 Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us at the 2020 Chancellor's Awards for Public Service Ceremony. I'd like to share a few words about the importance of service at Berkeley, but before that, I want to acknowledge the donors that made today's event possible. My deepest thanks go out to the Mather family, the Shin-Yo-En Foundation, the Peter E. Haas family, Mimi Haas and Bob and Mary Catherine Bergenot, all of whom generously contribute to public service efforts on our campus. I would also like to recognize the Public Service Center staff who worked diligently to manage the nomination process for these annual awards and for producing today's event. Finally, I'd like to thank everyone who was nominated for or who won one of today's awards, whether in the areas of civic engagement, community-engaged teaching, research in the public interest, campus community partnerships, or one of our special donor-sponsored honors. We are, of course, gathered here largely to honor the achievements of these extraordinary individuals, and we'll be hearing more about some of their work momentarily. I want to acknowledge that they were selected to receive these awards before COVID-19. We had planned an in-person celebration for the spring and decided not to wait any longer to recognize the accomplishments of these extraordinary members of our community. Beyond celebrating today's award winners, this ceremony also gives us a chance to celebrate the very activity of public service itself, something that is fundamentally tied to our university's purpose and something that thousands of students, staff, faculty, and alums of the university engage in every year. As with every other part of the campus, our public service mission has shifted during these times, and whether or not you are receiving any commendation today, I want to thank everyone for joining us for the time and effort you put in to improving the local and global community before, during, and after the current pandemic. As I'm sure most of you know, public service is one of the three central tenets of our university's mission alongside research and teaching. This commitment to service dates back to UC's origins as a land grant institution in the 1860s when the university was founded as a means of strengthening the state of California and empowering its people by spreading knowledge of practical skills in agriculture, science, and engineering. Today, while the university continues to serve society and the economy through education and scholarship, our public service commitment manifests in many other ways as well. I'm particularly proud of the many Berkeley students who have stepped up in these challenging days and deepen their commitment to public and community service. For example, in collaboration with the Public Service Center, each year more than 5,000 students volunteered directly with 250 community partners. For more than a decade, the Public Service Center, Berkeley students, and Berkeley and Oakland schools have worked in partnership to provide elementary and middle school students with mentoring and tutoring in literacy arts and math. Nearly 300 Berkeley students are engaged as mentors and tutors through these programs. Last spring, when schools moved to virtual instruction, student mentors quickly produced 75 children's book read-alongs videos and over 125 literacy lessons and 22 Facebook posts directing parents and teachers to resources to help them support young learners. This fall, these mentoring programs have seen a significant increase in the number of students wanting to participate. One program saw tripling in the number of students applying to be mentors and tutors, and by working closely with the schools, students have found ways to return to one-to-one virtual membership when the appropriate safety measures are in place. Outside of the activities of the Public Service Center, numerous individual units at Berkeley facilitate their own creative service projects as well. There are several that are currently addressing urgent COVID-19 needs among vulnerable groups. For example, in the first days of the public health crisis, graduate student Abbar Abidi heard that several staff members at the San Francisco County Jail had tested positive for COVID-19, and he and others in his lab worked around the clock to manufacture, package, and deliver more than 900 bottles of hand sanitizer to the jail. Enough for each inmate at all five county lockups in one weekend. This effort led to a multi-lab effort to produce sanitizer for jails, the homeless, and many more groups that needed it when none could be found. Of course, Berkeley students aren't the only ones taking action. Our faculty and staff are outwardly oriented and public-spirited, engaged in contemporary societal issues, and committed to advancing the greater good. They search out work that truly matters and often ensure that their research leads to tangible change. An example is the Innovative Genomics Institute, which adapted their research into a testing center and quickly increased its capacity to hundreds of tests to thousands of tests, allowing it to respond to multiple requests from communities outside UC Berkeley. Since then, the lab has tested firefighters exposed to suspected COVID-19 patients, nursing home residents, firefighters, and other frontline workers potentially exposed to the illness. In addition to testing UC Berkeley students, faculty, and staff, the lab is focusing on vulnerable populations and frontline responders who daily put themselves at risk for infection, with a focus on serving economically disadvantaged communities and public servants