The dream of a Berkeley education should be within reach of every student admitted here — and for most of our history, this public ideal was unchallenged.

That paradigm shifted in recent years as tuition rates doubled and many families’ salaries failed to keep pace. At the same time, exceptional graduate students often choose other private universities that offer better fellowship packages.

Thanks to you, we raised $383.6 million for scholarships and fellowships, keeping Berkeley a gateway to opportunity for the best and brightest students, regardless of their financial means. We will not let their bold aspirations go unfulfilled.

Berkeley’s world-class faculty is second to none — and highly appealing to other universities. On top of that, state budget cuts put at risk our ability to recruit and retain the very best faculty.

Then along came the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

In 2007, on the eve of the campaign’s start, the Hewlett Foundation made a landmark challenge gift to establish 100 new endowed faculty chairs that would support teaching and research and attract top professors. It was both the largest private donation in Berkeley’s history and a catalyst for the campaign’s success.

Thanks to you, so many stepped forward, and we completed the challenge two years early — exceeding all expectations.

Berkeley’s grand total of chairs now stands at 474. Not only does your generosity help us secure the excellence — and future — of our esteemed faculty, it contributes to the vitality of public higher education worldwide.

In labs and classrooms across campus, professors and students are changing the world. Whether they are discovering ancient ancestors or black holes, they share a yearning for discovery, a mission to serve the public good, and a willingness to break the traditional boundaries of single disciplines to make things happen. It’s the Berkeley way.

Thanks to you, nowhere is Berkeley’s research preeminence more visible than in the 18 state-of-the-art facilities that were constructed or renovated during the campaign. The structures themselves matter less than what happens inside of them — creating promising technologies and services to address global poverty in the Blum Center for Developing Economies … developing biofuels that address our world’s energy challenges in the Energy Biosciences Building … or preventing the root causes of cancer, Alzheimer’s, HIV, and other diseases in the Li Ka Shing Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences.

Your support of research is vital to Berkeley’s future — and to improving the human condition.