News

April 2013

Daniel Tuchler named UC Berkeley's Newman Civic Fellow 2013

As an third year undergraduate on the University of California Berkeley campus Daniel Tuchler has achieved an extraordinary service record. Daniel served as a Bonner Leader AmeriCorps member and Cal in the Capital (CITC) Student Director in 2011-12, when he committed 300 hours of service over the course of the academic year...

UC Berkeley Earns Place on National Honor Roll for Community Service

UC Berkeley was named to the 2013 President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll. This designation is the highest honor a college or university can receive for its commitment to volunteering, service-learning, and civic engagement. 

“UC Berkeley has a long history of public service and believes strongly in preparing our graduates to be active leaders and participants in an ever changing world,” Megan Voorhees, UC Berkeley Public Service Center Director...

January 2013

Community Engagement Student Fellowship

Two students from UC Berkeley, Jesse Dutton-Kenney and Liz Fairweather, were selected in January 2013 as the first cohort of 20 students from throughout California to participate in California Campus Compact's Community Engagement Student Fellowship (CESF) program. The program is a 4-month initiative specifically designed to support student leaders advancing service, service-learning and community engagement at California Campus Compact member campuses throughout the state...

December 2012

Stories of Service - 2012

In the past year, our Center has supported more than 4,000 students in providing over 300,000 hours of service throughout the Bay Area and California, in New Orleans and Washington DC. UC Berkeley was honored to be named to the 2012 President’s Community Service Honor Roll as an institution that reflects the values of exemplary community service and achieves meaningful outcomes in the community...

Cal in the Capital Founder Honored as Public Health Hero

Cal in the Capital founder Dr. J. Michael McGinnis is a recipient of the 17th annual Public Health Heroes Award from UC Berkeley School of Public Health. The honor recognizes innovative leaders for improving human health locally and worldwide...

October 2012

Chancellor’s Public Fellows make connections outside of academia

A team of 25 UC Berkeley undergraduate and graduate students selected as Chancellor’s Public Fellows are bringing the campus to the community and the community back to campus — reshaping academic research in the process.

Since January 2011, these fellows — enabled by a gift from the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund for the UC Berkeley Initiative for Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity — have supported 18 faculty teaching 16 courses that explore the intersection of campus, community, and diversity...

September 2012

BUILD Tutors Make District-Wide Impact

Preliminary findings from BUILD’s 2011-12 evaluation show that 40% of BUILD tutees who were not proficient in fall 2011 reached proficiency in spring 2012. BUILD’s work contributed to an 8 percentage point increase in overall district-wide reading proficiency. For more information come to the 2020 Vision Community Symposium(Opens in Facebook as an event).The full report will be released soon...

May 2012

Tears, inspiration at ceremony honoring civic-minded

More than a few in the room fought back tears as students, faculty, community partners and alums were honored for their civic-minded contributions at Monday’s 2012 Public-Service Awards ceremony.

Proud family members were among the crowd of several hundred in Sibley Auditorium as honorees were announced and welcomed to the stage by Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, Megan Vorhees, director of the Cal Corps Public Service Center, and Julie Sinai, the campus’s director of community relations...

April 2012

Taking stock, at ACES symposium, of ‘why engaged scholarship matters now’

Students and faculty involved in the American Cultures Engaged Scholarship (ACES) initiative held a daylong symposium April 13 to reflect on the first of what will eventually be two dozen new campus courses with campus-community partnerships at their core.

In the keynote address, George Lipsitz, professor of black studies and sociology at UC Santa Barbara, characterized this moment in history as one of deep crisis for U.S. society and its public-education system...

One student’s Alternative Break in New Orleans

UC Berkeley student Alicia Hernandez spent her spring break in New Orleans as part of an ongoing Alternative Breaks effort. As soon as she got back, she reflected on the experience.

It’s was about 8 p.m. as we arrived to the Lower 9th Ward Village where we were welcomed with warm regards by Mack, a community organizer, leader, and visionary for his home, the Lower 9th Ward. The area has become a community united by a mutual struggle in the quest for recovery after Hurricane Katrina, where the bonds of family and the shared feeling of love resonate and prevail amidst broken roads, houses and hearts...

Students take spring break for public service

While many UC Berkeley students kicked back or headed to the beach for spring break, more than 136 of them chose an alternative. They fanned out into communities near and far to lend their skills to public-service projects — and to get some hands-on education at the same time — through the Alternative Breaks program.

In its 11th year this spring, Alternative Breaks is run by Berkeley’s Cal Corps Public Service Center. This year’s participants spent the last week of March working on projects involving animal welfare, health care, immigration and homelessness in the Bay Area and as far away as New Orleans...

