was at the FBI Academy, we saw individuals who excelled and were like the top of everything in their personal lives. But when we all came together, we were just average because we were all the same. And so you're going to find that that's true here too. You didn't get here because you were average. You got here because you've got something that Cal wants to develop. And everybody around you is the same, which kind of puts you all on equal footing. So don't be surprised at how you feel when some things pop up while you're here. And parents, don't be surprised and put additional pressure on your students when you realize that they're performing pretty much like everyone else and not like the top of the class they came from. It's a very large campus, very inclusive atmosphere that we strive for. So join in, have a good time, excuse me, there are plenty of people to help you along the way and support you along the way. So don't hesitate to take advantage of those things. I'm going to throw one up. Is that on? Yeah. I'll throw one more thing in here. Most of you are used to having a grade point average that is probably north of a four. And I will just want to tell you that the average overall GPA on this campus ranges between a 3.1 and a 3.4. That's the average and that's in all majors. And what that says is this is a place that is pretty demanding. So when you do earn an A around here, it's pretty special. But B's are pretty solid and you should feel good about that. And parents, I want you to hear this because you're used to your students doing things. And if they care to share their grades with you, which they don't have to do, you know, don't go freaking out if they're, you're going to have to help them because they're probably going to be freaking out. And, but I just want to reassure you that this, this place is, it's demanding but it's incredibly rewarding and it's wonderful. And you sort of have to find your place in that, in that landscape. One other piece of advice, find a small class your first semester. Take a Berkeley Connect, take a freshman seminar, take a reading and composition class. All of those groups are under 20. And there's a place for everyone in one of those opportunities on this campus in that first semester. Okay. I'll have one more, one more thing as well. The, I think we had a question. No? Yeah. Go ahead. Okay. Hello, hello. Yeah. I think that's okay. So I am someone who's been here a lot. I live in Berkeley but I have some family members who might be coming here as undergraduate soon. And their biggest concern, my biggest concern is just like there being so many students in such big classes. And I think you're right to say start small but just what are some reassuring words about how this is a huge research university that you can get kind of real individual care in small groups, et cetera. Because that's like my own little cousins and so on are asking me. So let me just tell you, on Thursday night we had, or Wednesday night, we had the Distinguished Teaching Award ceremony. And three of the four faculty who won the Distinguished Teaching Award teach classes of 300 plus students. And the engagement that they have with their students is remarkable. One of the things that faculty on this campus have learned how to do is how to make those very large lecture hall classes exciting, meaningful, interactive. They'll lecture for a little bit and then they'll have a small group discussion. They'll use clickers to get the class to give you the polls. The one of the winners, John De Niro, teaches our basic computer science class. There are 1500 students in that class. They start in Zellerbach Hall for the first week. And then everybody decides whether they want to come to the physical space that they will be given the following week or watch all the lectures on the computer because they're all videotaped ahead of time. And then all of those students are in small discussion sections on small labs. So there's even in a 1500 student class, it's broken down into much more intimate settings where you get a lot of attention from the graduate student instructors and in fact undergraduate student instructors in some of those classes. It's a remarkable experience and I would say this campus does an amazing job both providing opportunities for small classes as well as taking those very large classes and making them work. Yeah, thank you for your question. We have some Cal Day Ambassadors that have microphones. They're waving their arms there. If you'd like to ask a question, I'm going to give you my microphone. So while you're formulating your question, I know you all have questions. Maybe our panelists can give one or two descriptors of our community here at Cal. How would you describe our community at Cal? I'll learn you a second for that one. Edgy, creative, curious, critical, demanding, high expectations, caring, learning, exploring how to be an adult, not afraid to give their opinion in all matters, wonderful to be around and truly the focus of why we're here. I'd say passionate, change makers and service oriented. And I'll just add vibrate and inclusive. And I'll add world changing. There are things that happen here at Cal that only change the world. And we're trying to prepare each and every one of you to go out into the world and in your own way make changes in the world. Okay, who has a question? I see one right there. Hello, the emphasis in education these days, K through college, is on experiential learning. Where in the curriculum are there opportunities for hands-on learning, project-based learning, experiential learning? I like Kathy, but I have a good question. Okay, so we are continuing to grow that dimension in the curriculum, adding new active learning classrooms in a number of places. If you've got to visit Moffat Library today, they're maker spaces in Moffat. And within the curriculum, Jacob's Hall and the School of Engineering has a lot of courses, some of which are open to the general student body. There's also opportunities in the College of Environmental