when asked why. The answer is, this is who we are at Berkeley. One students actually graduate from Cal. They remain civic-minded too, entering public service programs in droves. As many of you know, Berkeley is one of the highest producers of Teach for America teachers, and we are the all-time top producer of Peace Corps volunteers. UC Berkeley alums developed Masks to All, an organization that's already provided over 35,000 masks for individuals experiencing homelessness in the Bay Area. While clearly a great number of Berkeley students, staff, faculty, and alums are engaged in service endeavors, I would still like to see such spirit even more fully infused into our university and our community. Nearly 20 years ago, Ernest Boyer, who is Chancellor of the State University of New York, and then President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, wrote in one of his famous reports on the state of American education that, increasingly, the campus is being viewed as a place where students become credentialed and faculty get tenure. But the overall work of the academy does not seem particularly relevant to the nation's most pressing civic, social, economic, and moral problems. Boyer hoped that our universities would commit themselves to creating a special climate in which the academic and civic culture communicate continuously and more creatively with each other. This noble goal remains one that I don't think American universities have adequately reached, but it is one that public institutions and Berkeley especially should strive for. With public service so central part of our mission, I believe we should be giving all members of our community the opportunity to connect with that ethos, and to learn over the course of their academic lives here that they can and should think beyond themselves to use the language of one of our business school's core principles. Aside from the obvious benefits this would have to society, such increased attention to public service at Cal would benefit Berkleyans as well. According to a number of different studies, learning with an element of service improves academic achievement, assists in the recruitment and retention of historically underrepresented students, builds qualities such as responsibility, trustworthiness and caring for others, racial understanding and continued civic engagement, and builds soft skills and emotional intelligence, and can help students learn about and prepare for a range of careers. Let's get into the heart of today's program. I'll end by simply thanking you all and congratulating all of our winners on the fantastic work that they've done. The projects undertaken by the students, faculty and staff in this room add to our legacy of public service, even as we seek to reassert the central importance of that aspect of Berkley's mission. Thank you so much. And now I'd like to invite Director of the Public Service Center, Sandra Bass, and Director of Local Government and Community Relations, Ruben Lazardo, to join me in recognizing the awardees. Sandra, will you please start us off? Thank you so much Chancellor Chris. Congratulations to all of our award recipients this year. And a warm welcome to all of you who have joined us today to celebrate their accomplishments. As the Chancellor has shared, public service has been central to what it means to be a member of the UC Berkeley community since the earliest days of the university. These past few months have tested us in ways that perhaps we could not have imagined. But what has buoyed my spirits is to see the outpouring of actions from Berkeley students, staff, and faculty to ensure that those in our community, whether they be on campus or beyond, are seen, heard, and supported. Their care and commitment reminds me of the story of Congressman John Lewis, a veteran of the Southern Black Freedom Struggle, often shared about how he came to title his autobiography, Walking with the Wind. When John was a young child growing up in rural segregated Alabama, he and several other children were playing outside at his aunt's small, fragile wooden home one day when a storm whipped up. Fearful that the house would be blown off its foundations, John's aunt called all the children inside, hold them to hold hands, and to gather together to hold the house down. As the wind blew, one corner of the house would lift and they would move quickly move together to hold that part of the house down. Then another corner of the house would lift and they would run to that corner together to keep the house from lifting off. And so it went back and forth until the storm eventually passed. Let me share the insight John gained from his experience by paraphrasing some of his words. More than a half century has passed since that day and it has struck me more than once over these many years that our society is not unlike the children in that house, rocked again and again by the winds of one storm or another. The walls around us seeming at times as if they might fly apart. But the people of conscience never leave the house. They never run away. They stay. They come together and they do the best they can. And eventually, inevitably, the storm will settle and the house will still stand. But we knew another storm would come and we would have to do it all over again. And we did. And we still do. All of us, you and I, children holding hands, walking with the wind. John Lewis passed away this summer, but his life and his words will inspire us for generations. Our award recipients represent the best of public service at Berkeley, yet not the whole of it by any measure. Across this campus, members of the Berkeley community consistently are among those who run to those in need, choose to stand together, grasp hands and literally hold each other down, time and time again. It is my privilege and pleasure to be in community with all of them and to honor those who have done this work with distinction this year. So we'll begin our ceremony by first recognizing several students who have recently received prestigious public service scholarships and fellowships. We'll start with the John Gardner Fellowship. The John Gardner Fellowship selects three fellows from the graduating class of UC Berkeley and provides each a $35,000 stipend to work in the governmental or nonprofit organization that most closely fits their public sector interest. Fellows are matched with a senior level mentor during their 10-month fellowship. The goal of the John Gardner Fellowship is to provide meaningful post-graduate leadership opportunities for UC Berkeley's top students. Congratulations to this year's recipients. Barsha Sarvachwar, Nicholas Schaefer and Sarah Ritney. Next, we have the Shenyuan Peace Builder Award. This award is a 10-month paid post-undergraduate fellowship supporting one recent graduate from UC Berkeley in discovering their personal path to peace through immersive service. The Selected Fault Fellow joins groups of students from other leading universities across the United States to animate the Shenyuan Foundation's Infinite Paths to Peace Initiative. Congratulations to last year's Shenyuan Fellow, Robelle Gisichu. Next, we have the Judith Lee Stronach Baccalaureate Prize. This prize is awarded to graduates to undertake a service creative or community-based research project in the year following graduation. The program supports projects that serve the public good and heighten awareness of issues of social consciousness. Recipients are awarded up to $25,000 to pursue their projects. Congratulations to this year's recipients. Gabrielle Dimmick, Rebecca Gurney, Javier Lopez-Quintana, Mariza Kieros, and Harrison Rappaport. Next, we have the Donald A. Strauss Public Service Scholarship. This scholarship provides a $15,000 award consisting of a $7,000 scholarship and $8,000 project grant for sophomores and juniors who will pursue a self-initiated public service project during the year after winning the award. This year's recipients are Mira Chang and Miyako Iwata. And then we have the Peter E. Haas Public Service Leaders. Named in honor of alumnus Peter E. Haas, who is known for his deep compassion for helping others, the program seeks to grow a new generation of leaders committed to helping society. The Peter E. Haas Public Service Leaders program provides scholarships of $2,000 to $6,000 to undergraduate student leaders who have demonstrated a commitment to off-campus service activities. Congratulations to the many recipients whose names we are now seeing on the screen. So now we're going to get started with our awards. Chancellor myself and Ruben N. will be presenting all the awards this afternoon. We will introduce each award recipient and then invite that recipient to show their certificate and make one minute of remarks. So we'll start with the Undergraduate Civic Engagement Award, which recognizes an individual for their contributions to the community. And this year's recipient is Varsha Saveshwar. Varsha Saveshwar graduated as a political science major with a minor in history and public policy this spring. Varsha served in multiple leadership roles, including president of the UC Student Association, General Affairs Vice President of the ASUC, and manager for a successful Berkeley City Council campaign and more. She was an accomplished student leader who helps other students find their political voice in a complex political environment at the local, state and federal level. As a community organizer, Varsha led with an in-depth knowledge of the political landscape and used her platform to lift up others and educate and encourage students to advance their interests. Since graduating, she now works in the governor's office. Congratulations, Varsha, and we'd like you to share a few words. All right. Well, thank you so much, Sandra, for the introduction and thank you to the awards committee for this incredible honor. Throughout my college career, I've had to put together speeches and talking points dozens of times, but it took me a long time to figure out what to say here. And after struggling and struggling, I realized that it's because public service is such an integral part of my experience at Berkeley that I was never going to be able to put it all into words. Student leadership has both challenged me and given me more than I ever imagined. It made me more compassionate, more resolute, more humble, more committed, and more thoughtful. I'm grateful for this award, but so much more grateful for what it represents. Lastly, and most importantly, I'm so grateful to my mom and dad who supported and continue to support me every step of the way. And to the myriad UC Berkeley faculty and staff, especially the political science faculty, as well as my friends in government and community relations, who have been an integral part of getting me to where I am today. Thank you all so much. Well, I get to continue and I want to just start by just thanking all of the awardees and the faculty and the staff and the public service center and UDAR for bringing us all together to celebrate the best of Berkeley. It's an honor to serve you all every day and try to help ensure that our mission is strong, even with all the challenges that we face. And it's a very special time for us and just want to thank you all before I get into this. So I have the privilege of introducing the Graduate Civic Engagement Award. It recognizes individuals for their contributions to community. This year we actually have two recipients and I'm going to start by introducing Benny Corona first. So Benny is a master's of public policy student at UC Berkeley. The focus of his advocacy work is on the Central Valley of California where he was born and raised. Shout out to him from another Central Valley boy from Fresno here. Benny was the first in his family to attend college. He is no stranger to hard work starting as a farm worker at age seven in the field. He has worked as a community organizer working community development and it's been on political work on political campaigns. His personal experience informs his connection to immigration and other policy issues that he works on. He's the son of formerly undocumented farm workers and he works tirelessly on issues affecting low-income workers in the Central Valley, including access to clean water and sewer systems. Benny's outspoken passion for advocacy, public policy studies and his role as a wonderful public service fellow have equipped him to continue work for progress in his community and the greater society. Benny, congratulations to you. We couldn't be more grateful to you for your leadership and we invite you now to share a few remarks with us. Hi, thank you so much. In this time, I will try my best to explain my commitment to my community, although ultimately I don't really completely understand it. And I guess what makes the most sense is that I am madly in love with the community that raised me. And for most of my life, I have been a farm worker and I got to see my community pour their heart and soul into the work they do, where holidays and breaks were basically non-existent and today they're doing it during pandemics and out of control fires. And this is an experience that never leaves me whether how long, no matter how long I stay out of the farms, as opposed to part of that comes from that as well, drawing a sense of purpose, direction and urgency from the very pain I have lived through and witnessed. For a lot of the work I have done, I have not received a lot of money for it, but the level I get is infinitely more powerful and more meaningful to me. And I cannot promise I'll ever be in a political position of power again, but I can promise I will continue to speak truth to power. I promise I will continue to leverage my privilege for my community and I do promise I will continue to do the work that I do with all the love and joy in my heart. Thank you, Benny. I now have the privilege to introduce our second Graduate Student Award winner for civic engagement. Her name is Emily Eisner and unfortunately she can't make it today, so I'm going to just share a little background on her and then read a statement that she sends of appreciation. So Emily Eisner is an economics PhD candidate here at UC Berkeley. Her research interests include macroeconomics, public finance, labor economics and economic history. Outside of her academic work, Emily has spent a significant amount of time in graduate school promoting gender, race and ethnic, and socioeconomic diversity and economics. She is the co-founder of Women in Economics at Berkeley and was the lead organizer for the first ever graduate student summit on diversity and economics. Emily has also mentored undergraduates and works with her department to improve policies surrounding diversity, inclusion and student well-being. And this is what she has to share in terms of her words of appreciation. I'd like to thank my family and my advisor, Christina Romer, for supporting me throughout my time in graduate school. I'd also like to thank my friend Megan Lang for helping organize so much of the work that we've done with the Berkeley Economist for Equity Group. Thanks again and we really appreciate Emily's efforts. Now I'm going to turn to the staff awards for civic engagement. It's my pleasure to introduce you to Diana Salazar and she is the staff recipient of the Civic Engagement Award, which recognizes the UC Berkeley staff member for their contributions to the public good. And to get this award, you have to be doing that work outside of the scope of your actual pay job. And so we really want to recognize Diana Salazar, who you're seeing on the screen now. Diana grew up in Richmond and experienced firsthand the challenges that first generation college students often faced in communities with limited resources. Diana realized that her school district did a poor job of preparing students and she went into the university feeling underprepared. Knowing how difficult it is to assimilate it to a new environment as an undergraduate student inspired Diana to give back. Moving forward, the organization Diana co-leads serves youth and families in Richmond, working to get healthy and improve the quality of life in their neighborhoods. Moving forward to workshops and scholarship programs, identify promising youth, strengthen their leadership skills and support them with resources they need to make a positive impact in Richmond. Congratulations Diana. We're so grateful for all that you do and all the contributions to make the Richmond community better and contribute to the legacy of UC Berkeley. We invite you now to share a few of your thoughts with us. Hi everyone. So I want to start off by saying thank you. This is a huge win for the grassroots nonprofit organization. I'm a part of the moving forward and which is like Ruben mentioned based in Richmond, California. So moving forward's mission is to help uplift youth by providing scholarships, organizing