Berkeley Changemaker

Berkeley Changemaker® goes beyond a simple focus of skills or curricular skills. Its 40-some academically-rigorous courses, offered by departments across campus, have a clear and consistent focus on our core pillars of critical thinking, communication, and collaboration. Berkeley Changemaker is a campus-wide certificate program that enrolls some 20% of undergraduates. Students are exposed to our brightest and best faculty and alumni from across the campus, including Nobel Prize and Distinguished Teaching Award winners.

It codifies an essential part of what UC Berkeley has always stood for and provides a galvanizing narrative that our whole campus is rallying behind, humanists and scientists alike. Our curriculum activates undergraduates’ passions and develops a sharper sense of who they want to be and how to make that happen. 

Berkeley Changemaker is inclusive

World-class researchers like Nobelist Jennifer Doudna are most certainly changemakers, as are our alumni founders of Apple and Tesla. Students, faculty, and staff across campus, from the Humanities to the hard sciences, from traditional entrepreneurs to social justice advocates, are seeing themselves as Berkeley Changemakers. On every metric tracked by UC Berkeley, our Berkeley Changemakers are more diverse than the general undergraduate population. Those with an agency for making society and our world better are drawn alike to this expansive definition and narrative.

Berkeley Changemaker has intellectual heft

All of our courses, workshops, and programs include a clear and consistent focus on the core pillars of critical thinking, communication, and collaboration. These are central to a great education, regardless of field of study. The Berkeley Changemaker program goes beyond a simple focus on functional "changemaking skills" or co-curricular activities — it delivers a robust curriculum of over 35 academically-rigorous courses in departments across our campus. 

Berkeley Changemaker builds upon Berkeley's distinguishing values

There’s no better way to put a substantive signature behind a university effort than doing so with values. Berkeley’s values – like questioning the status quo and thinking and acting beyond ourselves – power our teaching, research, and service, and have done so for generations. These are not just “us too values.” Consider the President of an elite private university saying, “This university is about questioning the status quo.” Really? When mission – delivering positive impact – and values converge in this way, the result is powerful.