News

As a Native American, McKalee Steen said she often has felt “misunderstood or not seen” in college and in search of community among students who often “are ignorant to what your background might be.”

But on Wednesday in Albany, at a celebration of UC Berkeley’s newest graduate student residence, the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma citizen and Berkeley’s Graduate Assembly president expressed pride in the name of the housing complex — xučyun ruwway (HOOCH-yoon ROO-why) — that’s spelled out above the main entrance.

There’s a new performance hall at UC Berkeley, and its arrival comes at an exciting and critical time for the Department of Music: From fall 2020 to fall 2024, the number of declared undergraduates majoring in music at Berkeley grew 236%.

“Music is, in fact, the fastest growing major on campus, by a large margin,” said Mark Shaw, music department manager.

According to Berkeley’s Office of Equity and Inclusion, the number of declared undergraduate music majors jumped from 55 in fall 2020 to 195 in fall 2024.

A look back at 12 major happenings on campus, as chronicled by UC Berkeley News.

More than a few major milestones marked UC Berkeley’s 2024 calendar: one chancellor’s retirement and another’s arrival, the successful end of a multi-billion-dollar fundraising campaign, the long-awaited start of construction at People’s Park and the opening of a novel apartment building for transfer students.

Moffitt Library is a meeting place for friends, a destination for doggo devotees, and one of the most popular study spots on campus.

And after fall finals this year, the beloved library will close for renovations, which, once finished, will make Moffitt an even more coveted corner of the UC Berkeley campus.

Continuous concrete pours will continue in September 2024 for Levels 5 and 6 (the roof). During July and August, continuous concrete pours were completed for Levels, 2, 3 and 4 of the new building.

A new school year at UC Berkeley means a fresh crop of brilliant students. But this fall, a new chancellor, a new academic department, much-needed student housing, programs to bridge divides, and sports for students with disabilities also are making their debut.

Plus, the campus is cheering the 23 medals won in Paris this summer by Berkeley's Olympians, the financial aid office's success helping families hard-hit in the FAFSA fiasco, the Golden Bears in their first Atlantic Coast Conference games, and campus robots created by alumni startups.

ENR California is pleased to announce the winners of its 2024 Regional Best Projects competition!

After several weeks of hard work, an independent group of AEC experts reviewed 90 projects from across California and Hawaii and selected 30 Best Projects and 27 Awards of Merit. The California contest is split into two separate regions; North and South.

Projects were evaluated on the ability of the project team to overcome challenges, their contribution to the industry and community, safety and construction and design quality.

The 14-story building's design is intended to transform the transfer student experience by prioritizing residents' well-being and potential for success.

On Aug. 21, when 772 transfer students step into UC Berkeley’s Anchor House for the first time, they’ll quickly discover the new 14-story building on Oxford Street is no ordinary campus housing. Instead, it’s a home designed just for transfer students, a sizable population at Berkeley with talent, drive — and a unique set of challenges.

From the molecular to the local to the global, Berkeley donors are having an impact

Continuous concrete pours will occur weekly starting the first week of July 2024. To minimize disruption as much as possible, only the necessary amount of concrete will be poured each week while ensuring the structural integrity of the new building. On the days of continuous pours, crews will arrive at the project site at 3 a.m., and pumping will begin around 4 a.m. All trucks and pumps will remain within the project site. Each continuous pour will take approximately 13 to 14 hours and should be completed in the early evening.

It's been "a golden era for UC Berkeley's physical development," says Marc Fisher, vice chancellor for administration.

As her retirement nears, UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ is being lauded as a collaborative and effective leader who is decisive, a listener and team builder, and a champion of free speech, equity and inclusion, and knowledge creation.

A new incubator on the west side of campus will provide resources and support to entrepreneurs in renewable energy and clean technology.

From materials that can draw carbon from the air to plastics that are truly biodegradable, the University of California, Berkeley, is home to a stunning array of discoveries that are poised to improve the health of our planet and reverse the devastating effects of climate change.

Today (Thursday, May 16), the campus announced plans for a new space dedicated to translating these discoveries into impactful climate solutions.

UC Berkeley’s College of Chemistry celebrated the groundbreaking of its new research and teaching facility, Heathcock Hall, on Thursday, May 2, surrounded by staff, faculty, advisory board members, international benefactors, and even Oski the Bear. The event marked a key milestone towards creating a vibrant hub for new highly interdisciplinary research and education.

For the first time, Berkeley has chosen an Indigenous name for a campus building and consulted with Indigenous people in the process.

