Five Minutes With... Joyce Liou

Academic Affairs Vice President Joyce Liou's ambitious agenda for this coming year includes tackling long-term campus projects and improving student services. The Daily Californian sat down with Liou to discuss her strategies and top priorities.

The Daily Californian: Can you briefly discuss your responsibilities?

Joyce Liou: The Office of Academic Affairs is essentially responsible for representing students to the university and serving students' needs at Berkeley. Some of the responsibilities my office covers are also appointing people to our Academic Senate and campus administrative committees to facilitate communication throughout the year to make sure our voice is being heard on these committees when administrative decisions are made.

DC: What's at the top of your to-do list?

JL: That would be Lower Sproul. This issue is honestly very pressing for students, and my goal is to have the Lower Sproul redevelopment plan put on the chancellor's capital fundraising campaign, where he lobbies for public donations, by the end of the academic year. I want a central hub for student groups to convene, a permanent relocation of the Career Center to campus so it can directly serve students, and the creation of a teaching facility that students can use for their own purposes.

DC: What other goals do you have?

JC: One, I want to improve the quality of course selections and by that I mean implement more effective evaluation mechanisms in courses of instruction. At the end of each semester, professors have students fill out course evaluations and the student input and knowledge that goes into the evaluations are never made public to other students. If students were to actually have access to this information, I think we could have a much easier time figuring out what classes to be taking, especially for all the freshmen who are deciding what classes to take, much less their majors.

Another thing is revamping student technology services, which includes increasing education technology in classrooms, as well as updating student information services, which includes Tele-Bears, Info-Bears, and the CalMail system.

DC: A fair portion of your programs and ideas require funding. Where is the money coming from?

JL: For something like advising fairs, that will come out of our budget. There is no real funding issue for the putting on of an event or program. It's more about coordinating. This is about improving accessibility and improving the quality of the advising. There are a lot of advising efforts spread out across the campus, but we find that students don't approach advisers or that they don't find them accessible. We would take the money that we think is going into ineffective advising and retraining or retooling.

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