What is going on everybody? It's Stas here. Welcome back to another video. So in today's video, just like always, we're going to be breaking down the overall markets, taking a look at the S&P 500, the Dow Jones, and the Nasdaq. We're going to be talking about a trading update. What did I personally do today on the 23rd of May in terms of my trades, any day trading going on, any swing trading. We're going to be talking about that in today's video, as well as taking a look at some other stocks that I'm personally watching and ETFs for the rest of this week, for the rest of this month, and heading into the month of June in 2019. But before we do get into the topic of today's video, all I ask from you guys out there, the viewers, the supporters, the subscribers, if you enjoy the content here, if you find value in this content, go down below and hit that like button. It really supports me and supports the channel in general. And if you want to stay further connected with our community, two links down below in the description box, the Strive Smart Discord group chat and the Strive Smart Facebook group, make sure you guys get in there, free communities with a ton of valuable information and a bunch of valuable people in there talking every single day about the stock market. So let's just get right into it, guys.  We had a bit of a rebound towards the end of the market. But for most of the day today, guys, it was just selling, selling on top of selling, on top of selling, bloody day out there. So the S&P 500, the 500, largest publicly traded U.S. companies ended up closing the day down $34 here, down 1.19% here. I think it was down 2% at the lowest today, maybe 1.9%, 1.8% somewhere in that little area. The Dow Jones industrial average down 286 points at the close, down 1.11% here. And the Nasdaq, no, it did not close plus four, guys. This is the future. It's up a bit after hours here. But just like a lot of the times when we have bloody days, the Nasdaq got hit the hardest out of the three major indexes that we tracked today, I think it ended up closing under 2%. I believe like 2.1% in the red today. If we look exactly where it closed at about 4 o'clock, you can see, and you can see the big spike up that we saw here towards the close of the market. Literally in power hour, the Nasdaq went from $72.75, all the way up to about $73.25. So that's about a 50-point move there. And we ended up closing about, let's see, roughly a little bit lower from where we are right now. So it was a pretty bloody day out there in terms of the three major markets that we tracked, guys. You know, the tensions with China, they're starting to wear on the stock market more and more, guys. This is getting to territories right now in the major indexes on some longer-term charts where, on a technical basis, we could be selling off a lot more from here. And let's get into those technical spots on the S&P, the Dow, and the Nasdaq very quickly. And if you recall in yesterday's video, guys, in a couple of videos last week, I was talking about a potential head and shoulder pattern forming on the SPX. I know it's not exactly aligned with this left shoulder here if you're looking at this little right shoulder that was formed, but it's still kind of what I'm seeing here. And for those of you guys that don't know what a head and shoulder is, just take a look at this chart here.  This is the left shoulder. This is the head where we ended up going up to all-time highs, pulling back. And then this, what we just formed, is a right shoulder. And this is kind of what we were talking about in last week's video because, in a couple of videos last week, because we were noticing the resistance under the 50 simple moving average here on the 184-hour chart. So that, in my technical analysis, was telling me, you know, we're seeing some resistance. This could be the start of a right shoulder. And here, a week later, that's exactly what ended up happening, right? And we broke that technical support on the 180SMA that we were talking about in yesterday's video. And now we're kind of trading where we got about a week, a week and a half ago when we actually sold down or sold off to the 2800 level on the SMP. And let me show you guys on a 20-day one-hour chart here where I'm talking about. You notice how we sold off all the way down here on the 13th of May. Well, we ended up holding that exact spot of support today and we saw that nice little run towards the end of the market. So in my opinion at this point, for us to see further selling off on the SMP, we need to break two levels here. We need to break this 28 level, 2800 level from a couple of trading days ago, about 10 trading days ago. And we also need to break this old resistance, which is now new support. In those two spots, they're pretty much the same level, right? $2,800. So for us to see more selling, we need to see a break into the 2700s for the SMP 500. And who knows, guys, if this weakness continues into tomorrow, we may see a break into the 2700 level tomorrow if the markets do get ugly again. So that's kind of what I'm seeing here. The SMP is just getting weak. The markets are getting weak and we're so close to that full-on break. And if we break here, it could get ugly and we'll be forming a deeper bearish pattern at that point on the SMP 500. So smaller time frame charts, we're seeing the descending pattern. Nothing really crazy here. Nothing really different from yesterday. You guys can see all day on the one day, one minute, we were trending down that we had that nice little pop on power hour here. Hopping over here to the Dow Jones on the one day, one minute, we're seeing the same thing. Down trending for the whole day, power hour came. And then all of a sudden, the market, the Dow ended up flying, right? We ended up getting, how many points was that from this little, the low we hit, about 25, 340. And we closed about 150 points higher. So that's quite a swing there, 150 points in power hour to the upside for the Dow. That's a pretty solid recovery there. If we're looking back here on the 180 day four hour chart, we're no longer trading between 25, 526, 200 right now, that's 700 point level that we've been trading in, it feels like forever. But it's really only been the past roughly two weeks, we're no longer trading in between that level. We've now broken the 25, 500 level of support. We're trending just under it now, maintaining it as a resistance level. And this is a pretty key break on the Dow. Now that we ended up breaking this level, guys, we're trading in between $25,000 and $25,500. So we're in this little 500 point gap right now. And if we end up getting rejected tomorrow by this resistance, the new resistance here, we continue to sell off. How to take a look and see, are we going to hold $25,000 on a technical basis? If we don't, we end up maintaining that into the long weekend that we have, who knows, right? If that ends up happening, we may be trading in this level of 500 points for the next couple of days. Who knows guys, but right now, the major, the two major ones that we follow, the Dow, the S&P, we saw some critical, critical support breaks today in the price action. So let's take a look at the NASDAQ very quickly here on the 184 hour chart. We also broke a support, a critical support here on the NASDAQ today at about $7,300. We can see, we briefly broke that support level. We got down to about $7,265-ish. We ended up breaking above the resistance again. So now we're also, or actually we're again maintaining this level as a support. We broke it. We broke above the resistance again. And now we're holding it as a support. So I just wait and see tomorrow and tomorrow's action, are we going to sell off further? And one way that you can understand this before the market opens, you can take a look at the market futures. If you have think or swim, this slash ES, this is the S&P future, the slash YM, that is the Dow Jones future. And where is it? The slash NQ, the one you're seeing right now, this is the NASDAQ future. And this you can see pretty much throughout the night and before the market opens. So you can understand, are we going to open up red? Are we going to open up green? And this will better help in assisting your trades for that morning, for that day. You get to understand where the market could be headed. So at this point, if we end up breaking $7,300, which I think is possible because I don't think the selling is done, I've literally been saying this for about a week and a half, two weeks now, since we've started selling aggressively, it's been more like three weeks. I think there's more selling in store guys. I've been saying this, the start of 2019 was absolutely ridiculous, right? Markets rebounded 20%. These levels, they're not going to hold for a long time. That was kind of an inflated price, an inflated stock market. It shouldn't have gone up 20%. These levels, they're just correcting themselves. It makes sense to me. So if we break that level, next support's going to be at around $72.25 on the NQ, but everything's just looking down guys. You know, bearish cross here, 50 SMAs acting as a resistance. Everything is pointing to more selling on the technical side here. The 20 day one hour, you get to see it on a closer basis. The bearish cross was just formed, I believe, two days ago here on the 20 day one hour, lower lows, lower highs. The selling today pushed us to a lower low here, lower from the previous low, which was at about $7,300. So it's not looking too pretty right now. And again, the market's just been weak. Volume was super low a couple of days ago and that kind of raised a red flag. We were talking about that in the group, you know, typically low volume days. And I think the market, I forget what day it was actually, but low volume days, and then followed by more red, you know, that's pretty weak in my personal opinion, right? So that's kind of the market update for today, guys. Let's talk about the trading update very quickly. What I personally ended up trading today, I traded TVIX today, guys. TVIX, this is a volatility ETF that does well when the volatility, the VIX, is going up in price as well as the markets are going down, right?  