A five-building UC Berkeley apartment complex in Albany designed just for graduate students is nearing completion and will be called xučyun ruwway (HOOCH-yoon ROO-why), a name in Chochenyo, the language of the Ohlone people.

This is the first time Berkeley has given a name in any Indigenous language to a campus building or consulted with an Indigenous group to name one of its buildings.

The Inclusive Excellence Hub is now open!

A space for you.

The new Inclusive Excellence Hub at UC Berkeley is a unique, welcoming venue where underrepresented graduate students can find camaraderie and build multi-disciplinary networks of their peers. Located in a newly renovated building, the Hub is the first campus-wide community space exclusively dedicated to increasing excellence through diversity and belonging among Berkeley's graduate students. During Summer 2023, the Hub will be closed and going through more renovations and upgrades. Thank you for your patience.

A partnership of the Associated Students University of California (ASUC) and campus leaders in the Division of Administration have partnered to plan for the implementation of an additional 16-17 blue light emergency phones over the next 1-4 years. Read all the details in this 1/20/24 press release.

Chancellor Cynthia Larive was barely a year into her tenure at UC Santa Cruz when a fast-moving wildfire nearly destroyed the campus. “It came to within a mile and a half of us. Everyone had to evacuate,” Larive recalled recently. “And if the wind hadn't shifted overnight, I likely wouldn't be talking to you from this office. The fires could have burned through campus to the sea.”

The year 2023 was a year of innovation and major change at UC Berkeley. From emerging work on artificial intelligence to the announcement of Chancellor Carol Christ’s upcoming retirement to a flurry of new construction on campus, Berkeley faced and embraced the future.

For the first time, the campus is using mass timber — a lighter, safer and more energy-efficient alternative to traditional concrete and steel construction — in construction.

It's hard to imagine the impressive Undergraduate Academic Building that will emerge at UC Berkeley by early 2026, but walk past the Dwinelle Parking Lot this month and you'll see initial work already underway to transform the site into a vibrant new hub for instruction and student support services.

The Dwinelle Annex will undergo interior and exterior architectural updates to make it accessible for DSP’s diverse community of students.

For the first time in its over 50-year history, UC Berkeley's Disabled Students' Program (DSP) will have its own building, a campus investment that will centralize DSP staff and services, expand its facilities and make them more accessible, and improve support for the program's community of 5,000 students.

The University of California, Berkeley, is teaming up with NASA's Ames Research Center and developer SKS Partners to create research space for companies interested in collaborating with UC Berkeley and NASA scientists and engineers to generate futuristic innovations in aviation, space exploration and how we live and work in space.

Dwinelle Lot will be closing on 1 Nov 2023.

C Permit Holders (weekdays before 5 p.m.) and other Permit Holders and visitors (weekdays after 5 p.m. and all-day weekends) will be expected to relocate to the following areas once the staging and construction start.

Know your options and Alternative Lots: Recreational Sports Facility; Frank Schlessinger; West Circle; and West Crescent.

Chancellor Carol Christ sent the following message to the campus community on Wednesday afternoon:

As the new academic year begins, I want to offer a few updates about matters of importance and interest to the campus community.

From north to south, east to west and all the way to the nearby city of Albany, UC Berkeley’s landscape is being transformed this fall by numerous large construction projects that will create much-needed student housing, a renovated and expanded student engineering center and a home for the campus’s first new college in 50 years.

Explore the latest UC Berkeley capital project and planning news in the Summer/Fall 2023 issue of Constructive News. Click here to download (PDF).

Chancellor Carol Christ sent the following message on Thursday:

It is with decidedly mixed feelings that I am writing to let you know I will be stepping down and retiring next summer, at the end of June 2024. My time in office has been meaningful and rewarding beyond compare, and I will sorely miss the challenges, the opportunities, and the daily interactions with the members of Cal’s amazing extended family.

The UC Board of Regents today voted to establish UC Berkeley’s College of Computing, Data Science, and Society (CDSS), the campus’s first new college in more than 50 years.

The college will develop, implement and share high-quality, ethics-oriented and accessible curricula, educating a diverse student body in data science, computing and statistics. It will also create new fields, applications and solutions to societal problems through groundbreaking, multidisciplinary research that capitalizes on Berkeley’s excellence across campus.

Chancellor Carol Christ paused Wednesday in her twice-yearly, live-streamed conversation with the campus community to reflect on the semester at Berkeley that’s coming to a close and to look ahead to the next academic year.

