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[music]\ >> Berkeley has had a long history of a Summer
Sessions program. We had a very successful program that served and still serves Cal students,
UC system students, and visiting students from across the country and across the world.
It's an opportunity for experimental classes. It's an opportunity for learning in a different
environment where a student can devote a lot of intense time to just one class instead
of having to juggle and balance many classes. \
>> It's the one time a year where the university opens its gates to the world. Normally, UC
Berkeley is a very competitive institution where there are over 40 thousand applications
for four thousand spots.\ >> It's a way for entering students and transfer
students to get to know the campus in a more relaxed mode than when they start up in the
fall.\ >> We have students literally from all around
the world. We have students from Europe, from Africa, from Asia, from South America.\
>> I think I learn a lot from my classmates because everyone is very talented here, and
everyone has very different backgrounds, and they are from very different countries.\
>> I've found there's a great diversity of people and I can pick and choose what sort
of people I want to hang out with any given day. \
>> Yeah, it's been great. I mean, like I said, it just gave me another outlet, so it's been
a nice decision.\ >> It's a big campus. The person are very
open minded. \ >> I met some really cool people in my class.
There were only eight of us, so it was a pretty intimate environment.\
>> The Summer Sessions faculty at UC Berkeley is outstanding, and combined with the small
class sizes, it's a great opportunity for students to get lots of one on one interaction
and plenty of attention. \ >> The thing that's been best for me about
teaching summer sessions is really getting to know my students very well.\
>> And there are a lot of really unique programs. We have special programs for freshmen, special
programs for transfer students, we have travel study programs where you can spend the summer
abroad with faculty members, and literally over 600 different courses in 80 different
disciplines where you can study anything from Geography to African American Studies to Biology
to Astrophysics. \ >> This summer I taught Berkeley's first online
class through Summer Sessions, which was statistics N21. So, taking an online Summer Sessions
class allowed students a tremendous amount of flexibility to be wherever they needed
to be at the time, to have outside jobs, so forth and so on, and still to get some course
credit, not only course credit but credit for a required course for their major. \
>> We try to provide a lot of resources in the summer to support students when they come.
The Recreational Sports Facility is available. We have great museums on campus: the Hearst
collection, the paleontology museum. So there's lots of things just on the campus that are
rich resources. \ >> They've got access to 32 different libraries.
UC Berkeley's one of the nine repositories for Library of Congress, where research facilities
are just very, very deep and very rich. \ >> Lots of things going on, opportunities
to go hiking. You've got Tilden Park right above the campus so there's beautiful places,
the bay is just down the hill and so the area is amazing. You can jump on BART and go into
the city and there's lots of things to do.\ >> I do find that there's a very different
atmosphere in summer courses, and it's different in a positive way. The compression of the
time doesn't mean that people become more frenzied about it. If anything it seems to
have the opposite effect. They're there to enjoy the experience of learning, and that
seems in some ways to work better in the summer than sometimes it does in the regular year.
\ >> I never get bored when I'm in Berkeley.
There's always something going on in Sproul Plaza.\
>> We have more free time, so we're like let's go shopping today, let's go to the Marina
today, so it's a little different every day. \
>> The longer I live in the Bay Area the harder it is to tear me away, and Summer Sessions
is a good way to spend some enjoyable and instructive time in a beautiful part of the
world in one of the best times of the year.\ >> I would definitely recommend be outgoing,
meet people, take advantage of the atmosphere and lifestyle. I mean, don't be shy. Don't
give up. Just go for it. [laughs]\ [music]}