And you can see here, the VIX was up $2.17 today, which in turn pushes TVIX up in price. And hence, you can see that here, you know, TVIX was up $2.60 at the close, very solid, nearly 13% day in the green for TVIX, right? And if we're looking here on the one day, one minute, we got that initial spike on TVIX. I missed this, to be honest with you guys, I did not get in on this. We got that pullback. We got the pop-up again. I was watching it, still didn't take a position. And the fact that we were selling off here, it kind of worried me a bit because this was a lower high from the previous, although we made a higher low, you know, at this point, we were kind of in a little bit of a wedge, right? Take a look at this. And I wanted to see, are we going to hold here and potentially break out? We didn't do that, right? We broke the support of this little wedge that you're seeing here. And then we actually pushed below this support at $22.75. And at this point in time, I was like, okay, TVIX, it's probably not going to be a play today. But then, guys, we got a bottoming out point at $22.50, which was a higher low from actually the pre-market low right around $22. And then we started to spike up. And then we see if we extend this little wedge, you guys can see with the extension of that wedge here, if I just draw a new one for you all, you guys can see the breakout here, right? I was drawing this and we see the breakout. And that is where I ended up taking a position on TVIX. And at this point in time, guys, what time was this? About 11.30 Eastern Standard Time. Take a look at the VIX, right? The VIX had that big sell-off here. And towards 11.30, that's when it ended up picking up steam, right? And if we're taking a look at the SPX as well, we had that little run up. This is when the VIX was selling off as well as TVIX. And then when the S&P started to pick up the sell-off, which we saw again at about 11am Eastern Standard, we were selling off. That is when I ended up taking the position in TVIX. Again, volatility was starting to spike. And then I was able to profit. So once we broke out of this little wedge here, I ended up taking a position. I believe it was like $23.25. Then I ended up just riding it up past the resistance from what time was this? About 9.45. That first resistance from the big spike that we saw in the morning. I ended up getting out, rather, after we broke that resistance, giving me about a 1.6%, 1.7% profit. So that was it for the day, for me, to be honest with you guys. I day-traded TVIX. I'm pissed at myself a little bit because Drip is another one that I just completely missed and just dropped the ball on again today, right? Today was one of those days for Drip that it kept going up. And I kept telling myself, I'm going to get in on the pull back. I'm going to get in on the pullback. And we just never got that pullback for me to get in, right? We noticed the big spike. We got the sell-off at this point. We were seeing lower highs being made. We were pulling down. And I was telling myself at this point, okay, it's cooling off. It literally had a 10%, 12% day yesterday. It's already up like 15% at this point. I shouldn't chase it. And I just stopped looking at it to be completely honest with you guys. Because sometimes I get tempted. I know a lot of you guys can relate to this. I get tempted to hop into a trade. And then I ask myself, is this a good opportunity to hop in, right? This was already up 15% today. And again, yesterday, it was up 12%. And I just made a decision to just stop looking at it. I didn't want to make a FOMO decision, fear of missing out decision. You know, sure, if I did get in on this dip, I would have profited a bit, but it was not much at all. It didn't really move much. Actually, it was a decent move. Actually, I'm wrong. It was about a 4% or 5% move. But again, I just didn't feel like the risk reward was in my favor for drip. But nonetheless, guys, this is one that I am actually just going to continue to watch because I've realized when the markets have been selling off, you know, drip has been going up, not that they're completely correlated, but XOP, the ETF that drip trades upon, this one has just been getting hammered, you know, over the past couple of weeks. And it's kind of correlates to the market because the market's been getting hammered as well. So, you know, let's say the market continues to sell off, we might see an XOP sell off further for drip to go even higher in price. But at this point, you know, XOP is completely oversold, you know, we might see a rebound. So at this point, guys, you know, I'm not chasing drip. I'm actually looking to see if we get a rebound on XOP for potential play in GUSH, which is actually the inverse ETF to drip. And GUSH is the bull ETF that goes up whenever XOP is going up. So just keep an eye on the potential rebound here. Again, it's very, very oversold. It's literally at the 20 level on the RSI. So that's very, very oversold. We might see a rebound here, guys. We might see a rebound. So I'm keeping an eye on that. So that's one I'm watching for tomorrow, guys. XOP drip. What's the other one? GUSH, right? I'm obviously going to continue watching TVIX because TVIX is great when volatility is high, when the market is selling off. We've literally seen TVIX go up 40%. That was literally like a couple of weeks ago. Craziest day that I've seen in TVIX in over a year at this point. I'm also going to be looking at potential put options on Tesla, guys. I was actually looking at some, I think it was June 7th, the June 7th and June 14th put options about two, three weeks out from, I believe, is it? Yeah, it's tomorrow. Two weeks out from tomorrow and three weeks out from tomorrow. Some potential put options on Tesla because Tesla right now, guys, this is not the analyst's favorite stock or analysis put it that way, right?  Wall Street hates Tesla. And when the public or when Wall Street and analysts hate Tesla, they keep dropping down their price targets, although it may be a good business, this puts it in the public eye as a negative thing, a negative company, a bad company, and people just keep selling off the stock, right? It's just not a popular stock right now. And people in our group have been absolutely just crushing it with Tesla put options. So, when the time comes right, guys, I don't know if I'll be buying tomorrow put options. I might wait till next week. If we get a little bit of a rally here, that's when I'll make my decision on put options two, three weeks out, maybe a week out. I'm still thinking about it right now. And I'm still thinking about what strike price I want to buy. But that's one put option play. Also, Apple, a lot of people in our group have been doing very well with Apple. This is one that really just has been getting affected by the trade war in general, right? China, their sales in China have just been doing awful. The tariffs have just been crushing Apple. Literally, guys, I made a video, like, I feel like it was less than a month ago talking about Apple stock at $215. Yes, $215. That is $35 higher from where we are right now. So, understand how hard Apple's gotten hit. And I personally think as long as this trade war stuff is in full effect with China and as long as sales in China are weak, right? I just think Apple's going to continue to get hit. And again, I don't know if you know this, the newer viewers might not know this. I know a lot of the older viewers know this. Apple is one of my bigger positions in my long-term portfolio because I just love Apple as a up and coming dividend stock, actually. This one's growing. It's dividend immensely. I love it for that. And I also love it for the value that it provides. And for me to hedge against my position, my long-term position in Apple, you know, I might be playing some put options here. I might wait and see if we pop back up, maybe retest that 50 SMA. Maybe if we get back up to the mid-180s, that's when I'll pull the trigger on some two, three, maybe one month out, put options on Apple. That is something that I'm really interested in doing. So, those are two option plays right now.  And to be honest, guys, I'm not watching and looking to swing trade really any stocks at this point, right? A lot of the stocks, the patterns, the trends, they're not looking hot. Look at Apple, for example.  You know, take a look at these big tech stocks. You know, Google, why would you want to swing trade that, right? Why would you want to swing trade Facebook? Why would you want to swing trade Amazon? You know, Apple, we already looked at that one, you know, Netflix. It's looking like it's about to drop a bunch of these stocks. They're not looking attractive. So, for me, mostly what I'm going to be doing is put options potentially on Tesla and Apple. I'm going to be trading the volatility in the market because I personally do not think the volatility is done. So, TVIX is on my watch list as well as TQQQ and SQQQ. These are two inverse ETFs. They're two leveraged ETFs that trade on the NASDAQ 100, and these are great for volatility as well. Let me just pull this up real quick. So, SQQQ, this is one that goes up when the NASDAQ is selling off at a 3x leveraged rate. So, that means the NASDAQ selling off 1%, SQQQQ is going to be up 3% for that day. And on the flip side, let's say the NASDAQ is doing well. Let's say it goes up 2%. The TQQQ ETF here is a leveraged 3x ETF that will go up with the NASDAQ 6%, 3 times that 2% that the NASDAQ ends up going up. So, those are just a couple that I am watching at this point. Guys, you know, let's just go over some commodities very quickly, some other things that we personally keep an eye on and track on this channel. You know, gold is back in the 1280s. It's down about $1.60 today. Crude oil actually took a huge dump today, down to $58.15. The VIX, again, looking to come back here up about $2.17 at the close today. Natural gas is looking to make a little comeback back up to $2.58 today. Looking to reverse up a little bit here, which is looking pretty, pretty good. So, that's all I have for you guys today. I hope you all enjoyed this video. I hope you all have been killing it out there in the markets, guys. These times are very, very fun for me. I personally love volatility. I love when the stock market gets like this. It's just fun for me, right? Because I'm doing this every single day. I'm not going to lie to you all. Sometimes, it's boring out there, right? Sometimes the stock market is just kind of boring. But times like this, it's spiced up a bit.  There's just stuff going on every single day. It just fuels my fire. And I just find it very, very fun. So, if you guys enjoyed this video, feel free to hit that like button again. It really supports me and I appreciate every single one of you guys out there doing that. Subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already. Hit that notification bell so you're notified every single time that I do make a video. And drop a comment. Let me know what you guys ended up doing today. What are your thoughts with the market right now? Are we going to sell off further? Is there a trade deal around the corner? Let me know what you guys think what you guys are doing. And I'll respond to every single one of you guys in the comment section. So, I'll catch you all in the next video. Again, thank you all for watching, taking your time out to watch the video. Peace out.