There are challenges, as always: A $82 million campus budget deficit looms, there are vacancies to fill for departing deans and vice chancellors, and there’s growing distrust among the public of major universities.

The last time the power house at UC Berkeley furnished electricity to the campus over 90 years ago it was boiling oil and spewing exhaust from a smokestack atop the brick barn just uphill from Sather Gate.

But the next time the power house furnishes electricity to the campus it will be boiling water to supply clean energy, as the entire campus — more than 100 buildings — goes green in an attempt to reduce its carbon footprint by 80%. 

You’ve likely seen it on walks across the UC Berkeley campus — the little rectangular, one-story red brick building northeast of Sproul Hall and near Strawberry Creek. It’s hard not to admire the colorful, Byzantine-style mosaic tile murals on its east façade that depict people playing music, dancing, painting and sculpting.

The Hearst Greek Theatre Northside Concessions & Amenities Plaza is a winner for the 2023 Preservation Design Award for Contextual Infill. Award recipients are selected by a jury of top professionals in the fields of architecture, engineering, planning, and history, as well as renowned architecture critics and journalists.

Anchor House rises higher by the day

One year after the project's groundbreaking, the structural frame of Anchor House is rising higher by the day. In mid-February 2023, concrete pours and rebar installation are currently underway for the seventh floor. The Anchor House structure is expected to reach its final height of 14 stories and top-off later this summer.

For UC Berkeley, 2022 was a year of speaking out — against injustice, against violence, against the patriarchy — and committing to a better future, together.

When Russia waged war on Ukraine in February, the campus community joined in solidarity and voiced its outrage and defiance. When Iranians rose up in protest against their repressive government and called for freedom, Berkeley students, staff and faculty spoke out in support of the protesters and what they stood for. And students on campus screamed together for the art project OUTCRY.

UC Berkeley has a lot to celebrate and a lot to work on moving into the new year, Chancellor Carol Christ said during a virtual, end-of-semester Campus Conversations event on Tuesday. But through another tumultuous semester — which has seen a UC-wide labor strike and a continuing pandemic — Berkeley’s campus community has again come together.

Christ acknowledged the campus community Tuesday for all it has accomplished and for its continued resilience this past year as spring semester approaches.

Announcement: Winter Curtailment 2022

Accounting will be closed starting Friday, December 23, 2022. They will reopen on Tuesday, January 3, 2022. In advance of this curtailment period, please note these important processing deadlines:

“In many ways, the Gateway is the crown jewel of our $6 billion Light the Way campaign,” said UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ at the Sept. 23 groundbreaking ceremony celebrating the initial phase of construction on the Gateway building.

Recruiting a Project Manager to Direct Design & Construction for Berkeley Clean Energy Campus

UC Berkeley is taking another step forward in addressing the crisis of available and affordable housing for current students. Construction will begin later this month on the Albany Village Graduate Student Apartments, a community that will be across the street from the existing University Village family housing in the city of Albany, about three miles from campus. The new apartments, at the corner of Monroe and Jackson streets, are anticipated to open for fall semester 2024 and will house 761 graduate students – all in single-occupancy bedrooms at below-market rates.

The Berkeley community has a brand-new, 3,000-square-foot outdoor space — funded jointly by the city of Berkeley and UC Berkeley — where unhoused people can go during the day to use the bathroom, grab a bite to eat, play board games, listen to music, and relax under the shade of trees and patio umbrellas.

A major Hollywood studio sent UC Berkeley back to the 1940s at the end of May for a motion picture that was filmed on campus.

The set, which included old cars and costumes, was constructed over two days in an area near Sather Tower, Wheeler Hall and Physics North, a 1924 building designed by John Galen Howard and known as LeConte Hall until 2020.

UC Berkeley’s campus community this week celebrated the grand opening of the Bakar BioEnginuity Hub (BBH), the campus’s bold new home for research and innovation.

Powered by a $30 million challenge match grant from an anonymous alum, UC Berkeley’s College of Engineering has raised more than $74 million in gifts to transform the engineering student center into a vibrant hub of learning and discovery, cross-disciplinary collaboration, innovation and entrepreneurship.

California lawmakers on Monday voted unanimously to pass legislation that overturns court decisions that required UC Berkeley to freeze student enrollment to 2020-21 levels. If the bill is signed into law by Gov.

FACT SHEET: UC Berkeley’s community efforts

Note: This list is not comprehensive

The University of California is offering a series of free training and outreach programs specifically designed to increase the involvement of Small Business Enterprises in UC Design, Professional, and Construction Capital and Facilities projects.

