Your Question Keepers are pleased to announce our First Annual Beary Awards: citations that we are honored to bestow on units whose participation in 2025 merited special distinction. But first, we would like to share a few reflections on our survey’s inaugural year.
The Bearometer’s first question, suggested to us by the Senate’s Faculty Welfare committee, asked “What is the single most important challenge to your overall welfare as a faculty member at Cal?” Fourteen more surveys followed, recording over 3000 candid responses from faculty across campus on issues central to our shared academic life.
Your Bearometer responses have become a valued source of insight at the highest levels of the University. They represent a unique channel through which rank-and-file faculty perspectives reach university leadership directly and at scale, offering:
- Frictionless information sharing: University leaders often lack timely, systematic feedback about how policies affect faculty in diverse disciplines, career stages, and work environments. The Bearometer lowers barriers to communication and provides a structured alternative to informal channels that tend to amplify the loudest or most senior voices.
- Faculty-led communication: By centering faculty-generated questions, the Bearometer complements longer, administration-framed instruments and helps surface concerns and priorities as faculty experience them.
- Honest perspectives: In a political climate that can discourage candor on difficult topics, the Bearometer’s anonymity enables forthright responses that would otherwise go unheard.
We are delighted to report that more than half of regular Berkeley faculty participated in the Bearometer in 2025, and our analysis shows that our responses are strikingly balanced across disciplinary areas and campus units.
Looking ahead, we are eager to make the Bearometer even more useful to both faculty and university leadership. We invite your anonymous feedback and suggested survey topics as we plan for a 2026 Bearometer with fresh questions and renewed energy.
Finally, as promised at the beginning of the year, we are recruiting new Question Keepers. If you would like to participate in shaping future surveys, we would be delighted to hear from you.
And now, without further ado, the 2025 Beary Awards. Note all awards are restricted to units with at least 50 faculty members, and apply to Bearometers 4-15, for which we have department information.
High Turnout Award: Political Science
We extend special gratitude to our colleagues in Political Science, whose response rate topped all units at 13.6%, including both regular faculty and emerita. Our political scientists know the value of participatory democracy.
Infinite Series Expansion Award: Physics
Our colleagues in the Physics department wrote free responses with the longest median length, at 74.5 words per free response.
Marginalia Award: English
For questions where a free response was optional, our English department colleagues were especially generous with their literate commentary, finding remarks to offer 55% of the time.
Economy Award: Economics
Our economist colleagues brought to their Bearometer participation a keen awareness of opportunity costs, choosing 78% of the time to do something other than writing optional free responses, and holding themselves to a median of 22 words per free response that they did write. They led the field in both categories.
Hemingway Award: School of Public Policy
Faulkner Award: School of Public Health
Our colleagues in the Goldman School wrote the shortest sentences, with a median of only 13 words per sentence, while our Public Health colleagues wrote the longest, with a median of 20.
Learned Other Hand Award: Law School
Berkeley’s legal eagles found the most reason to engage in dialectic with themselves, with each sentence containing an average of 0.23 contrast patterns like “however,” “whereas,” or “nevertheless.”
F*ck Nuance Award: Sociology
By contrast, our colleagues in Sociology were the most decisive, with only 0.10 contrast patterns per sentence.
Most likely to be redacted: [L&S Social Science Unit]
Our colleagues in [redacted department] distinguished themselves by earning redactions a staggering [censored fraction] of the time, more than doubling the rate achieved by the runners-up in [redacted College of Engineering unit]. Their high redaction rate owed in part to their blistering commentary on [forbidden topic].
We extend our hearty congratulations to all of the units that won this year and our thanks to every colleague who responded to a Bearometer survey in 2025. We look forward to reading many more of your thoughtful responses in 2026.
Happy holidays, Chris & Will
