Undergraduate Studies

Five individual staff members from the College of Letters & Science are recipients of the 2025 Chancellor's Outstanding Staff Awards (COSA). One of the highest honors bestowed upon staff by the Chancellor, the COSA awards are presented to individuals who, in addition to performing their normal job duties with excellence, "...

UC Berkeley has a new endowment for its disability studies program thanks to a family of alums. The Haskell Wong Endowment for Disability Studies will be seeded with $900,000 to expand instruction and research.

The endowment will ultimately provide tens of thousands of dollars for the program every year, inspiring future generations to engage in disability studies and advocacy. In addition, the family pledged $100,000...

Have you ever seen letters from the 1800s? Aside from the pristine penmanship and grammar, the way friends expressed their fondness for each other is remarkable.

“Letters sent between friends are often full of the kinds of loving and affectionate language that today we would only associate with romantic or sexual relationships: ‘My darling,’ ‘I love you,’ ‘I can’t wait to be near you,’” said UC Berkeley historian Sarah Gold McBride, who in 2022 created the course, Friendship in America, with Berkeley anthropologist Christine Palmer.

Throughout history, with changes in...

UC Berkeley is a powerhouse for generating innovative ideas and solving global issues. This past summer, four fellows in the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) L&S program pushed forward this initiative of pioneering visionary change by bringing research back to their communities and addressing questions that spark social change. From working with incarcerated people to immigrant families to Indigenous...