Hey guys, welcome back to my channel. Welcome to an exciting video. Yes, I have a Band-Aid on my pinky. I have so much to share with you. I really just am in a moment of spilling the beans, but before I spill the beans, I do wanna tell you guys that I have a sponsor for today's video, so I wanna tell you a little bit about that before we go on. I wanna say a huge thank you to Blue Land for sponsoring this week's video. I have used Blue Land for probably almost a year now, and I absolutely love their products. I tell all of my family members that they need to get them as well. They smell incredible and they work very effectively. I am extremely conscious whenever it comes to what products I use around my house, just making sure that they have clean ingredients. All of Blue Land's products and packaging are cradle to cradle certified, which is the global standard for products that are safe, circular, and responsibly made. You all know that I am always budget conscious and trying to find the best deal, and Blue Land fits that ticket. How it works is you fill your forever bottle with warm to hot water, you drop one of the tablets into the water bottle, you put the nozzle on after the tablet is fully dissolved and you can use it right away. You don't need to shake it or stir it, it is completely dissolved and ready to go. Their tablets start at only $2 or $1.55 if you buy in bulk. That really adds up whenever you are constantly cleaning up messes, whether it's from your children or your pet or anyone else that you live with.  Blue Land is sharing a special offer just for my viewers. Okay, so now that we have that out of the way, I can tell you all the things. So I look crazy right now because I have been running around today. I've had so much going on. I'm actually sitting in my parent's driveway right now. The girls are playing in the house with my mom and I just thought that if I have a moment of silence it's gonna be in my car, especially with just everything that's happening right now. So as you can tell possibly by the title of this video we are moving. And it's just like the whole thing has come together literally within three days. It all just fell together. We've been talking about moving out of the house that we are in because it's in town and we know that we're not ready to buy quite yet. So we kind of were like either we stay in that house and we stay in town or we find something that we could potentially buy or just kind of like an in-between place for us right now. So I went online this past Sunday and I found a place I called the realtor and he was literally like, why don't you like right now if you guys wanna come see it. So we jumped in the car, we went to look at it and as we pulled up the lane and before we ever even got out of the vehicle Cory was like, this is the place. Like just, it just looked like home. And if you guys haven't watched like some of my Q and A or life update type videos you may not know much about our background. However, if you've been here since the way beginning you know that we used to live out in a farmhouse type of a home. It wasn't a farmhouse style house but like all around us were cows in pastures. And we both grew up in the country. I mean, I'm sitting at my parents place right now. It's out of town, it's not in town. They have some neighbors but it's not like they have a house sitting right next to them. So for both of us our heart is in the country having a place for our children to run around and just have open spaces. So this place I am so excited to show you guys everything about it. We signed the lease on it and we are ready to move in and show you.  So if you didn't know, this is my main channel. It's titled Adeline's Look because that's my name but I also have a channel called Adeline's Home. And so I will leave the link for that in the description box below because if you're not subscribed there you might want to be if you want to see the tour of our farmhouse slash little homestead type place that we're moving into. And I know this is probably gonna be the biggest question I get so I'm just gonna answer it right out the gate. Yes, we do have the potential of purchasing this place. That was something that we talked about with the owner right off the bat. And so that is kind of in our thinking as well. So it has I think a little under three acres. It has a running creek on the property. It has a pond on the property and it has potential if we were to become the owners to do like a pasture or you know, I mean it's got space. There's a some space up beyond the house. The house kind of sits on a hill where we can put a garden. It's just I'm so excited. Like I can't wait to start planning my garden for this year because if you guys watched my seller tour, I wasn't really planning to garden because we couldn't really do it where we were at. And last year I did some here at my parents, but it was just too big of a trip to go back and forth. So now I have the potential to like plan a garden. So I'm just like, I can't, I'm bursting. I'm just bursting and I wish I could just show you right now, but you're gonna have to wait until I have the home tour up for you guys to see it all. So the other side of it is the fact that we talked with the owners and they're going to let me paint and really just bring this property back to life. Part of the house has been refurbished and redone and just looks amazing, but there's another part of it that needs a little kiss of love. So I'm gonna be doing that. So all of that will be over on my home channel and then obviously here more the homesteading side of things, we are going to get a small chicken coop and have some chickens and I can't wait.  Like they have been begging, like please let us just go. Like when can we go? And when we were waiting to find out if they accepted our application, it was like every hour they were asking, did they call back? Did they call back? I mean, they have been thrilled, beyond thrilled about this. Now this property is really a bit from town. So we currently live very close to a grocery store, like blocks from a grocery store. And where we will be going, depending on which grocery store I go to in our area, it could be like 30 minutes to the grocery store, depending like I said, there is some smaller ones that would be closer. But if I wanted to go to grocery stores, I'd normally go to a lot of it would be pretty far out. So like that part of it, we love, I love the thought of like just being so far away from like town and all of that and just being able to like live in our own open spaces. So that is the main huge announcement. Besides that, I wanted to give you guys just like a little update on our lives. It's been, oh, God has just been so incredibly good. And I feel like the timing of this whole move is just so in alignment for the things that are going on in our spiritual lives for Corey and I and just the places and spaces that we're growing and the way that God is molding us even in our marriage. And it's just, it's all so, so good. And it's just a time of change. And this all just kind of fell in our laps. Like I said, we've looked before, but nothing ever just landed just right. And this place is just amazing. And it's right next to a farm that is a milking farm. So I think I'll be able to get milk from them and they have a chicken house. And there is farms nearby, which part of me kind of likes that because if something were to happen, the girls could run to a neighbor's house. You know, there would be someone nearby that they would be able to get some help if they really needed it. I know I'm gonna say this a bunch of times in this, but I'm just so excited. And I just couldn't be more excited about everything that's going on. And I just, and we're able to take our puppy, our little dog, Zaley. She, yeah, she's gonna love being able to run outside. And I am gonna be gleaning all of the gardening tips. I've done gardening, but like to just really have something that is of a decent size and my own. I wanna hear all of you gardeners tips cause I know I have a lot of gardeners that watch this channel in particular with like home preservation and things like that. So we're gonna have our own little homestead. And it's just so exciting. So the first task is definitely gonna be to kind of get the house in running order. The kitchen really needs a lot done to it. So you guys actually might see some meal props done in my mom's kitchen over the next couple of weeks because there's gonna be a lot of work and things going on in the house even while we're living in it and moved into it. But you know, you guys have watched me do a lot of projects over the years. And you know that that's just the kind of person I am. I'm always working on something and always doing something. So I feel like it's appropriate that this house needed a little bit of love. So I'm just watching the girls and their cousins jumping on the trampoline here at my mom's. They're just, they have just been blossoming just in the little bit that we've been going out to the house and stuff like that. They have just been like, I can tell just being able to be outside and just be kids. Like I had to be outside with them at our other house because of the area we were in. There was a road that was too close, just stuff like that. And so this just gives us freedom. That's probably the right word for this whole thing is just the freedom to live the lifestyle that we grew up in, that we love. I'm gonna take a drink of this and I don't know if I've mentioned this before but I do not buy fast food very often, like ever. And I do not buy McDonald's very often. And this is a diet also terrible for you but this is the kind of day I've had. So on top of packing and moving, I'm also like picking paint colors and like have a lot going on with like flooring and just different things with this kitchen. And yeah, there's just a lot into the whole thing but I know that once we're through this first part it's gonna be totally worth it. And we will be able to just enjoy the fruits of our labor and everything that's going on. And there is also, I don't think I mentioned this, there's also a shop on the property for Corey and for his construction business, which is great. It's just a perfect space for him to be able to store all of his tools and all the things that he needs. And yeah, I just can't keep, I just can't tell you. I hope that you feel. I hope you feel how exciting this is. And I think also with our story, I know a lot of you have heard our story, like just the seeing this come to fruition, fruition, I think I'm saying that right. Like seeing this just unroll is just like so incredible and just amazing. And the end of this month where Corey and I are going to a conference together and just like, I feel like it's all just, the timing is just wrapping it all together at the end of this month and moving and just everything. So you guys are gonna see a lot of different types of content in the next little while because as I'm moving and working on projects and all of that, it's gonna be a lot of here, there and everywhere. But I think I'm probably because my kitchen's gonna be kind of out of commission there at the house and we're gonna be living there. Yeah, I think I'm definitely gonna end up here at my mom's or you may even see me do some cooking and things like that at my sister-in-law, Sara's house, which you guys, a lot of you have subscribed to her channel as well and she has some really big news. So if you guys haven't seen that video on her channel, I will link that below as well.  We both have a lot going on.  So I think I'm just gonna wrap this video up and then like I said, go subscribe to my home channel because in the next couple of days, I'm gonna have the home tour up and you guys are gonna wanna see it. It's like, it's just so exciting. And we aren't quite to spring here in central Pennsylvania. So we're gonna be able to watch spring blossom and bloom at our house that like is in the middle of like a little bit of woods, a little bit of field. Like it's gonna be so gorgeous. And there is one little thing I will share about the house that I think is part of our excitement. And that is there is multiple outdoor living spaces that are included with this. So that is just huge. Like we can just be outside all the time. So anyways, thanks a lot for stopping by and hearing my little announcement and my little tidbit of what's happening in our lives. And I also think I am going to probably do some more like what we eat in a day where I like kind of vlog and show you meals throughout the day and what we're doing and things like that. I'm just, I feel like I have had some creators block a bit with my content, just a bit. Not in a big way, but just a bit. And this whole thing is just like sparking me with like all these ideas and just being really excited to share with you guys our journey and what's happening. So anyways, if this is the first video that you've ever seen of mine, you can go ahead and subscribe. I'd love for you to join me. But as always, leave a comment below. Let me know what you guys are excited to see with hearing all of this coming out and coming forward and give this video a like. And I'll see you guys in my next video.