Design for hands-on learning. There are American Cultures courses which are engaged scholarship courses where the hands-on is not so much making something as it is engaging with a community partner and working with them to resolve a particular problem or do a certain kind of research. So depending on what you want to do, there's the Blum Center with the minor in global poverty where students go abroad and do a project in another country that's around the area of interest for them. So I'll let Babette in. Yeah, I mean, the short answer is there are 100 opportunities, hundreds of opportunities. It makes me think of how we think about a student putting together their course load for a semester and typically what we want them to think about is also the experiential part, the skills building to prepare you for graduate school or the next phase of your life career-wise. So that could look like units to go tutor at a nearby school, right? So there are many partnerships that departments have with programs off campus that allow them to have those avenues. The Public Service Center is another hub on campus that connects students with projects that go to New Orleans and do building of houses, et cetera, et cetera. So many things are operating. And while the purview of my area is not within the classroom, the experiences that I think our own students create within student organizations and within the communities offers that experiential learning opportunity as well. So many of our students are doing work within the community, whether it's with the Public Service Center or going on outreach trips themselves. So we have a group of students who work on the access to public higher education and to higher education in general by going into local schools both here and throughout the state of California in order to demystify what it means to go into higher education. And so you get those experiences and those experiences in the student organization experience where you're serving in a leadership position, planning an event on campus, whether you're planning wholly the Festival of Colors here on campus or you're planning an awareness week around sexual violence and sexual harassment prevention or ally work or on the Earth Week, right? It's also, we're celebrating Earth Day. So we have students who are passionate about sustainability on campus. And so they will do much of that work on campus but within their student organization experiences and that often informs and again, illuminates what they're learning in the classroom and what you'll learn in the classroom and then takes on a practical approach in implementing it within a student organization experience and bringing that to the entire campus community and beyond. And also this is a campus that highly values our First Amendment, right? And so you're gonna have an opportunity to attend a lot of lectures, a lot of events, a lot of speakers that will challenge the way you see the world, the way you view things and they may not necessarily fall within your value system but the thing that's really good about all of that is it teaches and it reinforces that tolerance and respect for one another. And you pick up different opinions and different attitudes, which makes you a more well-rounded individual. So those are opportunities I encourage you to take. What are some tips and tricks for kind of getting plugged into finding resources, creating your own research opportunities, getting jobs and internships and whatnot? So there are lots of entry points for that. There are 11 departments that have a Berkeley Connect experience. That's a one-unit mentoring program. That's a way to get introduced to a number of ideas about work in those particular disciplines. So if you're interested in English or history, so there's a number of them that are mostly in the social sciences that have a Berkeley Connect experience. Another one is to seek out a freshman seminar which faculty and emeriti faculty give often on things that they're interested in. These tend to be really my daughter took one on how the scientists were presented in the movies by Vince Resch, who is now an emeritus faculty member in the College of Natural Resources. And it was a wonderful 15-person class where they really engaged with, how are scientists presented and what are the myths around them and what's real. And that was an entry point for some students into, okay, now how do I begin to think about this? And do I pursue something in journalism or do I do something in research? So that's another way to get to know a faculty member and also learn something about the research opportunities. There are also big ideas courses that are designed to exactly that, to raise questions and ideas. And then finally, there are a number of programs in the colleges that are undergraduate research apprentice programs. So the largest one is URAP in the College of Letters and Science, but it's open to all students on campus. And you can apply for an apprentice program, their faculty put in an interest, you get an interview and you see that that's an opportunity. So in terms of the research areas, those are all ways to get involved. The Career Center is the point of starting for internships and other kinds of experiences. Some classes have an outreach component associated with them, and that's another way to get involved. No, Marissa, if you wanna add some. Two quick things. Is also think about the summer before you start your official first semester. Is summer edge, summer bridge, those opportunities to really engage in that experience in a way that is less crowded, less intensive from the perspective of how many students are here in the fall. So I would say that. And to Kathy's point earlier, your advisors are really, part of their role is to make sure that they're helping you with your roadmap. So you're interested in X. These are the many pathways that X could go on to get you to your destination. So finding those mentors and advisors that you trust and engage with is a key, key, key part of your experience. And one other