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UC Berkeley professor to speak on public university funding crisis

Ananya Roy, a University of California at Berkeley professor who has worked to fight higher education budget cuts in her state, will speak at 4 p.m. Friday, March 26, at the University of Iowa Main Library's Shambaugh Auditorium. (Media-Newswire.com) - Ananya Roy, a University of California at Berkeley professor who has worked to fight higher education budget cuts in her state, will speak at 4 p.m. Friday, March 26, at the University of Iowa Main Library's Shambaugh Auditorium. The University Lecture Committee is presenting the lecture, "The Crisis of the Public Universities: Old and New Struggles and Solidarities." It is free and open to the public. Roy is a member of SAVE the University, a faculty group formed at UC Berkeley in response to the budget cuts and fee hikes, and of Solidarity Alliance, a collaboration between the faculty, student and worker movements at UC Berkeley. She will be speaking about the current plight of the public university given the present economic climate. Roy teaches at UC Berkeley, which is in a sense the front line in the battle to keep public universities intact, said Lecture Committee member Kathryn Lavezzo, associate professor in the UI Department of English in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Roy is a professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley, where she teaches in the fields of comparative urban studies and international development. She also serves as education director of the Blum Center for Developing Economies and as co-director of the Global Metropolitan Studies Center. In 2006, Roy was awarded the Distinguished Teaching Award, the highest teaching honor UC Berkeley bestows on its faculty. Also in 2006, Roy was awarded the Distinguished Faculty Mentors award, a recognition bestowed by the Graduate Assembly of UC Berkeley. In 2008, Roy was the recipient of the Golden Apple Teaching award, the only teaching award given by the student body. Most recently, Roy was named 2009 California Professor of the Year by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie