Berkeley Social Sciences asks questions about the human condition and circumstances under which a good society can flourish.
In an ever-changing world, we ask about how population displacement, refugees, and inequality affect human flourishing; about the impacts of technology on cognition; how we can create responsible, informed citizens; and the future of democracy. In addressing these questions, we leverage the extraordinary intellectual breadth and depth of our faculty and students. While the technology we are interacting with is new and ever-changing, the fundamental questions remain. New tools allow access to social data as never before and require new methods of training. Your support enables Berkeley Social Sciences to meet these challenges and embrace opportunity. No other institution creates this combination of access and excellence while enabling research for the public good and social mobility.
Philanthropic support is integral to the teaching and research of UC Berkeley. Your gift to the social sciences allows students to focus on what is most important and graduate on time, eases the burden of costs in the Bay Area, and ensures access to the greatest teachers and scholars in the world.
Supporting Faculty
Supporting social sciences faculty addresses both near- and long-term needs by improving endowed funds targeting recruitment and retention, raising current use gifts in support of research, and securing additional funds to support career teaching positions. Supporting our faculty in this way relieves bottlenecks in gateway courses and brings teaching commitments by tenure-track faculty in line with peer institutions. Your support ensures that our students have access to the best scholars in the world and that cutting-edge research is conducted at UC Berkeley amidst our commitment and dedication to the public good.
Supporting Graduate Student Fellowships
Recognizing the importance of graduate students to the research enterprise, as well as their impact on teaching and institutional reputation, the Social Sciences Division will expand the number and total amount of graduate fellowship endowments. Among our priorities are more stable, multi-year fellowships to ensure the size and quality of our graduate student cohorts and an increase in the amount of summer funding to ensure they remain focused on their scholarship.