Okay, everybody, welcome to this edition of Campus Conversations. My name's Dan Mogulov. I'm with the Campus Office of Communications and Public Affairs. And today, and with all due respect to Batman and Robin, we have a true dynamic duo. And I will introduce them shortly. And as per our usual practice, each will have a bit to say about what they're currently doing, the status of their area of responsibility, and as well as some visions for the future. And then, again, we welcome questions, index cards around your seat for that purpose.  Totally fine to do that once the conversation gets away. So just a brief introduction for Kathy Koshland and Fiona Doyle. Fiona Doyle is the Vice Provost for Graduate Studies and Dean of the Graduate Division. In that capacity, she oversees all of Berkeley's graduate programs and our 10,000-plus graduate students. Fiona obtained her bachelor's degree from the University of Cambridge and her master's and doctorate from Imperial College University of London. She joined the faculty at UC Berkeley in 1983 and was appointed to the Donald H. McGloughlin Chair in Mineral Engineering in 1998. She has served as Chair of the Department of Material Science and Engineering, Executive Associate Dean of the College of Engineering, and Vice Chair and Chair of the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate. Fiona's research focuses on the chemical aspects of minerals and materials processing. If you have any questions about that, send them up. And material solution interactions with the goal of developing a sustainable supply of resources and energy. She has taught a wide range of graduate and undergraduate courses. Kathy Koshland is the Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate Education and the Wood Calvert Professor in the College of Engineering. She is a Professor of Environmental Health Sciences in the School of Public Health and a Professor in the Energy and Resources Group. Professor Koshland graduated with the BA in Fine Arts from Haverford College, studied painting at the New York School of Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture, and received her MS in 1978, and her PhD in 1985 in Mechanical Engineering from? That other store. Stanford? Yeah. I will talk about that later. But she made it up for it because she is a past parent at Cal with a daughter Sarah, a 1999 graduate, and daughter Maggie, a 2002 graduate, full compensation. Among Vice Chancellor Koshland's responsibilities are major operating units, including summer sessions, study abroad, and lifelong learning. The Athletic Study Center, the Student Learning Center, et cetera, et cetera. We'll go on. We'll be talking more about that. But Fiona, if I could ask you just to kick it off with some comments? Well, first of all, I want to know which one's Batman and which one's Robin. I ain't going there. Let me just start it and then start it. So lots of people kind of ask me, well, what is it that the Graduate Division actually does, or even what is the Graduate Division? The latter question is a bit too complicated, which means that I don't really know the answer. But as Dan mentioned, I oversee, I and my colleagues, we oversee all of Berkeley's students. And actually, we're now up to about 11 and a half thousand. So it's a fast-moving target. Keeps on increasing. And the Graduate Division oversees graduate students really from kind of cradle to grave. We oversee the, well, not quite, but cradle to grave academically. We oversee them as they're doing their applications. The Graduate Division is the entity that actually admits graduate students to Berkeley. We then track their progress on milestones towards their degrees, whether these be doctoral degrees, masters degrees, professional degrees. And while the students are here, we also provide resources for financial support of graduate students, which for our doctoral students takes the form of fellowships. We also oversee the complex dance that graduate students do, moving from one form of support to another in terms of fellowships, GSR appointments, and GSI appointments. And then we provide resources training graduate student instructors for their first teaching appointment and then support as they grow as teachers. We provide professional development support. And then at the end of it, we proudly ensure that our students have satisfied their degree requirements. There's a tradition in the Graduate Division when graduate students submit their dissertations. It's now just bringing their title page to us, which we archive. It used to be that they brought the whole dissertation. That's now done electronically. But the big thing is that they get a lollipop at the end of it. And so we have a standing order with C's candies for lollipops that are dispensed at the end of it all students and file their dissertations. So that's probably enough to get going on. So I'll just add I'm actually also a current Cal parent. My youngest, Jake, is getting his MBA at Haas and has just started his second year. But he's one of mine. Yes. He is. So the Graduate Division has often guessed the same questions. What do you do as a Vice Chancellor for undergraduate education? And I would say we have two roles. I'll mention the first one, which is a management role that involves all of the academic support services and academic programs that roll up to me. So that includes things like the athletic study center, the student learning center, all of research and teaching, learning IT center for teaching and learning, the whole division of summer sessions study brought in lifelong learning, and then numerous faculty led programs like the Collegium and Berkeley Connect, for example. So those are all the vast variety of things that sort of roll up to us. The other role we have, besides making the trains run, is a strategic role in working collaboratively with all of the undergraduate colleges and their deans, as well as with the Dean of the Business School. So those are 10 deans that we work with. I convene a Council of College deans, which has really been instrumental in helping us talk strategically about what we're doing for undergraduates, and really working collaboratively also with Oscar Duvall in equity inclusion and with Steve Sutton in student affairs around the undergraduate experience, around the student experience, but a real focus and collaboratively the three of us have joined forces in a variety of ways to be able to be effective across the many resources that we have that support the student experience and make us more efficient together and not siloed. Great. And again, just to remind for folks who just came in, there's index cards on your chairs. If you have questions, write them down. Hold them up in the air. But I want to start off, if you don't mind, with a couple of my own. Kathy, let me start with you. Sometimes if you read The Daily Cal, you would think that it's just an absolute nightmare being an undergraduate at UC Berkeley. Tough to get classes, tough to get by, tough to navigate. Help us a little bit with sort of fact and fiction and how you assess the current sort of the state of the union in terms of our undergraduate offerings and the student experience here. So first, I have to say, I'm a little bit on a rampage at the moment to change our dialogue. Why are you looking at me? I think there's an element where we say so much about how hard this place is and how tough it is that we actually induce stress rather than help alleviate it. And I think part of what I would love to see us do is change the way in which we talk to students about what their experience is. Certainly support them because they do run into challenges. There are stressful moments. There's no denying that. But if we start out from the very beginning talking as if this place is an impossible lift, that's what our students are gonna feel.  And what I would like to say is instead of the story being, the bar is here and the old Berkeley would be, the bar is here and when you reach it, we'll talk to you. And I would prefer to say the bar is here. You might be here or here or here. We're gonna support you and help you get there. And we think you can get there. And it's a matter of how we help you navigate that, how we help you get there. And that's what I'd like us all to be thinking about is that positive message that once you've been admitted to Berkeley, we expect you to succeed. And our job is to help you figure out a way to do that giving, every student we've admitted comes in with assets. And it's a matter of helping them understand that they have those assets, where are the things where they don't know quite what to do and help them along the way.  So in that context then, and the chancellors talk about improving the undergraduate experience, what are the things that we're doing? What are some of the changes that are in the works? What are some of the initiatives that you're looking at going forward in that regard? So I think one of the key things is we do want it to be a place where students can get the courses that they want. So that's going to be part of the strategy as we move forward, finding the resources that let us do that. We certainly prioritized key classes for students. And in fact, with the exception of things like Robert Reich's class, which only 700 students are gonna get in every semester, we really do try to meet that fundamental need. Part of what we are embarking on is a project called Major Maps, which is going to be for each major, a navigation pathway, not just for the major and classes, but ideas for internships, study abroad, a number of things that will integrate and it will be a useful guide for students, for advisors, for parents to see what you can do. And part of what we hope that does is actually let students see that there aren't just about six majors you could do around here. I mean, really, before economics majors, we're not all gonna be economists. So let's broaden our landscape of what we can do and help students see that there are alternative pathways that many, many CEOs of companies were philosophy majors, English majors, history majors. You don't have to major in econ to be a successful business person or to go to law school or whatever those things are. So part of it is creating a way in which students can both find their way through here and also embrace the many, many opportunities that exist for them. Thanks, Fiona. I wanna ask you, I mean, the campus is now in the process of digging itself out of a pretty deep financial hole, but I know that at the depths of our challenges, there was a lot of concern about our ability to remain competitive with graduate students, to support them financially, to counteract any narrative that the university was in a state of decline, which it clearly wasn't. Where do things stand now? How are we doing in sort of from a competitive perspective? And just on a sort of substantive basis, our ability to provide graduate students with what they need. How do you assess where we are right now? So I'm actually very proud of the progress that we've made in the last few years. So first of all, I'd like to just clarify that there are really two different populations of graduate students. There are students who are following doctoral programs and there are students who are following professional programs. And the default around here, when people talk about graduate students, they're normally thinking of doctoral students. Doctoral students are actually now a minority of the graduate students on the Berkeley campus. And this is by design. We have fairly limited ability to support graduate students and doctoral students in particular. And so I have been working with departments to ensure that they understand that if they admit fewer doctoral students, they will still get the same financial support from central resources. So that they have more money per student, which means that each student can be better supported. Nobody likes this. We would rather have more money and be able to support more doctoral students. But given that we have a limited budget, everybody agrees that we want the doctoral students that we have to be properly supported. So this year, more than 50% of the doctoral applicants to whom we offered admission chose to come to Berkeley. This is statistically, frankly, a miracle because these are incredibly well qualified students who all of the Ivy Leagues are vying for. We know that each of these students who's been offered admission to Berkeley has a few really good financial aid offers, often better than the financial aid offers that we're able to provide them. And they choose to come to Berkeley because we have an amazing faculty, our students report that they chose to come to Berkeley because they really want to work with Professor X and Professor Y. And then one of our