thing I'll add is that you will have a tremendous opportunity in mid-August when you come back for the fall semester participating in Golden Bear Orientation. One of the toughest things to do in life, I think, is transitioning from high school to college because there's just so much that comes at you. But this seven to 10 days is really designed to help you hit the ground running. You're gonna meet lots of fellow students. You're gonna have opportunity to meet lots of staff members, people that are very concerned about your success here. You'll have a chance to really get emerged into the campus. We made some tremendous changes to orientation two years ago and so we're very excited with the new model that we have because you think it really creates a strong sense of community amongst our first year students. And it's not just, it's also a transfer student population as well, so that I would really encourage you to immerse yourself into that. For those of you who are admitted to the College of Letters and Science and haven't quite made up your mind, one other program to really think about is the Fall Program for Freshmen, which is a small cohort-based program where no class is larger than 80 and you cover a lot of initial breadth requirements and other requirements in that program. And you're a full Berkeley student, your classes are just in a special location right on the edge of campus and it's that its hallmark is small classes, a lot of high-touch advising and those students get a really, really great start in this institution. Their grade point averages tend to be higher and they have a very, very high graduation rate. So I encourage you to look at that program as a way of making Berkeley both small and also giving yourself a really good start. I wanted to reiterate Golden Bear Orientation and in particular, the Getting Your Bearings Weeks in addition to GBO as we call it. This is a prime opportunity for you to really explore the campus because you're not in classes yet and you have an opportunity to go to those offices that once classes start, you may just put in the back of your mind and maybe even challenge yourself into thinking, well, the Career Center is something I don't have to think about yet. It's a place I don't need to visit until I'm thinking about getting closer to graduation and a job and I would challenge that notion. Visit them as soon as you need to. Visit all of the resources you have available to you in your downtime, so when you don't need them. So you're already exposed to them and you know and you've already made a connection in those places. Go visit University Health Services before you get sick. So you know where it's at. You know where the counselors are if you're feeling challenged by the transition and you're feeling like, oh, I'm getting really homesick and I really want to talk to somebody. You already know where UHS is. Take a friend with you so that they also know where that resource is and that they can hold you accountable when you're feeling sad. So think about yourself when you're in your moments. Right now you're in a great moment. It's you're at a high point, you've been admitted to Cal, we're excited to have you here and have you join the Golden Bear family. But also think about, well, what does it feel like when I'm not at that point? What does it feel like when I'm at one of my lower points when I don't receive the grade that I expect? Or I'm feeling homesick. Or you know, it's just one of those days. What does that feel like? What do you need in those moments and who do you need in those moments? And so share that with somebody you start to trust and build trust with now, whether it's your roommate or share that with your family members so they know what that's like now so that when you reach out and say, I'm struggling, I need help, it's not a surprise and they're ready for it and you're ready for it too. Because that's also part of the experience. It's okay to feel that, to feel homesick or to feel sad or to feel frustrated by an overwhelming large research one institution is normal. So don't beat yourself up if you feel that way about that. But go seek those resources before you need them and build connection and relationship with them so that you're ready for them when you do need them. And come visit the Lead Center. We'll help you find those communities to get involved with. Hi, yes. So I wonder if you could sketch out a bit more what the well-rounded student life looks like. One can come here and face 1200 different student clubs and people may go maybe crazy trying to do all of them. So and maybe people go crazy thinking that people are doing all of them, but I can't. So am I underperforming? So if you could sketch out a bit more what is actually normal? What's actually good performance without going crazy? And not just purely in academics, but in general. What is having a good four years at Berkeley? I think, and that's a great question. It does, you need sounding boards. So this is where the idea once again loops back to the idea of who your mentors are, who your advisors are. Because I think there is the academic in class course load that you have to carry and what is a right size course load for you based upon whatever you bring in what you wanna do and what that looks like. Then there is the question of what about your health and wellness? What does that look like? What does your routine look like when you get stressed? Is it working out? Is it music, whatever that is for you and thinking about that piece? What are your family responsibilities and what does that look like? How do you imagine continuing to stay connected with your loved ones, your support system and what that means? What are your other responsibilities? We have students that are student parents that have children or dependents while doing their course load. So that looks a little different for them because they have to put that into the mix, right? And then lastly, as funny as it sounds, you map out a 24 hour day and typically students are like, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that, I'm gonna do that. And when are you gonna sleep? What does a healthy sleep schedule look like for you? And they'll be like four hours, five hours. No, no, no, no, no, no. What does it really look like to be sustainable with a sleep schedule? So let's throw in seven hours and let's map out what a healthy week looks like for you. And then it'll be iterative, right? You'll have discussions about what that means and what that looks like. And I think a lot of times we convince students you wanna grow and challenge yourself all the time. But I think how that starts and how that builds is really the key, right? And what I mean by that is if you try to do it all, if you go into a candy store and eat all the candy, you're gonna have a stomach ache, right? You gotta pick and choose and build towards something. That analogy fell apart quickly, but. But you get the idea, when you come in, you wanna make sure that you're gonna be successful. At the end of the day, you took 14 or 15 units and participated in a student group and had a healthy routine and slept well and you got straight A's. Thank your advisor for that. And then next semester you build a little more, right? And you keep your ability to cope and manage gets better as your Cal career extends. One of the things we try to do at Cal is to create small communities for students so they can find, create a home base for themselves, a place where they can feel grounded. For example, we have seven different theme programs and residence halls where students can be part of a smaller group. And that provides stability that Fabrizio was talking about in terms of being able to have a cohort of students that you're working with, you're living with. In some cases it's through academic programs, in some cases it's through a student club or organization. So I think that's really important in terms of providing that stability, trying to keep your routine there in terms of working out, your sleep, your mental health and wellness, those kinds of things are really critical. I was just gonna say, college is not high school. And many of you were involved in multiple organizations, multiple clubs, took a really solid course load, played a sport or two, were engaged in a whole lot of things. And the academic demands on you are going to be much greater. They're going to be much less structured. So you're gonna have to figure out how to organize your time. And I think Fab's advice was really good. Get involved in something you really care about. At least one club, organization, volunteer activity, something that takes you outside of the library or your dorm room. And do get out of your dorm room. Explore this campus. You have free admission to the Berkeley Art Museum. It's open Wednesdays through, some days you get a discount on the Pacific Film Archive, an amazing film program. You have access to the collections, the Bancroft Library. This is a treasure box. And there's no limitations on your access to those collections and those opportunities to explore. So when you're sitting in Doe Library and you get a little bored, go down to the stacks and just explore in the stacks. Don't spend all your time with your nose just on your algebra or your calculus book. It's an algebra, calculus. It's important to get out and look at things beyond beyond your classes. And I also want to say to Fab, if I had to do over again, sleep would be the number one thing on my list. Followed by making sure that I ate a reasonably well balanced diet. And it's amazing what those two things do. Those of us that put in long hours around here and work on behalf of all of you have finally learned that lesson. I just wish I'd learned it about 30 years earlier or 40 years earlier. So I have a question. How many of you are under the age of 21? So you won't be drinking while you're here? I'm sure, okay. I'm gonna put it on my police chief hat and my advice to you is socialize slowly. Moderation is the key. You do not want to get yourself in a situation where you're so heavily socializing that you cannot function and perform in your classes the way you need to. Parents, I would tell you that your student may not call home every night. They may not call home for a couple of nights. At the police department, we're always getting phone calls from parents saying Johnny hasn't called me today. Can you go find out if he's okay? And we will go find Johnny and say, call your mom please, would you just call her? But parents realize that they're moving into adulthood and deciding who they wanna be, what they wanna do, how they're gonna structure their day, the freedom that they have is gonna be something totally new to them living in this environment is something that's gonna be totally new to a lot of you. So I would say just socialize slowly. Get your feet on the ground. Get your classes in order and then start exploring those social friendships. My advice is to have you reflect on the word balance and what that means to you. That's not going to be the same for everybody but how you balance your academic experience with your co-curricular experience and the communities to which you belong is going to be unique to you. And that's gonna be based somewhat on what you know it to be based on your high school or your community college experience if any potential transfers are in here. So think about what does that mean? What does balance look to you? What does that look like to you now and what might that feel like to you when you get here? And so to answer the question on average, how many student organizations does somebody join? It's hard to know without actually doing the survey and the data. But anecdotally I'd say many students end up probably anywhere between two to four in my experience. What I see tends to happen with students who are new to the campus is that they explore and get really excited and join multiple and that's okay because you wanna try them on. You wanna get a feel, go to a couple of meetings, find out if it's a good fit for you. Is this an organization