Construction has begun on a 772-bed, apartment-style housing project for UC Berkeley transfer students that is being designed, built and funded by the Helen Diller Foundation.

The 500,000 square-foot building, named Helen Diller Anchor House, will be gifted to Berkeley upon its completion and is anticipated to be open in time for the 2024-2025 academic year. Rent for each housing unit will be below market rate, and the building will require no public funds to construct or operate.

Things will be a bit different at the UC Berkeley Library in the spring semester, owing to the temporary closure of Moffitt Library and extended hours at several of Berkeley’s other libraries.

From January through August 2022, Moffitt, the popular undergraduate library at the heart of campus, will be closed for seismic upgrades. Part of a campuswide initiative, the updates will ensure an even greater level of safety in the building. Moffitt is expected to reopen for the fall 2022 semester.

There's no better argument for the value of historic preservation than this: It keeps revealing fresh ways that buildings of merit can be reborn.

A San Francisco music club inhabits an ex-mortuary on Valencia Street. Five blocks to the north there's a private school in a former Levi's factory. On the Embarcadero, the Exploratorium moved its interactive science museum into a shed-like pier where steamships once docked.

The wait for UC Berkeley's bold new home for research and innovation is nearly over.

After two years of construction, the Bakar BioEnginuity Hub (BBH) is scheduled to open in February 2022. The world-class facility pairs the Bakar Labs incubator with fellowships and programming for Berkeley students and researchers, equipping current and aspiring entrepreneurs in the STEM world with labs, offices, equipment and shared community spaces that aim to encourage collaboration.

And all of this is just steps away from campus.

Important: Winter Curtailment 2021-2022

Accounting will be closed for winter curtailment starting December 23, 2021, and will return on January 3, 2022.

Imagine the Gateway: Creating data-driven solutions to our world’s greatest problems

Michael Drake, the new president of the 10-campus University of California system, visited UC Berkeley Thursday to meet with a mix of administrators, staff, students and faculty.

The visit, which lasted most of a brisk, but bright, autumn day, was a chance for Drake to hear from Berkeleyans and to share his vision for the UC system.

Chancellor Carol Christ sent the following message to the campus community:

For the first time, UC Berkeley has taken the No.1 spot on Forbes magazine’s annual list of America’s top colleges, beating out several elite private universities, including Yale in second place and Princeton in third.

Rounding out Forbes’ top 10 for 2021 are Stanford in fourth place, followed by Columbia, MIT, Harvard, UCLA, the University of Pennsylvania and Northwestern University.

Chancellor Carol Christ sent the following message to the campus community on Wednesday:

As we begin this fall semester with high hopes for our return to in-person learning, extracurricular activities and all that makes this campus an amazing, vibrant place, we are also aware of the continued uncertainties and concerns born of the pandemic’s ever-changing contours and impacts.

After more than two years of negotiations and extensive community input, the city of Berkeley late Tuesday agreed to a $82 million deal with UC Berkeley that will govern the growth of the campus and set the stage for a new town-gown relationship.

The agreement will enable “a world-class education in a world-class city,” Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin said in a statement.

At issue was UC Berkeley’s long range plans for new housing, student enrollment growth and other construction and development.

The University of California, Berkeley, today (Monday, June 7) announced three gifts of $25 million each that will reinforce Berkeley’s position as a leader in computing and data science research and education, and help create a visionary new home for the Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society (CDSS). 

Notably, two of the gifts are from current Berkeley faculty: professors Scott Shenker and Ion Stoica of the Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society, and the College of Engineering. 

In the face of daunting global challenges, such as climate change and a catastrophic pandemic, it is evident that the world urgently needs science-based solutions to tackle society’s greatest problems.

The Gateway fulfills the promise of what a place of possibility can be. Here, Berkeley will convene and connect brilliant faculty and students from our core disciplines of computing and data science with others across campus. With a shared purpose to improve human health, social justice, and environmental sustainability, the Gateway community will catalyze interdisciplinary collaboration to solve the most pressing problems of our time. 

Next week will mark the year anniversary of COVID-19 being declared a pandemic and UC Berkeley switching to in-person instruction. Whether you're in on-campus housing this semester, living elsewhere in the Bay Area, still in your hometown or on distant shores, the Bear Territory we used to know still feels like a much-used adjective these days — remote. So, with second semester well underway, here's a peek at your campus, where we hope you'll be glad to see that signs of perseverance, resilience and newness are as prevalent at the coming of spring.