enormous strengths is our comprehensive excellence. So given that most doctoral education is very interdisciplinary these days, even if a student is in a particular department, the cutting edge of knowledge requires drawing on other disciplines. And because of our comprehensive excellence, students realize that they're going to be able to do work at Berkeley that they wouldn't be able to do at Harvard or at MIT or name your prestigious school. And so we're doing incredibly well. Then I want to talk about our professional students as well because these are now the majority of our graduate students. Talking of narratives that I think have got messed up, there has been in the last few years a very unfortunate narrative that we are increasing our professional programs, the numbers of them and the students enrolled in each to raise revenues. That is not the reason why we're increasing our numbers of professional students. We're doing it because increasingly professional degrees are entry-level qualifications. I really wanted to ensure that the University of California is providing citizens of the state the opportunity to study and top rate professional programs because if we aren't doing this, then they're going to seek out professional education in institutions that don't give them such great education. I think it's a responsibility of us as a public institution and it's a responsibility for us to be able to be graduating students who are well-prepared to actually support the needs of California employers. So I think things are really good. When I met with both of you to sort of prepare for this event today, there was a phrase I think Fiona, you brought up but I'd like you both to talk about it and that was the integration, a vertical integration of our learning communities and at first I was like, oh, jargon, what does that mean? But thinking about it, there's some interaction, there's the GSIs but it's suggested that there's still sort of two separate bodies that we want to integrate and bring together. What's the vision for that? What's driving that? And what were you referring to? Well, I'm going to let Kathy respond to that because she kind of coined the phrase around here. So I don't want to steal her thunder because it's very visionary and Kathy deserves the credit for it. Yeah, Kathy, if you could start off but I'd also like to hear your perspective. Kathy deserves the credit. So part of the, I'll back up and say one thing I didn't answer or previous question which is, one of the things that we're really focused on is discovery as the organizing principle for the undergraduate education. The only way we're going to be able to really do discovery in the broadest possible way at Berkeley given the numbers of undergraduates and the numbers of latter faculty is to leverage one of the assets of a research university which is, our graduate students, our postdocs, our emeritus faculty. That vertical learning community which has learning going in both directions on any kind of level is part of how we will actually achieve the ability for every undergraduate to have a discovery experience which is ultimately where we want to go. And that discovery experience is really one that a student is initiating a project in their area of passion and they need mentoring for that and guidance and that can come from any one of these layers and I'll add also many of our staff actually have the capacity to also provide that mentorship depending on the kind of project that a student wants to be engaged in. So that's really what we're talking about there and that mentoring, that role of mentoring from a, if you think about it to have our graduate students and postdocs involved in that, that's a lifelong skill. In any professional setting, as you move up the ranks, you have a responsibility to mentor your younger colleagues and so it's something that we all need to know how to do and what better place to learn it than a place like Berkeley. So I'll add to that and in my formal life I was an undergraduate dean so I've been deeply engaged in undergraduate education as well. And I just add that one of the reasons why discovery is important is that some people in this room can remember 40 years ago and if you think about the world 40 years ago, we with our undergraduates are thinking about how to prepare them for careers that will extend for 40 plus years and we've got no idea what the world's gonna be like and so discovery is important because it teaches students that they themselves can keep on learning. We can't prepare them for what's there, we have to prepare them to keep on preparing themselves and that's why it's important. That's an element of course of the research that doctoral students are deeply engaged in and so they are further up the ladder in terms of knowing how to find out things for themselves and how to create knowledge actually. So in addition to the pedagogic benefits of the discovery experience, one of the things that's very much on my mind is actually the well-being of doctoral students in particular, my professional students as well but the doctoral students are here for longer and work-life balance issues because when you're in a long degree program, it's easy and the nature of research is such that it's actually fairly easy to kind of develop a cloistered isolation which is not good for people in terms of their mental health and so the engagement with undergraduates and with postdocs in these vertical communities also helps graduate students get out of their silos. So it really is a win-win in terms of the benefits for everybody. You both mentioned sort of, talked about what you're doing in ways that sort of reveal the breadth and depth of your experience and so I wanna ask you some time-related questions. In both of your areas, how have you seen students change? I mean, we've seen this emergence of this unfortunate notion of the snowflake student. There have been books written about the coddling of the American mind and that we're protecting students and they're looking, they're coming to campuses, looking to be protected from ideas they may find offensive or harmful. What have you seen in your time here and how have students changed or have they changed at all? I'm feeling, let me start with you. So, I mean, students have changed because their experiences were totally changed. I mean, when I started teaching here, for the first few years, I was here, there was no internet. Imagine that. I do almost on a daily basis. I say, gosh, I love Wikipedia, you know. I love being able to get information but we didn't used to be able to do this. So, students today, they know how to navigate that space and so there are spaces that students in the early 80s navigated that today's students aren't as adept at doing. So, they're different but the way that we do scholarship is also evolving and they are still every bit as bright, excited to be here and so it's our job as educators to make them where they are. You know, it's completely futile to say, oh, well, you don't have those skills that the students in the 1980s had. But instead, we need to recognize the skills that they do have, their engagement, their ability to do teamwork and that opens up the doors to do very exciting things. So, you know, we always have to think about what you have, not what you may not have. That's my view. I think what do you see? I mean, are we being called to provide different sort of environment than we have in the past or students changed in that regard? I think there is, I think it's a complicated space because I would say on the one hand, we probably have a sub-population of students who have had many obstacles removed from their pathways by their caring families and don't actually know how to navigate a tough situation, don't know how to fend for themselves in a certain way because they actually haven't been, have those skills developed in them and some of them expect that we will protect them from an uncomfortable idea simply because they've been protected from them all their lives and from my perspective, universities are the place to be unsettled and be challenged. On the other hand, we also have students who have met with an amazing array of life challenges and for whom this is one more complicated and perhaps somewhat difficult space that they actually in some ways have the skills to navigate in certain ways and lack them in others. So, I actually see that we have two or three different populations of students, one who've had to be resilient, maybe they've been the family translator, maybe they've been a breadwinner within their families and they're coming here and still trying to do many of those things, the ones who've had everything, what I call them lawn mowing parents, that every obstacle is smoothed out of the way in front of them and they really lack certain kinds of skills. So, to balance what Fiona said, it's helping them see what they do have, it's helping them to see what they need to learn and also helping them grapple with the uncomfortable, with the unsettling, with the fact that they're gonna come in here and meet different people and have their worldviews rocked in many ways and rather than protecting them from that, I think we need to help them have the skills to respond to that in appropriate ways and build on that and learn how to grapple with those uncomfortable concepts, ideas, conversations and that's not easy. But I think it's something we need to do. So, I wanna stay with the experiential theme just for a second. Given how long both of you have had careers in academia, we're living through a remarkable and disturbing moment, the whole Me Too movement that's really putting the spotlight on women in the workplace, women in the culture, women in our society. I've heard the Chancellor talk on many occasions about what it was like to be one of 3%, which is alarming and profound. And I'm wondering what changes you've seen in terms of being a woman on faculty or in a position of leadership, how things have changed and what hasn't changed enough if you could talk about it. Captain, let me start with you on that one. It's an interesting question, one I've often reflected on. I did some things that I think many young women were advised not to do. I had two kids while I was getting my doctoral degree. And I basically had one as gotten my masters and then when I went and talked to the chair of our division at Stanford and I said, I'm gonna do my PhD. And he said, great. And I said, and by the way, I'm gonna have another kid while I'm here. Do you have a problem with that? The answer was, no. So, I just did what I needed to do. And I think some of it sometimes is just having the courage to indicate what you're going to do and follow through on that. I will also say having mentors. I had two mentors here at Berkeley and actually in some ways a third. Both of my mentors were men. One was in public health, one was in engineering. They were essential to my getting through the first part of being an assistant professor. So, I don't care whether they're men or women, having a mentor or mentors was life-saving and hugely important. My third mentor was actually my mother-in-law who was on the faculty as well and had five kids, an amazing career. So, there was a role model that I could really follow and felt supported by in a personal way. So, the other thing I would say is very different is when I went to have my third child, this campus had a six-month maternity leave and they had decided to make it a year. And there was complications around that and I had to sort of had to fight around that. I'm happy to say today that not only do our young faculty have two opportunities to stop at 10 o'clock and there's paternity leave as well as maternity leave and we've extended it to graduate students, tobacco students. Graduate students can have academic leave and they also have, if they are graduate student employees they have some paid leave as well. So, huge change in terms of our family-friendly policies which are real on this campus at least for faculty and graduate students. And I think that's been a huge change at Berkeley and I think we actually led the way in making those changes. Well, I think things have changed for the better. When I came here, I was the third female faculty member in the College of Engineering. So, this wasn't like 3%, I would have loved it, it would have been 3%. I think I took us from slightly below 1% to slightly above 1%. And I was the only female faculty member in my department for 19 years. I was actually the department chair when the second female faculty member arrived. So, with that said, I mean my colleagues were actually very, very supportive of me. And that was a good thing because I was totally clueless. I came, I was educated in England, I had no idea what the American- You came here and you can be clueless too, so. You know, I had no idea what the American education system was like, you know, I didn't really know why people were, say, talking about tenure and hushed tones and things like this. So, I really needed an awful lot of mentoring to actually understand what the whole program was about.  