whose values align with my own? Is it, do they, are they, you know, do you wanna join the Quidditch Club and go compete in Quidditch? Do you want to, do you wanna do service? Do you wanna plan events on campus? What do you wanna do and how do you wanna explore that? Do you wanna write for the Daily Cal? Do you wanna work in a media and publication, a media or tech organization? We, I guarantee we have it here. But what I encourage you to do is to explore multiple organizations and then with the intention of narrowing down as the years go by so that you really start to narrow down what it is that you're passionate about and where you can influence change and what does it mean to be a leader within an organization? What does it mean to be a member and to be a follower as well? What does that mean to you? Leadership to me and in the way we talk about it in the lead center is not about title. So we're not talking about somebody who has president or vice president in their name, but leadership is what are your values? How do you act on those values and how are they in alignment with your own? And then how do you work in community? How do you build a team and what does that mean to you to work in community? So and that's something that's reiterated not just in your co-curricular experience in your student group, but it's also something that you're exploring in your classrooms. What does it mean to be part of a study group? What does it mean to work on a group project? So you'll explore what role you play when you're in your group. You can start exploring that now. What role do you play in your family and with your friend group now? You'll start to see those themes and those threads play out through your experiences here. Reflect on those things and then apply them to your student organization experience so that when you decide, this is the one I'm really passionate about, this is the one I want to become influential in. I want to actually be a leader of this organization and I want to welcome others into it then that's what we want you to do. Start to, you can start broad, but I would say narrow down and make it balanced for you. So I'm wondering how students usually navigate so many opportunities here and even just trying to plan my schedule for Cal Day I can get a sense of what's coming. Yeah, so how would you recommend navigating Cal and all its resources? I'll once again say that I think it's in finding those that are gonna hear you out with regards to your particular goals and then they'll offer ideas about the ways in which you can map that out, but ultimately you're the decision maker and so your advisors and mentors are there to give you their experience, their thinking about what makes a successful pathway towards that, but anybody that tells you that there's one pathway to your goal is probably not the right mentor or advisor for you because there are many ways to any given goal that you have, but I would say carefully, my advice would be in the first few weeks don't commit because everybody's gonna try to pull you in, this is the greatest thing, you need to be involved in this, please, please, please, and it feels good, but you don't have to, you could say, I'm still exploring, let me get back to you, right? Try a few things and try not to commit to too many things in your first semester, even though you're gonna want to because everything looks so great, going back to my analogy that didn't work earlier. I would just say you'll have access to Golden Bear Advising, which is online advising tool that's been developed for each of the colleges, and that's a great place to start in terms of planning your academic experience, and then take advantage of, over the summer, looking at the myriad of websites that you're pointed to that will talk about things like Study Abroad, how do you plan a Study Abroad opportunity into your four-year experience? Where would you plan an internship? How are you going to get those pre-med requirements done? There's a huge amount of pre-med advising advice, pre-health sciences advising advice available to you. Those are the kinds of things that you can spend some time in the summer. Enrollment begins in the middle of July, you'll have a chance to choose your classes, and then during Golden Bear Orientation, there's another opportunity where you'll have college advising days, each of the colleges sits aside a whole day, in case of letters in science, more than a whole day, to really help you nail that schedule down and talk about all the opportunities that you have in the college that you've chosen to be a part of. So there's a great, there's a whole lead-up into figuring out, and then of course, there's Golden Bear, oh, and then Getting Your Bearings, which is three or four weeks of activities sponsored by all the organizations across the campus. So just a practical tip, you're living in res halls, hopefully you're living in a res hall. We have resident advisors, this is under Steve's program, that are in the dorms in the res halls. They're fantastic individuals. They do a tremendous amount of training. They are there for you, particularly at the beginning, when you may not know, I mean, it's something so simple. Have you ever heard of this professor? You know, how do I get to this particular room? Have you heard anything about this club? I mean, they are the ones who've been here for a little while and can help you when you're talking about navigating day to day throughout this pretty complex and heavily populated area. And I would just say it's also okay to say no, and that's okay too, that there's gonna be, just like today, a whole menu of things, and you're like, I wanna go to all of them, and this is where you're gonna have to start making some hard choices, and that's okay too. So it's okay to say no, and be okay with that. But really find what calls to your soul, what calls to your passion, and check it out. And sometimes you're gonna find out it was a misfit. It didn't work, it didn't like it. Or you're gonna find out, you're gonna audition for