Vice Chancellor for Administration Marc Fisher and Campus Architect Wendy Hillis sent the following message to the campus community on Tuesday:

Chancellor Carol Christ sent the following message to all UC Berkeley students on Monday:

Four years ago, a campus task force documented the extent of our student housing crisis, and set the stage for an urgent initiative to address it. UC Berkeley houses fewer undergraduate and graduate students than any of the other UC campuses. Due to the high cost and low supply of housing close to campus, we estimate that 40% of our students are not able to live in Berkeley, undermining your ability to thrive, succeed and fully partake in all that the university has to offer.

Progress reports and financial results for FY20 for the Administration Division and departments. 

UC Berkeley will temporarily close three areas of People’s Park for soil analysis from January 19 through February 16, 2021. Public safety is our primary concern. Affected areas of the park will be temporarily closed to safely obtain soil samples, which involves drilling/boring into the ground by engineers.

Once samples are collected, temporarily closed areas of the park will reopen.

When an area temporarily closes, it will be cleared and fenced. To ensure public safety, there will be no day or overnight use in temporarily fenced areas.

As part of UC Berkeley's annual winter curtailment program, Capital Strategies' offices will be closed from December 23, 2020, through January 4, 2021.

At UC Berkeley, two documents guide the planning and future development of the campus. A multi-year effort is underway to update these plans: the Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) and the Campus Master Plan.

You are invited to participate in our second online open house as part of this effort. This open house focuses on the Campus Master Plan.

The Student Advisory Council on Undergraduate Education (SACUE) shapes the student experience at UC Berkeley by providing critical feedback to campus leaders on undergraduate initiatives and programs. Convened by Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate Education Catherine Koshland, SACUE is composed of undergraduate students and meets throughout the academic year to engage with campus decision-makers on issues that affect all undergraduates.

You’re miles from UC Berkeley, maybe even overseas, working remotely and wondering if central campus has become a COVID-19 ghost town with cobwebbed windows, withering brown lawns, locked doors and barely a human, or even a peregrine falcon, in sight. Is anybody there?

If you were here, you’d see nearly empty outdoor expanses and darkened classrooms and offices. And because of all-remote instruction, most of the 45,000-plus students expected to enroll aren’t around; only about 2,200 are in on-campus housing.

UC Berkeley has prepared a Draft Environmental Impact Report (Draft EIR) and Appendices for the Wildland Vegetative Fuel Management Plan.

A scoping session helps notify the public that a lead agency (in this case, UC Berkeley) is evaluating a project under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), and to solicit public comment regarding the type and extent of environmental analyses to be undertaken.

This message was sent to all UC Berkeley faculty, students, and staff on May 28, 2020.

Dear campus community,

The UC Berkeley campus is proactively engaging in planning around the COVID-19 outbreak in collaboration with our public health partners and the UC Office of the President. The campus is operating in accordance with all public health directives and applicable orders regarding the public health emergency.

A scoping session helps notify the public that a lead agency (in this case, UC Berkeley) is evaluating a project under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), and to solicit public comment regarding the type and extent of environmental analyses to be undertaken. As a result of the expanding outbreak of COVID-19 and restrictions placed on in-person gatherings throughout the State of California, on April 27, UC Berkeley will host an online public scoping session, rather than an in-person event.

UC Berkeley’s Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society (CDSS) will soon have a brick-and-mortar home, thanks to an anonymous $252 million gift to seed the construction of a new “Data Hub” on the open space at the intersection of Hearst Avenue, Arch Street and MacFarlane Lane.

Video highlights of the top UC Berkeley stories from 2019 in under 3 minutes. To read more about each story, read the video’s description on YouTube

UC Berkeley is moving forward as quickly as possible on a complex, ambitious building program that will help to address earthquake safety and shortages of affordable housing, classrooms and up-to-date laboratory space, UC Chancellor Carol Christ said yesterday.

In a year-end Campus Conversation, Christ cited the building program and the urgent requirements of campus diversity and inclusiveness as top priorities, both of which support the campus’s global leadership in education, research and public service.

UC Berkeley alumnus Terry Rosen, the CEO of Arcus Biosciences, and his wife, Tori, have donated $25 million to the College of Chemistry for a building to be named in honor of Terry Rosen’s beloved mentor and former chemistry dean, Clayton Heathcock.

Rosen, who obtained his Ph.D. in 1985 while working in Heathcock’s lab, has fond memories of the four years he spent at UC Berkeley and decided that naming a building after Heathcock was a great way to say, ‘Thank you.’