But, you know, I never felt that I was discriminated against. And I was actually very lucky in that I had quite a few colleagues who had daughters who were about my age. And it appeared to me that they were in fact thinking, I wouldn't like people to treat my daughter in the way that some of the women around here are treated. I'm going to treat her, you know, sort of better than that. So, they were really sort of very, very sweet. And I sometimes think, because I'm in an academic field, I'm, you know, mining isn't renowned for gender diversity. And, but there are quite a few fairly prominent women academics. And I often wonder whether perhaps if there are so few women in the field, then men don't feel threatened. And then they actually, it brings out the better side and they're supportive. Because many of my peers kind of in my academic field also have felt very supported by male people, male colleagues. But, unlike Kathy, I didn't, I have my children until I actually had tenure. And I actually, when I was expecting my daughter, I went to my department manager and said, so, you know, what are the arrangements for maternity leave? And she said, I don't think there are any for faculty. So I would then went and wasted a perfectly good sabbatical on what I subsequently discovered when my daughter was nine months old. I could have actually taken some maternity leave, but nobody knew about it. Things aren't like that now. And that's actually really, really good. So, yeah, let me, let's just continue this just for a second and bring it into the present tense. Totally level playing field now, still challenges, still work to be done. Where are we? I'd say there's still work to be done.  She's done a huge amount of research on women in the workplace. And, you know, one sees regular statistics and Angie Stacey does research on our faculty and we're still seeing that women, or shall I say mothers, are reporting spending much more time in total on work and household responsibilities than male employees in similar titles. And until that is really level, things aren't totally level. I would agree with that. I mean, I think there are, again, there are improvements. One of the statistics that's interesting is, you know, prior to our introduction of family-friendly policies, when a woman went up for tenure, she had zero kids, that would have been Fiona, and men had an average of something like 1.5 or something. And once we introduced the changes in the maternity policy or leave policy, parental leave policy, now the numbers are almost identical for men or women when they achieve tenure. So that's a huge change. But again, I think there are many areas where we need to see things. We see more women in that associate professor's stuck place, not getting the second book out for two reasons. One, they're often asked to take on certain leadership roles in the campus, and that sort of often can slow them down. And then secondly, they have the family responsibilities. And so those two things tend to work towards making the pathway a little bit more challenging for women. But things are definitely better. I will say though, my field, mechanical engineering, I think still has 3% doctoral students. I don't know why, it's a great field. So we have work to do in that area. I will say that when my children were small, I used to love business travel. It was so relaxing. And that, you know, I didn't have to worry about it, anybody else, I could go to sleep when I wanted to. And then when I came back, my husband was really grateful to see me. So if we're talking about gender as sort of a differentiator of experience and it remains so, to bring it back to the students for a second, we've also seen a lot of anecdotal and even some sort of database reporting about students and basic needs, about the differentiation of experience due to socioeconomic differences. What are you seeing, let me start with you, Kathy, what are you seeing in the undergraduate realm? To what degree is it a significant problem? And how do you think the campus is, what kind of job are we doing in terms of responding, whether it's about food, shelter, and other supportive services for students with basic needs? So everybody has basic needs. I mean, all students need a place to sleep, food to eat, those kinds of things. And I think we're, I wanna put a framing around this. I think we wanna create a healthy campus where there's an emphasis on wellness in a broad sense and that means sleep, food, nutrition. There's a subset of our student population that really runs on the ragged edge. And we're still unpacking what that is because we offer fairly generous financial aid packages to many of our students. I think there's two populations that have a harder time. One is the population of students who are still helping to support families at home or have dependence of their own here. And we don't cover that in the financial aid package. We cover what their cost as a student is, but they're often that second job is not to pay their rent, that second job is off of money that's being sent home. And that's an interesting challenge. Another one is cultural inhibition around taking out loans. Our average student debt is remarkably low for the population we have I think we're inching up to about $17,000 or $18,000 at the end of their time, that's out of their self-help. But that's just for the students who have debt. And that's just for the students who have debt. There's a huge part of our students who don't have any debt at all. So some of them are fine, then there's the group that probably should have taken out student loans and have compromised their experience here because they're afraid to go into debt. So they don't have debt, but they've also, other things, and I will say this, for every student who stays that extra semester and doesn't graduate in four, that extra semester costs them in ways that I don't think we talk about enough. It costs them in terms of foregone earnings. It adds to their debt burden. It's a risky business, and if you actually look at the data on that, it's sobering what that extra semester costs. And so part of our dialogue and thinking about this is actually helping them see the best way that they can both leverage their experiences here, really use their summers, for example, for certain kinds of experiences or making up courses or adding to their toolbox. But graduating in four carries a lot of benefits that we don't talk about, and this is one of them. The other population that I wanna say is squeezed is our middle-class population, whose parents, so it's not so much the student as much as their parents are squeezed because FAFSA works really well for our low-income, the federal financial aid form, whatever that, it's called a FAFSA. And when you put your application in, there's a really strong benefit for students who are, whose family incomes are under $80,000. Between $80,000 and $70,000, it's basically like every dollar that's available is supposed to go to your kid's education, and never mind every other cost that you may have. And then above $170,000, you probably have a ways to do that. And so there's another group that we don't talk about very much, which is this middle-class population that the burden is on their families more than it is on the student, and that's another population to be aware of and to think about. And then Fiona. What do you see in your realm, Fiona? Do we have a lot of graduate students who are really struggling to make ends meet? So we've got different, here I need to distinguish between my different student populations. So if we look at the professional students, first of all, many of them have been out of college for a few years, sometimes a decade or so, and are more established. Quite a lot. We've got quite a few who are online, so they're continuing to live with their families, and so on. Those students typically fund their education either from savings or they take out loans, but they aren't eligible for the federal aid that benefits undergraduate. I've had conversations with many professional students who basically said, I'm paying so much in tuition, I'm jolly well gonna make sure that I eat properly and that I live somewhere reasonable because that way I can make the best of my tuition. I'm gonna come to class well fed and well rested so that I get my money's worth. So those students are kind of taking the long view, particularly in programs that then have the promise of high income. Within my doctoral students, there are really two distinctive sort of sectors. One is students who are in STEM fields where there is a significant ability for the student to be paid as a graduate student researcher while they're doing the research on their doctorate. So those students can go through their programs pretty quickly and they are usually fairly well supported. Obviously they're not living in luxury but they have adequate support. There are also students in what sort of generalizes the book based disciplines where there is very little funded extramural research and as such these students don't have very much of an opportunity to be employed as a graduate student researcher while doing the work that's going to go into their dissertations. Those students are supported on combination of fellowships and also serving as graduate student instructors. And so they have less time to work on their research so it takes them longer so they're in sort of challenge circumstances for longer. And then kind of overarching all of this in terms of basic needs is the fact that there's a chronic shortage of housing for graduate students. So Berkeley is only housing at the moment 9% of its graduate students, principally students with families. And so the rest of vying for housing on the sort of free market and it's very expensive. So when they're paying rent, then they don't have money available for food and the like. So I'm really glad that the campus is moving to increase the amount of housing available for grad students. So we're gonna move to some questions in the audience. We're gonna stick with the theme of money and finance in this first, and this is a two-parter. Where does private philanthropy have the greatest impact in each of your areas? And connected to that, what is your core message to the alumni community at Berkeley regarding their engagement and investment in our faculty and students? Kathy, let me start with you. Where does private, where's the greatest bang for the buck in private philanthropy? And what's your basic message to alumni and donors? That's an interesting question. Biggest bang for your buck. I think, well, probably at the undergraduate level, the biggest bang for the buck, I'm gonna say that there's sort of two places where I'd like to see this. One is just purely undergraduate financial aid. That just, the more we have in our own control for financial aid, the better we are able to support our students. So that's the, if I'm gonna say one big thing, I mean, I would like to see us have, I'm gonna probably shake up anybody from UDAR, but I'd like to see us have a $500 million goal for financial aid in the next capital campaign, at least, and that's undergraduate financial aid. That's not even going to graduate fellowships. And then the second piece of that is support for students to be able to engage in the discovery experiences. So whether that's an offset to their expected contribution, their student contribution, their loan and work expectation, monies to travel, monies to actually engage in discovery so that there's an equitable playing field so that all students have that opportunity, not just those that are well resourced. So those are the, that's probably the biggest thing that I would see. And I think alumni engagement is essential. This is a great place to invest in. And I would love to see all of us making that, making an investment in this institution. It is a remarkable engine of opportunity. Our ability to move a student from the lowest quintile financially to the top is one of the best in the country. Again, our students leave with less debt than they do in many institutions. It's comparable to my alma mater, which is a private institution. I think that commitment, paying it forward for those of us that benefited, I think is an important part of what we do. And every gift matters. I mean, it matters if you can make an annual contribution. It matters if you can make a capital contribution. Both of those are important to the future of this institution and to