The University of California at Berkeley has a new college for the first time in 50 years.
UC regents on Thursday voted to establish the College of Computing, Data Science and Society to teach computing, data science and statistics and help solve some of society’s problems. Establishment of the new college comes following the creation of the Goldman School of Public Policy in 1969. A year before that, university officials established UC Berkeley’s journalism school.
“Artificial intelligence, computing and data science are lenses through which we now experience the world,” CDSS Associate Provost and Dean Jennifer Chayes said in a university media announcement published online. “This college provides Berkeley with opportunities to innovate and incubate new fields of inquiry at the intersection of computing and data science with other data-intensive fields. These interdisciplinary areas are often the most active areas of research, leading to some of the most exciting breakthroughs.”
“We are thrilled to announce a new college at Berkeley that connects our excellent research and education in computing, data science and statistics with the many data-intensive disciplines across our campus,” Carol Christ, Berkeley’s chancellor, said in a statement. “Infusing the power of data science across multiple disciplines, from basic and applied sciences to the arts and humanities, will help us to fully realize its potential to benefit society, help address our world’s most intractable problems, and achieve our most visionary goals,” Christ added.
UC Berkeley officials and others will celebrate the beginning of the new college at 7 p.m. Friday at the undergraduate commencement ceremony at the Hearst Greek Theatre in Berkeley. Google senior vice president Prabhakar Raghavan will give the keynote address, which will be streamed live.