cleanups and just encouraging health and wellness. We also do free community classes and I really want to give a special shout out to some more mirrors. He's a founder and project manager for moving forward as well as our Lady Santos. She's the director of marketing. So without those two, my counterparts, none of this would be possible. And also thank you so much to the dozens of volunteers, the Huerta family, who they're also bears. The scholarship committee who helps select the recipients that we award. And also a big thank you to my nominator Keith McLear. So thank you for recognizing moving forward's work. And I really hope this brings attention to, you know, this new grassroots organization, you know, feel free to follow us on social media, moving forward 5-1-0. And we also have a webpage where you can contribute or support. So thank you. Wonderful. Our next award is for the Student Group Award for Civic Engagement. This award recognizes a UC Berkeley student group for their contributions to the community. And this year there are two recipients of this award. And so we'll start off with the first awardees, blueprint technology for nonprofits. Blueprint is a student organization that builds web and mobile apps for nonprofits pro bono to make beautiful engineering accessible and useful for those who create communities and promote public welfare. Since 2012, Blueprint has built tech solutions for over 40 nonprofits and approximately 45 club members fill a variety of roles, including software development, design, event planning, project management, external relations, and more. Last semester, Blueprint also held the Hack for Social Impact Summit, which empowered students to collaborate with nonprofits in the social impact space and featured speaker panels discussing ethical implications of tech and career pathways in social good. Congratulations Blueprint. You'd like to invite one of your representatives to share a few words. Thank you. It is my true privilege to be here representing a passionate and yet collaborative group of young leaders. This academic year, we continue bringing a meaningful impact through well-intentioned web and mobile apps to the five nonprofits, which includes Nipenor National Black Justice Coalition and Oakland Genesis Soccer Club. Last year, we brought the Hack for Social Impact Summit on campus, gathering over 100 students, speakers, and nonprofits to work with and learn from each other within two days. We invited a diverse range of voices and engaged the public to discuss ethical complexities of technologies, the implications, and different career pathways in that space. Today, we are focusing on scaling our mission by establishing Blueprint chapters to all the university campuses across the world, including the United States and Canada. We are sincerely honored to be receiving an award today and further our public service. Thank you. Great. And our other student group recipient is the Sage Mentorship Project. The Sage Mentorship Project is UC Berkeley's largest one-on-one mentoring program. All operational costs of the program are covered by grants and fundraisers the Sage Leadership Team applies for and puts on during the school year. Since its establishment in 2007 by Alejandro Villes, the Sage Mentorship Project has grown from mentoring at just one elementary school to a total of nine in both Berkeley and Oakland. In one semester alone, they have around 300 mentors and 400 plus mentees at nine different elementary schools mentoring and volunteering for about 7,800 hours. Congratulations to Sage and we'd like to invite your representative to share a few remarks. Hi, Sandra. Hi, everyone. My name is Caitlin and my journey with Sage started during my very first semester as a freshman at Cal. And though some of you may have heard us saying, are you interested in kids and helping them while firing on Sproul, Sage is not like your typical club on campus, although, like you mentioned, it is one of the largest. We have our founder Alex Villes to thank for that. His time along with the commitment of Katie Huang from the Public Service Center, our faculty advisor, Professor Zhu, our 300 plus student mentors, elementary school mentees and their parents and our school liaisons have all contributed immensely to this award. So on behalf of the Sage Mentorship Leadership Team, I would like to thank all of them for their unwavering support and for doing it for the kids. Thank you. Great. Our next award is the Campus Community Partnership Award. This award honors campus community partnerships and university sponsored programs that improve the quality of life in our community. This year's recipient is Bea Scientist. Bea Scientist is a collaboration among Mary Wildermouth, Associate Professor in Plant and Microbiology, Teresa Barnett, who is Executive Director of Community Resources for Science. And Aaron Rhodes, who is Executive Director of Berkeley Public Schools Fund and the Berkeley Unified School District. Bea Scientist is a six-week program implemented in every seventh grade class in Berkeley Unified School District, designed to ignite a passion for science and foster competency in science through mentored, individualized, scientific inquiry. Bea Scientist involves over 700 seventh grade students and over 160 UC Berkeley STEM graduate student mentors, working to train a diverse generation of future scientists. Its vision is to end the disparities in academic achievement existing along racial and socioeconomic lines by cultivating a deep, individualized instructional experience with a one-to-five mentor-student ratio, as well as by representing racial