University of California President Janet Napolitano issued the following statement today (September 14): 

The University of California is pleased the recently approved Public Education Facilities Bond will be on the March 2020 ballot and deeply appreciates the $2 billion that the measure allocates to UC, which sets the stage for the biggest capital investment in the University since 2006.

Dear Campus Community,

I am pleased to announce the appointment of Wendy Hillis, AIA, as UC Berkeley’s next Assistant Vice Chancellor and Campus Architect. She joins Capital Strategies starting today, July 1, 2019, and will lead our Physical and Environmental Planning team.

Bisnow has honored UC Berkeley’s Vice Chancellor of Finance Rosemarie Rae with a Bay Area Power Women (link is external) award. This award celebrates Bay Area Power Women who have helped shape Bay Area cities, neighborhoods, businesses and lifestyles. Fellow honorees included Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf and Jackie Safier of Prometheus, among others.

NRLF, the giant storage complex in Richmond, is running out of space.

But not for much longer.

On Thursday, about 40 NRLF devotees — including architects and champions from UC Berkeley and across the University of California system — descended upon the facility to celebrate the ceremonial groundbreaking of the new addition to the sprawling complex.

Chancellor Carol Christ issued the following message today:

To the Berkeley Campus Community

Now that we have completed our first, new Strategic Plan in 16 years, the campus is ready to take the next, necessary step to turn its aspirations into physical reality by updating our Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) and creating a new Campus Master Plan.

Back in 2005, UC Berkeley took a look into its future. The administration needed to renew its legally mandated Long-Range Development Plan (LRDP) and to forecast for the following 15 years its probable environmental footprint as a result of its operations, anticipated development and student population.

John Arvin named associate vice chancellor for Capital Strategies

By Public Affairs, UC Berkeley| FEBRUARY 4, 2019

Dear Campus Community,

UC Berkeley will be looking a little lighter and brighter in the next few weeks after nearly 100 new energy-efficient LED lampposts are installed across campus.

The $2.1 million project comes as student and community groups make greater use of the central campus in the evening hours.

The locations of the of the posts were chosen following studies by technical engineers and investigative nighttime walks with students, staff and UC police experts.

With a snap of the traditional big scissors, Chancellor Carol Christ formally opened Berkeley Way West, UC Berkeley’s newest academic building.

The eight-story, 230,000-square-foot building houses classrooms, offices, open workstations and collaborative space designed to serve the 900 students, staff and faculty connected to the Graduate School of Education, the Department of Psychology and the School of Public Health.

It took only a few months this summer to give Wheeler Hall’s massive auditorium a complete makeover with new seats, carpets, better ventilation, accessibility aides and all kinds of other upgrades.

Campus leaders gathered this week to dedicate UC Berkeley’s newest residence hall to David Blackwell, the first black professor to receive tenure at Berkeley and a preeminent statistician who died in 2010. Blackwell Hall opened to more than 750 students in August and features study centers, a gym and plenty of ping-pong and pool tables.

As UC Berkeley’s bears roll back onto campus, they’ll notice some changes. From new construction projects to renovations and upkeep on some of Berkeley’s most iconic buildings, here’s a breakdown:

David Blackwell Hall

2401 Durant Ave. at Dana

UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ sent this message to the campus community on Monday:

Dear students, staff and faculty,

I want to begin this back-to-school message with a warm welcome for Berkeley’s new students, faculty, and members of our staff. So much awaits those of you for whom our university is new and unexplored territory. I wish each of you nothing but the very best on the road ahead. I hope you will come to cherish your membership in this extraordinary community, just as I have.

David Blackwell Hall, the first new residence hall to open at UC Berkeley since 2012, is a living space for more than 700 students full of patios, study rooms, bike racks, ping-pong tables, exercise machines and — if you’re lucky enough to live on the west side of the building — million-dollar views of the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco skyline.

UC Berkeley’s newest residence hall will be named after David Blackwell, the first black professor to ever receive tenure at UC Berkeley and a preeminent statistician, Chancellor Carol Christ announced on Thursday.

Commuting to UC Berkeley just improved for many of the 80 percent of students, faculty and staff who arrive every day by bicycle, transit and on foot.

On the two busy streets that flank the campus’s north and south sides — Hearst Avenue and Bancroft Way, streets with historically high collision rates — new dedicated bike lanes, safer bus loading zones, a new sidewalk and other features have just been completed. Together, they are intended to improve commuter access, sustainability and safety.