making our students be able to take advantage of everything this place has to offer. You're on the same deal. Where would you like to see? What do you think the primary goal for philanthropic contributions to your part of the world should be and what the message is? Well, I've got, in terms of bank for the buck, I have so many needs that I'm great. I'm grateful. I can ensure that anything that anybody is inclined to fund will have a big impact. So, certainly fellowship support for students is enormously important. Just to put in perspective the magnitude of that need. If we look at the amount of support that we're providing to doctoral students at the moment and the amount of money that we need to actually bring each of them up to the stipend that NSF considers an appropriate one, which is I think it's 33 or 34,000 a year. We need an additional 1.4 billion with a B in endowment. So, any contributions will help. But there's a big, big hole that needs filling. But there also, one can have incredible impact by supporting some of our incredible current use activities. One of my pushes is to provide more programming for grad students on professional development so that they're prepared for a variety of careers, not just academic careers. And that's actually a great place for alumni to be engaged because as an academic institution we have this institutional bias where we kind of convey to our students that sort of the most common career path is actually being professors, which is actually not true, the statistics bear this out. And having alumni engaged to actually inform our students about their own career paths and success is an incredibly powerful way to get engaged. And that complements the expertise that we have as an academic institution. And so here's a question that came from the audience that's right in that same vein, but for a different part of our stakeholder set. And the question is this, is there any plan or program that staff can get involved in so that they can mentor undergraduate students in the areas of discovery experience or mental support or whatever? Just a rough look, yes, we predominantly a staff audience here. And I think people love this place and want to be more involved. What kind of opportunities are there? Well, we're really beginning to explore that area and think about it because we think that there is an opportunity for staff. We had a conversation yesterday around housing and one of the areas for greater development for the RD staff working with our students and just thinking about their mentoring role in that. But there are many opportunities that we're talking about, especially staff who are in either like the technical fields in IT and other areas. That's an area where we have students who really have great ideas and want to do things. That's just one example. I don't want to limit it to that. But I think we can, as we begin to roll out discovery and think about the dimensions we're thinking about for discovery experiences. Just say briefly, classic undergraduate research projects where you have a senior thesis or a portfolio you develop. Creative ones where perhaps your project is a performance or co-curating a museum exhibition, something along those lines an entrepreneurial project or community engagement project. And you could imagine in certain areas there are opportunities for staff all along the line to mentor not just as I said, the classic things that have a faculty member as a mentor. And I just say that throughout my career I have seen staff be incredibly effective mentors for both undergraduate and graduate students on an informal basis. It's something that has risen organically kind of within departments where something clicks between the student and the staff person. I've seen this, for example, staff who are mothers kind of mentoring grad students who've had babies and just kind of helping them out. And sometimes there's a student who's come from a non-traditional background and there's a staff member who can relate to them and they provide a little bit of just help and advice that they're there to listen to. And that's incredibly powerful in terms of helping the student feel that they belong in the institution that they're valued. And frankly just helping them navigate some of these difficult situations. Great, so we're gonna go back to the undergraduate world here. So as many people may know, but not all, so I'm gonna ask you to talk a little about it, there's part of the strategic planning for the campus is sort of a new vision for undergraduate education. So I'd like you just to describe briefly what that vision is, what it entails, but also address the following question here too about staff. How will staff be involved in the implementation of the undergraduate education and related recommendations of the strategic plan? It states here that obviously that staff run facilities, scheduling support the campus in all sorts of aspects and their input is critical at the planning stage of the initiatives. So I think the question is, how are staff gonna be able to provide input and participate in what is sort of this new emerging vision for the future of our undergraduate education here? So a little bit about what it is and how to be involved. How to be involved. So the vision really as I mentioned briefly in the beginning was the idea of discovery as the organizing principle for the undergraduate experience. So from the time that they begin to engage with the campus in, before they even are admitted, that they are choosing Berkeley because of the potential for the discovery experience, the potential to co-create with faculty, the potential to pursue their passions and to make that visible and the reason that students are choosing Berkeley over another institution. Then moving through into their very first experience, organizing our courses, things like Berkeley Connect, discovery courses, introductory courses that have them explore something. I was talking with a colleague yesterday who's introduction bioengineering course involves having students look at a product or something that's been developed and sort of go back in time and understand how did that product evolve? What were the decisions that were made that ended up with that? And what were the alternatives? Was there a better way to achieve that same outcome? That's a freshman course. That's really exciting because it starts right away getting students thinking about what it means to discover something. And then he said they actually tie that then to what they're expecting their students to do in the capstone. So that's the idea that there's sort of an arc of discovery in the curriculum. We go from this beginning, we move through the various stages, building capacity, building skills and then finally have them have a discovery experience that is a capstone in what they do. So that's the vision of at least the academic portion and that surrounding that would be all of the things that make that possible and the potential for them having discovery through an experience with the Public Service Center or helping them have an internship that helps them guide what they might ultimately do. So there's a larger landscape around not just the academic piece but all the other pieces that support those developments. So staff are gonna be really critical in say the career center where helping, actually I've heard from all the undergraduate deans that they are desperate for better support around internships because they're being inundated by requests from students and none of us know completely how to do that. So that's gonna take a partnership between the colleges and the career center to sort of build that out in a meaningful way. Same thing with the Public Service Center. Interesting, faculty who love it, engage with it, use it, students who are involved in it and I have faculty who didn't even know we had one. That was an interesting outcome of some of the conversations I had over the summer. So we have work to do in terms of what are the resources and support and again, staff in those programs become vitally important for that. Those are just two of the direct examples I can think of but many, many other places. And I think we'll be working on ways in which staff can engage on one project. Like I said, we mentioned this major maps project is gonna be a partnership with the registrar's office, the academic guide, with some advisors who can help us work on those tools with folks in other areas of the campus to be involved with that. So stay tuned. Let me just say one thing quickly. This rollout, this development is a five to 10 year process. So this is not gonna happen overnight and we're all stretched. So the idea is we'll chunk off things each year that we think we can make progress on. So it's just not gonna happen in one fell swoop. It's gonna be an evolving process and this year we're focused on major maps, the first year experience and some strategies around diversity and admitting a diverse class and putting in the stakes to become an HSI. Those are kind of the big picture things were. So last, we only have time for another question or two and I have some really good questions here so I'm gonna ask those people who submitted a question and didn't get it answered if you want to come up, just write your name on the back of the card.  The email afterwards. I apologize that we didn't get to everything. So last two, the next one is about rankings and this person asked that the recent US news ranking put Berkeley behind UCLA. Settle. Do we know why there was a drop in Kenwee? They put in quotes, recover. So I should just note that actually Berkeley didn't drop. UCLA came up but having said that, this is the season of schizophrenia where the rankings come into our office. So that's a good ranking.  And they seem to be all over the map. How do you guys look at rankings and how important is it and help us with our neurosis about this? So let me say that this US news and world report was not on the graduate stuff so. Thank you, Yona. Well. It's the same thing. I mean, when you dig down into the surveys, the methodology is phenomenally important on the outcome of the rankings and that's what happened with the US news and world report. because, well, you can chime in. Basically, they changed two weighting factors on two of the categories that disadvantaged Berkeley. They were ones that we were so, academic reputation got downgraded. We are still, from a graduate perspective, we're in the top four, and sometimes we're one, sometimes we're two, and it depends on the field. But they downgraded the overall weight on that, which hurt us, helped UCLA, who's not as strong as we are. And then there was one other factor where the same thing happened. So, let me just say, this is all about selling the report, the magazine. So they tweak this all the time. I've been through this on my alma mater when I was on the board, and we got slammed because our endowment per student as a top level arts college is much less than Williams-Welsley. So those things, in one year we went from being fourth because of the weight on academic rankings and things to being like ninth, because they switched the financial framework and had nothing to do again with the student experience or the academic ranking. Really quickly, is there a ranking that you care about that you follow?  But let me just say, just as an example of how crazy some of these are, there's one of the rankings in Asia. Recently ranked Berkeley as number 11 in the world in mining. Do you know how many faculty members on this campus do mining? That's me. That's me, number 11, yay. So all that shows is that it's totally crazy because we're not that strong on mining, I can tell you. All right, last question. We're not gonna let Fiona go without taking a little bit of a victory lap because, and this question is gonna help us do that. Fiona, you were about to retire, I'm told. What is the one thing you're most proud of from your tenure as dean and what is the major issue that your successors should tackle? It's gonna be the last question. I think that there's the same things. I think that I've improved the funding for individual students and we've raised a lot of philanthropic money and I think that we have got things going to change the conversation about the careers that doctoral recipients should be receiving and these are issues that my successor is gonna have to continue on because we're not there. We've made a lot of progress, I'm proud of it but there is sure a lot of work to get to be done. Got it, so just to wrap up, the next Canvas conversation is gonna be on October 15th with the Vice-Chance of the Research, Randy Katz. I have to say this was, as Fiona would say, a jolly good conversation and I really wanna thank both of you for being open and out there, thank you.