February 2012

Megan Voorhees Receives Cone Award

California Campus Compact has selected Megan Voorhees, Director of the Cal Corps Public Service Center as the recipient of California Campus Compact’s 2012 Richard E. Cone Award for Excellence & Leadership in Cultivating Community Partnerships in Higher Education.

“I have had the pleasure of knowing Megan Voorhees for many years. In addition to being a passionate and skillful community leader and an expert in her field, she has worked tirelessly to promote service learning and community engaged scholarship to administrators, faculty, students and community partners, with impressive results,” said Elaine Ikeda, Ph.D., Executive Director of California Campus Compact. “We are pleased to recognize Megan and highlight her exemplary work in the field of service-learning and civic engagement by presenting her with the 2012 Richard E. Cone Award.”

January 2012

Spotlight - Professor Arthur Blaustein

In spring 2012, Professor Blaustein will be leading a 6-part series titled Social Change, Community Development, and Economic Justice focusing on people in multicultural and diverse communities and discussing the ways economic policy is linked to political power. With years of experience in not only teaching but working directly in this field under the Carter Administration, Professor Blaustein will engage 42 Bonner Leader AmeriCorps members in this thought provoking series...

October 2011

Berkeley Project Day 2011

At eight in the morning on the Saturday of Homecoming Weekend, 1,500 students, residents, staff, alumni and retirees came together on Sproul Plaza to kick off Berkeley Project Day, Cal’s largest day of service. Now in its sixth year, Berkeley Project has grown to include service projects at 68 sites in Berkeley, Albany and Oakland and is designed for individuals and groups to join together to serve the needs of Berkeley and its residents and forge a positive relationship between the campus and the community...

Bay Area Leadership and Social Justice Conference

On Sunday, October 16, 2011 U.C. Berkeley’s Cal Corps Public Service Center in partnership with seven Bay Area universities will host the 3rd annual Leadership & Social Justice Conference...

July 2011

Chancellor’s fund focuses on education and economic development

New campus-community partnerships focused on education and economic development have won the largest grants this year from the Chancellor’s Community Partnership Fund at the University of California, Berkeley...

June 2011

UC Berkeley Students Volunteer with Lower 9th Ward Village in New Orleans, Louisiana

This summer, 40 students from University of California, Berkeley are working in New Orleans as part of Magnolia Project, a student social justice organization created in collaboration with the Cal Corps Public Service Center to work in solidarity with Gulf Coast communities through a 2016...

May 2011

Students and staff recognized for leadership and service

This year, a number of students and staff at Cal Corps were recognized for their contributions to public service, a core mission of the University of California. These awardees represent the breadth of work through the Center. We celebrate these individuals and groups and commend them for their work and commitment to public service...

Highlights from Chancellor's Awards for Public Service May 2

Public service — a core mission of the University of California — is a vibrant and living tradition at Berkeley, said Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, citing the more than 8,000 campus students who volunteer locally each year and the campus’s stellar record of volunteerism through the Peace Corps, since the program’s inception 50 years ago...

March 2011

100 UC Berkeley students choosing service-learning over play during Spring Break

Almost 100 UC Berkeley students through the Cal Corps Public Service Center’s Alternative Breaks program will be embarking on service-learning trips to various locations in California, as well as New Orleans, Arizona, and Oregon. A total of nine different trips, each of which is led by one or two student break leaders and consists of up to 12 participants, is scheduled to take place from March 19th to the 25th during the students’ spring break...

February 2011

UC Berkeley renews the call for grads to join the Peace Corps

As the Peace Corps marks its 50thanniversary, UC Berkeley is celebrating its unique place in the U.S. agency’s history as the all-time top producer of volunteers, and is renewing the call for more graduates to serve.

January 2011

Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service

On January 17th, 80 Cal students participated in the annual Martin Luther King, Jr. National Day of Service. Through Cal Corps Public Service Center, students volunteered at the newly opened YMCA - PG&E Teen Center and at Lake Merrit...

Fall 2010

Learning: A Two-Way Street

BUILD tutors from UC Berkeley help keep students from local school districts from falling behind in school, while applying their own knowledge and teaching skills at the same time...

Out of Sight, but Still in Mind

The Magnolia Project at the Cal Corps Public Service Center, which grew out of the Center’s Alternative Breaks program, was started by students after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005. Since their first volunteer trip in summer 2007, Cal students have traveled to New Orleans to work with community-based organizations, providing services and helping to rebuild the homes and other various service projects...