PHOTO BY AARON WALBURG

Al Gore, former vice president and Nobel laureate, was ardently greeted by cheering students at the April 23 groundbreaking for old Naval Architecture, which will be refurbished to provide space for the College of Engineering and a new wing that will be home to the Richard C. Blum Center for Developing Economies. Gore is a longtime friend of Richard Blum (’59 MBA), the UC Regents chair and San Francisco philanthropist who founded the center in 2006 and will finance the renovation.

A multidisciplinary initiative that educates students to mobilize against poverty, the Blum Center supports projects—like the Darfur Cookstove and CellScope—to improve life for the world’s poor. The center’s minor in Global Poverty and Practice is the fastest-growing program concentration on campus, with more than 200 students from 30 different majors taking part. Engineering dean Shankar Sastry serves as the center’s faculty director.

Before joining Blum, Sastry and other campus dignitaries in ceremoniously tossing a shovelful of dirt, Gore praised Blum Center students for making a “commitment of the head and the heart” to address the inextricably linked crises of poverty and climate change. Go to http://blumcenter.berkeley.edu/news.

PHOTO BY AARON WALBURG