Hi everyone, this is Alice Gao. In the previous video, I started talking about the optimal policies of the grid world. Depending on the change in the reward function, the optimal policy of the grid world would change to carefully balance the risk and reward. I talked about the first two cases in the previous video. So the case when life is quite unpleasant, and the case when life is extremely painful. So as we've covered the two worst cases already, life can only get better from there. So in this video, let's look at the rest of the three cases when life gets better, better, and eventually it gets really good. Here's the first case. Life is still quite unpleasant, but it's better than the unpleasant one we had at the beginning. So in this case, we have a fixed value for the reward is minus 0.04. This is our original value I gave you when I introduced the grid world. Let me remind you what the optimal policy looked like when life is slightly worse than this one we're looking at. So when life is quite unpleasant, so worse than the case we're looking at, we have this optimal policy right here where the agent is trying to take the shortest route to the plus one state. And while chasing, while trying to get to the plus one state, there is some risk of falling into the minus one state by accident, and the agent is willing to take this risk. Given that, let's look at this case where our life is slightly better than that. Same as before, let me give you some descriptions of the optimal policy and let you guess what it looks like. So the optimal policy for this world is conservative. Because our life is slightly better, the cost of each action is not as bad as before. So the agent prefers to take the long way around to avoid reaching the minus one state by accident. Given this, think about what the optimal policy looks like and then keep watching for the answer. Here's the answer. So there are, same as before, two paths to get to the plus one state. But the bottom one is always safer. So that means if we are already on the bottom path, we are going to go straight towards the plus one state. The top path is not as safe. So in this case, our strategy is conservative, which means if we end up on the top path, we don't want to go there. We want to go the safe route to make sure we don't fall into the minus one state. So this means that from the start we'll try to go down and if we by accident goes to the right, then we're going to try to course-correct and go left. And same thing if we by accident somehow gets to state one three, then we're going to go left again. And same thing for S14. You can see all of these arrows going left are trying to course-correct saying that we don't want to go the short route. We want to go back to the beginning and go along the safe route through the bottom to get to the plus one state. And then for S23, we're going to try to go there. So you can see this policy is more conservative than before. We're not willing to take as much risk because we're willing to explore a little bit more to try to get to the better goal state. But you can also see that this is not the most conservative policy because for example, if we look at the action we have in state S23, we're choosing to go down and by doing this, there is still a chance that we will step into the minus one state and that's it. And similarly for the state S14, we're choosing to go left. With this action, there is still 10% chance that we're going to go down and get into the minus one state. So these are certainly not the most conservative option but this is more conservative than before. Here's the next case. Our reward is even better. So it could be up to zero and the minimum we will get to is minus 0.02 something. So this is even better than the minus 0.04. So again, here is a description of the optimal policy. In this case, life is only slightly dreary. It's not so bad at all and the agent takes no risk. It wants to avoid falling into the minus one state by accident as much as possible and in return, in order to achieve this the agent is willing to bump into the wall many times in order to avoid falling into the minus one state. So given this description, think about what the optimal policy looks like and then keep watching for the answer. The optimal policy in this case is almost the same as the previous case. So for the previous, let me highlight the part that's the same first. So in the previous case we will try to go down first. This is the safe route and then if we manage, if we by accident get into the other route we will try to course correct. So if we get into S12 or S13 we're going to try to go left and we're willing to go the long way to ensure we're on a safe route. Now this policy is different from the previous one for two states. One is S23 and one is S14. The difference is that life gets better. The better life is, the more conservative we are. The better life is, we're willing to explore for a longer period of time we really want to avoid falling into the bad state, the minus one state. So in S23 we're going to avoid falling into the S minus one state by going left. You can see that if we go left it's only possible for us to remain in the same state or go up or down but it's not possible for us to go to our behind. Our transition probability does not allow us to turn 180 degrees. So there's no chance to fall into the minus one state. Similar for this for the state S14 we are going to choose to go up. Going up is the safest the best way to ensure that we never fall into the S minus one state. As you can see given these two choices there's zero probability for us to fall into the zero one state. It's simply not possible given the transition probabilities. But the consequence is that because we're directly going towards a wall so we might have to bump into the wall quite a few times before we accidentally get into the right direction. So for S14 we might have to do this many times before we end up going left. And for S23 we might have to bump into the left wall many times before we end up either going up or down. But because the reward is relatively high so the agent is willing to do this to make sure that it gets to the plus one state eventually. Let's look at our final case. This in this case the reward of reaching any non-goal state is positive. So R of S is strictly greater than zero. This reminds me of a friend I made during my PhD. So I used to go to lunch and dinner with her a lot. And whenever we get to the place and the food is ready then she would always look at the food and say, Alice, life is good. So this is exactly the case when life is good. So given this case I don't think I need to say too much about this case because it's quite intuitive the reward is positive. So given this take a guess think about what the optimum policy looks like and then keep watching for the answer. So what does the agent wants to do in this case? Well every step the agent takes in this world it gets a positive reward say a candy. If you get a candy every step you take would you ever want to leave this world? Probably not. So the goal of the agent in this world is to stay in this world forever as long as it's in this world and it takes any step it's going to keep accumulating positive reward. And we could potentially accumulate an unlimited amount of positive reward. Therefore the agent's primary objective is to avoid both goal states. This is funny because previously we were trying to avoid one of the goal states because it's bad but we still want to get to the other goal state but now we want to avoid both of them. Well we already know how to avoid the top one so as long as we go directly away from that goal state then we'll never get into it and similarly we can use similar strategy to avoid the bottom one so as long as we go left we're going to avoid the plus one state. For any other state really does not matter which direction we go as long as we stay in this world. So we can represent that by saying any direction works. So what I do here is that the optimal policy says for all of these other states I don't care what the action is. Any action is optimal. That's everything for this video. In this video I've shown you a couple more examples of the optimal policy for different reward functions. We've made some interesting observations about how the optimal policy changes based on changes in the reward function. I haven't told you how to solve the Markov decision process yet and how we can get these optimal policies. But I hope these examples sparked some interest so now you are more interested to learn how to solve a Markov decision process. Thank you very much for watching. I will see you in the next video. Bye for now.