something, you'd be surprised how many student groups we have here that love to perform. Berkeley students, dance groups, acapella groups, oh, you'd be so surprised. Audition and find out you didn't make it, and that's okay too. So maybe the student org says no for you. So you'll find that there's opportunities, and there's gonna be doors that shut, and that's okay too, because there's gonna be another door that opens somewhere else. But be okay and be open to that happening. I tried out for, when I was a student here, I tried out for the Cal Dance team, because I was a cheerleader in high school, and I so desperately wanted to be a part of that. My brother played football here, and it was so important to me to want to be part of the Cal spirit. And I failed miserably, it was great. It was fantastic, it was awesome. And I love that story there, because I had so much fun trying. And it also helped me build up my resiliency around rejection and around just letting go. And that's okay too. So it's okay to let go of all the things that you think, okay, you're not gonna be a doctor, and a chemist, and this, and that, and the other. You're gonna have to choose a major. And changing your mind is okay. It's a popular major as well. But have a goal in mind, and make sure you also have that beacon of light that you're working towards that keeps you guided. One of my advisors once told me, don't judge your insides by other people's outsides. And I say that to say that, I think you will walk around and see brilliant students, both undergraduate and graduate students, you will see brilliant faculty. And it may make you feel some kind of way about where you're at, but you don't know what they walk with. You don't know the challenges they face. You just see what they present in classroom or when they open up their mouths and they speak beautifully, and you think like, I'll never get to be that articulate. And they look at you and probably think the same way. So just be cognizant, and that connects back to the inner voice thing about the messages you're giving yourself regarding that. There's a question over here. Okay, we got time for one more question. Way up in the back there. All right, so just could you talk a little bit about security and safe behavior in and around the campus? Yeah, I'll pass that over. I was expecting that question today. This is a highly urban environment. We're in tight packed streets. Our campus is in the middle of Berkeley. We're surrounded by Berkeley streets. If you've not grown up in an urban environment, it's going to be a bit of a learning curve for you. We have safety programs that get people around after dark at night. The reason for that is because we don't want individuals walking alone on the streets. And I would encourage you to take advantage of the Bear Walk program or the Shuttle, that night safety shuttle. After 2 a.m., 3 a.m., I think it is, they do a door-to-door service until 6 a.m., and you might think, oh, my students not going to be out at 3 in the morning? Yes, they will. They most definitely will. And so for the students, I would tell you, really pay attention to the don't walk alone at night. The most, yeah, even Kathy doesn't. Faculty staff, everybody calls Bear Walk and says, can you get me to my car? And the statistically, the individual who gets robbed on our city streets is a male, tall male walking by himself because he thinks he's invulnerable. And so everybody needs to pay attention to that. And if you like being up all night, join the workforce of our CSOs or our community service officers. They're the ones that do the walking of folks around. And we really love having them and they have a good time working for us. We give them office space that come in, study during the day, they work at night. They don't go to the football games because they're out working traffic for us during those games. We'll let them off for one game a year. So they get to choose that. But seriously, navigating in safety is something that you have to pay attention to. You must be aware of your surroundings. And that means don't have your head and your iPhone. Don't be texting as you walk around. Get those earbuds out of your ears and pay attention to what's happening around you. That way we don't have to respond to people falling down the stairs, running into trees, having a bicycle run over them. It's like truly be aware of what's going on around you. We also have several security measures in our residence halls. If you happen to live on campus, you've got to use a key card to get into your building. We have a security monitor program where we have a student living or sitting in the lobby from six a.m. till about two in the morning, making sure that people coming into the building are supposed to be there. You've got to use your key or ID to get up the elevator. So there's several measures we have in place. We actually have a UCPD sergeant that actually works in the residence halls, is right there, has an office there with us and works very closely with us. So we take safety and security very seriously here on our campus. So one quick note for parents. As a parent, you're also going through a transition by sending your student to college. So this is really important. We have support for you as well. We have the Cal Parents Association that you could consider joining. They had a tent out here earlier. Hopefully some of you stopped by. But probably the biggest piece of advice I can give you is when your student encounters a challenge, encourage them to find the right person on campus to help them work through that challenge. It's really not helpful for them as they're becoming adults for you to pick up the phone and try to solve that problem for them. There's lots of people here that are prepared to assist them and empower them in working through that issue. And the best thing you can do is encourage them to seek somebody out to solve that problem. So thank you so much for coming. We'll stick around for a few minutes if you have some additional questions. And go Bears.