 Good morning, Golden Bears, or good afternoon, or good evening, depending on from where you're joining us all around the world. My name is Abby Jones, and I'm the Deputy Director of Undergraduate Admissions at UC Berkeley. And I'm so excited to connect with you today. Now, traditionally, I'd be getting excited to welcome you in person, to meet you in person on campus at Cal Day, or perhaps in your neck of the woods at one of our admitted student receptions all across the country. But of course, I unfortunately can't meet you in person this year. So from my living room to yours, I look forward to getting to know you better and kicking off Cal Week with you today. So today, I look forward to introducing an esteemed group of colleagues, friends, members, of the UC Berkeley community. And they'll share their insights that will hopefully help you navigate deciding if Cal is the right place to you and helping you navigate perhaps your own Cal experience. Through our introduction today, and really the rest of Cal Week, we hope to provide a really well-rounded perspective of what it's like to be a Cal Bear. But before we get started, I want to pause for a minute and reflect on why we're all here together today, whether you are watching from home close by right here in the Bay Area or somewhere else in California, or out of state across the country, or wherever you are in the world. I want to reflect on why we're here today. Now, as the deputy director of undergraduate admissions, I have the privilege of guiding a team of admission officers through reviewing your applications and reading your stories. And I can tell you that all of you newly admitted students, you're here for a reason. Now, in the world we live in today, technology is obviously widely used. And we could rely on technology for our admissions process. But we don't. We recognize the time, energy, and effort each of you put in to your applications, to crafting your personal insight questions. And so in return, we put that time, energy, and effort into reading your stories and into getting to know you. Each application is read by a minimum of two people. Two people read each of those four personal insight questions that you wrote. This winter, we spent over 20,000 minutes getting to know you through your applications. We know that you spent time doing research over the summer at NASA. And we see that you're going to bring that to our labs on Berkeley's campus. We know that you cared for your three younger siblings every day after school while your parents were working. And you balanced that with your homework. And we know that you're going to bring that persistence to balancing your academics and your extracurricular activities on Cal's campus. We read about your experiences in musical theater and your passion for that. And we can't wait to see you on our stage at Cal. So I said that there's a reason that you're here. And through reading your application, we saw that reason. But it's really not just one reason. It's a myriad of reasons that you shared through your application that help us see you as a member of the Berkeley community. If I were to sum that myriad of reasons up into one, however, it is that you are Berkeley. You are Berkeley. We are Berkeley. Perhaps you've already checked out our social media this past month. And you've noticed the hashtag I am Berkeley campaign. Maybe you've already contributed to the I am Berkeley campaign. We hope that you will. We hope that through our social media campaigns, through this kickoff and the rest of Cal Week, you will see why we believe you are Berkeley. And we hope you'll join that conversation. Now let's get right to it, our very first Cal Week event. I have four guests that I look forward to introducing. And again, they hope to share their perspectives in helping you to see why Cal might be the right fit for you. So I'm going to introduce our chancellor, Carol Christ, our dean of engineering, Professor Suje Lu, Cal parent board member, Deidre Thorpe, and last but certainly not least, Amma Sarkodi Adu, a fourth year political science major and English and public policy minor. Hopefully through their words, you'll get a better sense of the excitement we have for you joining the Cal community. It is now my distinct pleasure to introduce our chancellor, Carol Christ. And hello, prospective Golden Bears. I'm UC Berkeley's chancellor, Carol Christ, and it's my pleasure to introduce you to Cal Week. While this year, we can invite you to experience the richness of Berkeley in person, I hope that the sessions we have planned will give you a taste of the incredible energy and the passion for making change in the world that surged through our institution. And of course, we want to invite you to join us at Cal for the personal and intellectual journey of a lifetime. Whether you're interested in the sciences or the humanities, the arts or engineering, there's no place on earth that combines Berkeley's depth and breadth of academic excellence with such deep passion for exploring and engaging the world around us. This is a place devoted to discovery and to problem solving, whether it's developing diagnostics for COVID-19, confronting the challenges of climate change, analyzing the implications of government policy decisions, or giving expression to what unites us through art. Berkeley is also a place that enables an incredible amount of self-discovery. Here, you'll have the chance to explore anything and everything that piques your interest. Our faculty members are dedicated teachers, thinkers, and innovators who will be your guides, and they stand among the very best in the world. Perhaps you've heard of Berkeley biochemist Jennifer Doudna, whose discovery of the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technique is revolutionizing hundreds of industries. Maybe you've read the writings of our policy professor Robert Reich, the former US Secretary of Labor, whose undergraduate class, Wealth and Poverty, is described as simply life-changing. Another thing that makes Berkeley special is the energy, enthusiasm, and electricity generated by students like you. Cal's students are universally excellent. But beyond that, our student body represents the widest possible range of backgrounds, experiences, and interests. We cherish and support this diversity. Through it, we grow, learn, and begin to see the world with new eyes. All of this magic happens on a beautiful campus, nestled within a thriving urban community in one of the most fantastic places to live in the whole world. At Cal, you're steps away from the quiet and solitude of a walk in the hills of Tilden Park, and yet still a part of the cultural and culinary mecca that is the city of Berkeley. You're also a 25-minute train ride to downtown San Francisco and just a short trip away from the heart of Silicon Valley. I'm proud and delighted to welcome you to Cal Week, and I hope these sessions give you a sense of what's in store for you should you choose to enroll. And now a refrain that I hope you'll come to know well. Fiat Lux and Go Bears! Thank you, Chancellor Christ. Now it is my pleasure to introduce our Dean of Engineering, Professor Suje Lu, who teaches in Electrical Engineering Computer Science. Thanks very much, Abby. Hello, everyone. It is my honor to help kick off virtual Cal Week and to welcome newly admitted students to the best public university in the world. This year, our campus is celebrating a major milestone. 150 years ago, the regions of the University of California voted unanimously to approve a resolution to admit women into the university on equal terms as men. As the first female dean of the College of Engineering, I'm especially proud of this anniversary because it reflects the values that our university has held since its formative years. Berkeley has always pushed boundaries, whether it be of knowledge or of convention. We continue to challenge the status quo today, continually looking for ways to improve society equitably and inclusively in keeping with our public mission. Berkeley is also known for its breadth of excellence, from the STEM fields to the arts and humanities. Among all universities in the United States, we have the largest number of top ranked departments. Key to our success is our world class faculty, who continually push the frontiers of knowledge and innovate solutions to advance humanity. A reason why many of us chose to join the faculty here at Berkeley is because of the outstanding students. Berkeley students are passionate. They want to make the world a better place, and they challenge us continually to do better in educating them to become future leaders and to improve the quality of life for all members of our global society. Our ethos of benefiting the greater good rings true in efforts today across the entire campus to help mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, our biologists and geneticists have opened the doors to a robotic COVID-19 testing lab. Our public health experts are helping to advise people on how to safely navigate the pandemic while sheltering in place. Our engineers are working together with doctors to create life-saving devices for patients and protective gear for healthcare workers. Our data scientists are helping to track the pandemic so that we can plan to deploy the life-saving devices to where they are most needed. And all the time, our greater good science center reminds us continually to maintain connections socially and emotionally online, even while we are physically apart. I hope that you will take advantage of the many opportunities this week to get a glimpse into life as a member of our vibrant community. And on behalf of all the faculty here at UC Berkeley, I want to congratulate all the newly admitted students and welcome you to visit our campus. And we look forward to seeing you in the fall. Go Bears. Thank you, Dean Liu, for those great remarks. Now I would like to introduce Deidre Thorpe, a member of our Cal Parents Board. Thanks, Abby. Hello, my name is Deidre Thorpe and I'm a member of the Cal Parents Board. I'd like to welcome the incoming students and I'd like to congratulate you on your amazing accomplishment of being accepted into the number one public university in the world. And for you parents, congratulations for the amazing job that you've done in helping to get your students to this point. As a member of the Cal Parent Board, I'd like to welcome you and also share with you my story, which is the journey that my daughter Taylor and I have taken over the past four years. Taylor is a senior at UC Berkeley in the Sociology Department. She actually graduated from a relatively small private girls school in Northern California and was really excited to be accepted into the Cal community but was initially put on the wait list. And then after going through the actual essay process she was taken off the wait list as of May the second and was admitted into the fall program for freshmen, which is FPF. It's a small cohort of students who work together off campus to have the Cal experience. And this is really important for her because she was able to integrate her experience at Cal but also assimilate into the Cal environment after coming from a 1200 student environment into the large 35,000 Cal campus. So she went through that experience and felt that it was really not only engaging but helped her to assimilate into the Cal environment along with a few other experiences that she had, which was she was part of the theme floor in terms of her housing. And she was able to be part of a community of individuals who had common interests and common experiences and backgrounds. She also became part of the Black recruitment and retention group on campus and so was able to integrate in that way. When I talked with Kayla and asked her, what are some of the things that you would recommend to incoming freshmen? And she said she would recommend that she won, get involved, two, make new friends and three, embrace the amazing Cal experience. As a parent, I would say get involved. One of the reasons that I became involved with the Cal parent board was that I wanted to be connected to the Cal University and the experience that my daughter was having but sort of from afar. And so being part of the Cal board allows me to not only serve and whether that be on campus or in helping to share insights to incoming students and parents in our local communities, but it also provides me with opportunities to remain engaged and to donate my time and funding to support the wonderful programs that Cal has to offer. So parents, I know these are uncertain times as you are getting ready to send your students off to college. Just know that they are in a very safe and secure environment. Know that they are absolutely prepared for this amazing experience and journey that they're getting ready to embrace and embark on. And know that Cal is a community that will be part of your lives forever. So what I would say to you is make sure you embrace and take advantage of this moment. And again, congratulations. So go Bears. Thank you, Deidre. Finally, I would like to introduce Aama Sarkodiadu. Aama is our ASUC president and a fourth year political science major minoring in English and public policy. Hi everyone, my name's Aama. I'm a fourth year political science student and I also currently have the honor of serving as UC Berkeley student body president. And on behalf of the student body, I just wanna say congratulations and welcome to Cal. We're so excited to have you. I know we all get super excited about the new incoming freshman class. And I wanna start off by saying that if you ever need anything, if you ever have any questions, definitely reach out to members of the Berkeley community because we're all so excited to answer questions. And I know that when I was trying to figure out where I wanted to go to school, one of the things that was most helpful for me was talking to current students. And it was really surprising and inviting how willing everyone was to talk to me even if they didn't know me just because everyone was so excited about having new members of the Berkeley community. So I would definitely encourage you all to reach out if you ever wanna get in touch with me, please do so. And I also wanna start off by thanking you all for being here virtually. I know this is a super weird thing. It feels weird to be talking to you from my home and not from campus on Cal Day. And I know this is a really weird and scary time and it's definitely a really challenging time to be a college student. I've been feeling that myself but I think a silver lining that I found is that if I'm gonna be a college student in this super weird unprecedented time I feel so lucky to be a college student at Berkeley because I think that Berkeley has just done a really great job of taking care of us and making us know that we're still a part of this community even when we're not in the dorms or going to class on campus. I've always felt really connected to the campus during this and it's made me realize and made me reflect on why I did choose Berkeley and it's because I really do feel like this campus has this really special sense of community that kind of goes beyond your experiences of where you go to class or even like who's in your major but I think I feel that when I see someone wearing a couch or at the airport and I'm like, go Bears and they're like, go Bears. It's this really big, broad community that shares these really core values of wanting to make the world a better place and wanting to learn as much as you can for the sake of learning and also for someday helping people and I think that I've never been to a school like Berkeley. I've never known a school like Berkeley and I think that no matter what all Berkeley students can talk about this really special shared experience and I'm really grateful for that. And so I wanna share that with you as part of why I love this campus so much. And I recognize this is a really unique time full of unique challenges and I think that every year students face these unique challenges that the classes before them didn't have to deal with and I think every year students kind of rise to the occasion and use these really weird challenges as an opportunity for innovation and growth and supporting each other and I know the class of 2024 will do the same. So thank you again for being here and I hope you pick how I look forward to seeing you on campus if you do and go Bears. I hope you enjoy the rest of this program. Thank you, Amma. Amma, you spoke to the value of building community and our students commitment to making the world a better place and that absolutely resonates with me as a fairly new member of the Cal community. That's really what draw me drew me here. Our students, our students and their desire to make the world a better place. So thank you, Amma, for those words. Also thanks to Chancellor Christ and Dean Liu and Deidre Thorpe. We hope that today's event helped introduce you to Cal and helped you see why you could fit in with this Cal community. But this is just the start. This is the first event of Cal Week and we have over 100 virtual events to come. Events from student panels to faculty lectures to visual and performing arts and through these over 100 events we hope that you'll get a sense of the student life, the incredible academic experience and the amazing resources that we have on campus to help our students thrive. So to check out those events go to admin.berkeley.edu slash events. And through this next week we hope that we provide you with all the information you need to make a tough decision that lies ahead. The decision of where to spend the next several years of where to spend your college career. So while we hope to equip you with all of the knowledge you need and hope to help you see why we see you at Berkeley. We also hope that over the next several weeks you're doing what's most important right now in this very challenging time across the world. And that is spending time with loved ones and being safe and taking care. So on that note, I wanna officially kick off Cal Week. Say congratulations to you, be safe, take care and go Bears.