The California Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (California Alliance) consists of the University of California, Berkeley; University of California, Los Angeles; Stanford University; and California Institute of Technology.

We work to ensure that underrepresented minority (URM) PhDs from our alliance institutions, in much larger numbers, aspire to and populate the ranks of the postdoctoral population, the faculty at competitive research and teaching institutions, the federally funded national laboratories, and scientific think tanks. The California Alliance will focus on increasing diversity in the academic fields with the greatest national underrepresentation of minorities: the mathematical, physical, and computer sciences; and engineering (MPCS&E).

The California Alliance recently held our inaugural annual retreat at Stanford University on April 4-5. The retreat, themed Leveraging Our Influence, brought together graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and faculty from the four institutions and national labs in California. The retreat focused on how to use the Alliance to build networks and foster mentorship and communication amongst our four universities.