and ethnic gender and life experience diversity among STEM mentors. Congratulations, Bea Scientist. We'd like you to share your remarks. Thank you Chancellor Christ and colleagues for this special award. I founded the Bea Scientist program to develop the next generation of diverse scientists by sharing the research experience critical to UC Berkeley's mission with economically and ethnically diverse student body of the Berkeley Public Schools. The program was developed for seventh graders, the first grade in which there's a dedicated lab and science teacher. Through a close partnership with Community Resources for Science with Teresa Barnett as Executive Director, the Berkeley Middle School Science Teachers, and the support and funding of the Berkeley Public Schools Fund with Aaron Rhodes as Executive Director, we developed a sustainable, individualized and in-depth research experience for every Berkeley seventh grader. The program was initially championed by King Middle School Principal Janet Levinson, allowing us to pilot the work at King, and within three years we had it operating at all three middle schools. The six-week in-class curriculum at each school partners the seventh graders with the UC Berkeley STEM graduate student mentors who help guide them to develop and test their own experimental hypotheses. Having just completed its sixth year, the annual participation includes 700 seventh graders, seven science teachers, the program managers from CRS, Community Resources for Science, Darlene Yan and Betsy Mitchell, Berkeley Faculty Oversight, and 160 UC Berkeley graduate students who power and are the heart of the program. This close partnership brings together complementary expertise and resources to promote our community and the next generation of diverse scientists. I want to thank and congratulate all involved. Thank you. The Faculty Award for Research in the Public Interest Award honors research by faculty that addresses critical needs and issues affecting local, state, national or global communities. This year's recipient is Dr. Colette Coco Awerswald. Dr. Coco Awerswald is an associate professor in the UC Berkeley School of Public Health and director of the UC Berkeley UCSF joint medical program. She holds academic positions at both the Berkeley and San Francisco campuses of the University of California. She's a pediatrician specializing in adolescent medicine. Her research consistently focuses on the social determinants of health of our society's most disadvantaged youth and on structural interventions that have a positive impact on their health, employing a community collaborative and youth engaged approach. She's the co-founder and co-director of I4Y Innovations for Youth and the faculty lead for the Ending Youth Homelessness Catalyst Group. Congratulations, Dr. Awerswald, and we invite you to share your remarks. Thank you so much Chancellor Christ. I'm immeasurably grateful not only to receive this award, but also that it would take me far more than the time I have to thank everyone who's contributed to this moment. Instead, I ask you to close your eyes for a few seconds and to picture a youth who is couch surfing or experiencing street homelessness. Now, ask yourself, did they choose homelessness? Highly unlikely. Why don't they have a home? More likely than not, because the adults and systems responsible for their well-being instead abandoned them, neglected them, or harmed them. Are they a criminal? Laws in much of California say they are, just for having nowhere to sit or for begging for help. Programs for youth are effective at helping youth exit homelessness, but are very scarce. Due to stigma and exclusion, youth without homes are in the crosshairs today of COVID, climate change, police violence, food insecurity, and the unemployment crisis. We all lose when we contribute to their exclusion with our stigma and assumptions. Thank you. Thank you. The faculty award for community-engaged teaching honors leadership by faculty in developing or teaching community-engaged courses or engaging students in community-engaged research. Dr. Pablo Gonzalez is a continuing lecturer in Chicano-Chicano studies and ethnic studies. His work focuses on trans-border social movements, the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, urban ethnography, and activist research. Dr. Gonzalez has mentored several community-engaged projects, including alternative breaks to the Central Valley and Puerto Rico, and serves as a board member to Bahia Inc., a pre-K program in Berkeley. In introduction to Chicano-Chicano history, he brings community voices into the classroom through readings and guest speakers. He's a scholar activist at heart, and his courses reflect this way of teaching. Dr. Gonzalez mentors and coaches students, connects them to community partners, and guides them in best practices for engaging with communities. Congratulations to Dr. Gonzalez, and we invite you to share your remarks. Thank you, Chancellor. I'm deeply honored to receive the Community-Engaged Teaching Award. As someone who was born and raised as a guest on a lony land here in Berkeley, California, and that is committed to the project of Chicano studies and ethnic studies, a project centered on community-building and social justice, the Chancellor's Public Service Award is a promise kept to those of us who lived and worked under the shadow of the Campanile. As I often share with my students in my classes, I grew up in West Berkeley and Richmond, California, not knowing much of the campus. This divide is one of many that students know all too well if they're raised near the shadow of other universities and colleges throughout California. The sense of feeling forgotten or ignored, or the common sentiment that students from UC Berkeley were only there for a temporary time and then went to leave. And this is one of the challenges that I speak of in my research and my teaching. Instead, I also ask my students, how do we build and sustain communities that thrive and that counter one another? Because I hold dear the imperative of community-building, this award is shared. It is shared with the hundreds of students and comrades I have made over the last eight years at Cal. It is shared with the passionate and dedicated community partners that have welcomed us to their spaces and homes. It is also shared with the Public Service Center and the amazing people that were tirelessly there. This award is also shared with my colleagues and staff at Ethnic Studies and also students who seek community engagement opportunities. Finally, I want to also share this with my extended family, one of the largest in Berkeley, who migrated from Mexico in the 1960s from Macambero, Guanajuato. And because of necessity, built community. And I'm sure they are very proud, like I am of them, to continue to also further the Latino community in Berkeley. Thank you very much. Thank you. These next two awards were established by Chancellor Emeritus Bob Bergenau and his wife, Mary Catherine, as part of their continued support and advocacy for undocumented and underrepresented students, not just here on campus or in the state of California, but across the nation. I would like to ask Bob and Mary Catherine to join us now to present the Bergenau Recognition Awards. As Carol can tell you, one of the greatest pleasures of having the privilege of serving as Chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley is that you get to meet an extraordinary cross-section of students. And among our many extraordinary students, we particularly enjoyed our interactions with students from both the underrepresented minority community and from the undocumented student community. And particularly impressive to us was among these students, there were many who not only worked very hard on their academic studies, but devoted their life to improving the lives of their own communities. And we felt that these people deserved special recognition. And so, accordingly, we decided to establish two awards, one to recognize students who had contributed immensely to the welfare of undocumented students and a second award to students who had contributed to the underrepresented minority community. So to begin with the Undocumented Student Award, the Robert J. and Mary Catherine Bergenau Recognition Award for service to undocumented students honors an undergraduate or graduate undocumented student or student ally who has performed exemplary service pertaining to undocumented communities. And recipients are awarded a $1,000 prize in recognition of their work. It's all Calvo Medina is a student organizer whose undocumented status is letter to advocate for pro immigrant policies on and off campus, since her time in community college. She is directly organized for increased access to education for undocumented people, which resulted in substantial substantive policy change. As a deportation defense organizer with the California Immigrant Youth Justice Alliance, it's all works alongside people fighting for their freedom from detention centers. Her participation in the American Cultures Community Engaged Scholarship Program, letter to create a student guide for fellow scholar activists to support their organizing efforts and to help them navigate the universities and communities in order to affect social change. It's all we'd be delighted to hear from you. Thank you so much, Robert and Mary Catherine. I am very honored to have been selected for this award, but I am even more honored to be joined today by my friends and comrades who made this word possible. I have been organizing and attending school for the majority of the time that I was working on these major community victories. So when I say that this is a collective award, I mean it. Because without the work and the support of my friends, Yadira, Juan, Valeria and Sandy, much of this work would not be possible to hold while also pursuing my education. I would also like to thank my professors Lisa Sujitani and Victoria Robinson for allowing their office to become a refuge to me in this university. And for their words of encouragement and validation that gave me the push that I needed to demand a place for me in this university. As a transfer student, it is very difficult to find your place and even more as an undocumented student. But I have always been proud of these identities because it is these specific experiences that have brought me the most precious people in my life and the most greatest learning lessons. I fight for those continuing to push the limits of education and hope that with the student guide that I created, it reaches many people looking for guidance. This award is a testament to those that continue to pour their hearts into me and that includes my parents, Lorena and Antonio, who inspire me to keep my passion for justice alive. Thank you so much. And I'm very grateful and honored today. Thank you so much itself. The version of recognition award for service to underrepresented students honors an undergraduate or graduate underrepresented student or student ally who has performed exemplary service pertaining to underrepresented communities. Recipients are awarded $1,000 prize in recognition of their work. George Moore is a fourth year PhD student studying mechanical engineering. His