We are an organization of both undeclared and declared astrophysics majors dedicated to creating a strong sense of community within the undergraduate Astronomy Department at UC Berkeley. We help students to become involved in the Astronomy Department while guiding them and providing resources for success.
About the Society
The Undergraduate Astronomy Society was formed by several third year astrophysics majors in 2015. UAS has two major goals: The first is to foster a sense of community between the undergraduates in the department as well as between undergrads, graduate students, post-docs, and faculty in general. The club has held a variety of socials and is planning more events to mix the different niches of the department.
The second goal is the dissemination of valuable information about the department and major, primarily to freshmen and sophomores but in some cases to juniors and seniors as well. Because most astrophysics majors don't take a class in the Astronomy department until their sophomore year, it is difficult for information about events, resources, and even requirements to reach these students. UAS hopes to facilitiate this information transfer by reaching out to those freshmen and sophomores and bringing them into the department environment, making sure they know about clubs like UAS and SESB (space exploration society), classes like the Python and IDL decal for introductory programming, who the student advisor is, etc.
Much of this information has been accumulated onto a student maintained wiki which can be accessed at kartp.astro.berkeley.edu. We highly recommend all astro and intended-astro majors to explore the wiki, which has often more comprehensive information about completing the major than the department website itself! Furthermore, the wiki is a collaborative effort, so anyone reading the wiki and feeling like they have something to contribute should make an account (must be done on a campbell hall computer) and contribute! To get involved with UAS, you can sign up to receive emails about events below, or check the events page.
While the Wiki serves as a large repository of in depth information, UAS has also put together several pages with overviews of the resources available to students pursuing the Astrophysics major. In particular, we highlight the python and idl decals, which allow astro majors to learn how to program- an essential skill for the upper division labs in the department as well as research. In addition, we have a directory with various points of contact within the department for different needs that may crop up as a student, from course selection advising to sexual harassment concerns to ideas for future UAS projects.
UAS is involved with putting on a variety of events, from socials, to poster/research presentations, to industry talks, to faculty/student lunches, and more. You can click here to access the events page and see full posts about these as these events as they are announced, or sign up to receive an email for them. The calander below also shows when these events will be taking place.
We are a student group acting independently of the University of California. We take full responsibility for our organization and this website - Copyright UAS 2016 | All Right Reserved
