The University of California at Berkeley has a new college for the first time in 50 years.
UC regents recently 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.
“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 celebrated the beginning of the new college this past Friday at the undergraduate commencement ceremony at the Hearst Greek Theatre in Berkeley.
Google senior vice president Prabhakar Raghavan gave the keynote address, which was streamed live.