work is driven by a goal of empowering underrepresented communities. And as research seeks to combine equity and sustainability. George is particularly committed to serving underrepresented minorities in STEM, including facilitating workshops with the penola bill. As an instructor for underrepresented high school students of color at smash academy as vice president of the black graduate engineering of science students and as a graduate representative for the mechanical engineering departments diversity equity and inclusion committee. Through these roles George has worked on multiple successful projects, the further opportunities, recruitment and retention of underrepresented minorities. George, we would love to hear from you. Congratulations. Thank you so much. I really appreciate the recognition and the way that an award like this carries. While I don't need any extra motivation to continue supporting underrepresented students. It feels really nice to be acknowledged. Balancing a demanding PhD candidate schedule with so many extracurricular activities isn't isn't so easy. But I'd like to shout out a few folks that make that job a lot easier for me to handle. First, there's support coming from the mechanical engineering department. Alice Agagino my advisor Costa got your Lambert, Grace O'Connell and Yavo Dagbeve. And many others. Next, there's a lot of student groups that help support me, including the black graduate engineering and science students and the black graduate student association. They've been my local family and I really appreciate all their support. And of course there's my, my family back home in Mississippi my parents and my siblings are always keeping me grounded and and providing a place for me to go when I need to step away from the work. And finally, thanks to Bob and Mary Catherine for sponsoring this award. I don't take it lightly. Congratulations, George. Selected from the nominees for the Chancellor's Awards for Civic Engagement, our final award today is the Mather Good Citizen Award. It's awarded to a graduating senior for outstanding service to the community and comes with a $1,500 award to the recipient. MacArthur or Mac Wong graduated as a sociology major and DSP re-entry, hope scholar, underground scholar, and student parent. At Berkeley, Mac created the first formerly incarcerated scholars research cohort, helped create the first undocumented scholars and foster scholars research cohorts and co-founded the first on-campus addiction recovery program. When he started at Cal, Mac found the university difficult to navigate. From his experience and with support from the public service center, Mac launched NavCal, a class aimed at supporting students in navigating Cal and training participants to be leaders. Mac's work supported students who have experienced significant adversity, enabling them to become agents of their own futures, leaders of others, and important voices for institutional change. Congratulations, Mac. We invite you to share your remarks. Thank you so much, Chancellor. It's been a privilege to be on this campus with you. This award goes first and foremost to my niece, Thu. I see you on here. At times you've been my only cheerleader on my side, and we made it. We made it, Thu. I want to thank the faculty on this campus. A special thanks to Dr. Victoria Robinson, Dr. David Harding, Dr. Pablo Gonzalez, Dr. Chris Muller, Dr. Sandra Smith, Dr. Tulani Britton. I want to make a shout out to the public service center, Ashley Kelly, Andrea Wise, Dr. Sandra Bass. I want to do a special thanks to Betsy at the Berkeley Co-op to make sure I was never homeless. UHS, Tiffany Melendez, Kathy Kadama, McKell and Summer, the Institute of Research and Labor Employment, that one research wizard, the librarian Susan Edwards for helping me, everything she deserves this more than I do. The transfer center, Steve Nguyen, CE3, the whole family, Julianne, Ron, Luisa, Yuki, Yi and I, Fabrizio, underground scholars and Hope scholars. And I want to make a special thanks to Assistant Vice Chancellor Mia Settles-Tidwell for seeing it's up to me. I didn't see it myself. I want to thank you so much for all the support you've given me throughout the years and I want to thank our chancellor for believing in the NAFTA program and all I can say is I'm not anything special. I'm like any other foster kid that came out of a system that was depleted and left me out for dead just like the 170 other foster kids that graduated the same year I did. Graduated to homelessness, graduated to incarceration with the support and help and how this school is starting to move forward on supporting and help non-traditional students. I believe we can have more successes and I don't want to be the first nor I want to be the last. This pandemic will not stop our fight for justice. Thank you. Congratulations, Mac. Congratulations again to all of the awardees. Thank you to all of our recipients for reminding us that UC Berkeley is a place of great promise and possibility. The impact that you have on your campus and world are inspiring. We're fortunate to count you as members of our community. To everyone here today and watching online, thank you for attending this celebration of public service and for your continued support of UC Berkeley and our mission of public service. Keep an eye on your email. We'll be sending a Cal message in a few weeks about the nominations for next year's awards that will be presented in the spring. I'd like to close with a celebration of the award recipients. To those of you who are on the Zoom, please join me in a virtual round of applause for all of the award recipients.