CAA Announcements

Just about every Cal grad and fan owns a Cal sweatshirt or hat. So, what do you give the ultimate Cal fan during the holidays? Don’t worry—the Cal Alumni Association (CAA) has you covered this season with our list of the best Cal gifts. Some are extra, some are out there, but isn’t that what the Berkeley spirit is all about? We think so.

It’s late September, and Emily Pilloton ’03 is at Girls Garage, a nonprofit she founded in 2013 in Berkeley. Girls Garage recently reopened for small groups of girls eager to get back to the space and get building again. “I just feel like failure is not an option,” she explains. “This space means a lot to the girls that come here.” 

In partnership with the UC Berkeley Foundation, the Cal Alumni Association honored this year’s Achievement Award recipients at a virtual—yet lively—version of the Berkeley Charter Gala on October 8, 2020. Get to know the 2020 Alumna of the Year and the rest of these esteemed award recipients.

At 15, I realized that my grandmother was completely illiterate, my parents didn’t have a proper education, and that we had slavery in our family. I began to learn about how Indian slavery occurred up until the 1950s and how my own grandmother was in bondage all the way up to this time. I learned about how political strife led to the deaths of thousands of my ancestors. And finally when I was 20, did I realize the impact my ancestral history was having on me this whole time. I felt as though I couldn’t attend a prestigious university like Cal, that maybe I should just work in a labor profession, just like my parents and those before me. All of this changed when a cousin of mine said, “Why don’t you apply to Cal? Why don’t you try for Cal?”

Berkeley remains world’s No.1 public university; NFL head coach Ron Rivera ’83 supports Cal softball in a big way; archivists chronicle Disability Rights Movement’s rich history.

UC Berkeley adds two Berkeley professors to its lengthy list of Nobel Laureates this week.

Professor Jennifer Doudna received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, sharing the win with Emmanuelle Charpentier “for the development of a method for genome editing.” Doudna and Charpentier are the first women to win together in the sciences. | UC Berkeley

In an increased effort to support transfer students, the Cal Alumni Association (CAA) held its second annual Transfer Success Dinner virtually on September 30, 2020. Three years ago, around 24% of the Alumni Scholars Program community was comprised of transfer students; this year, 30% of scholars are transfers—the largest number yet in CAA’s history.