Russell Launer
Name:
Russell Launer
Job Title:
Assistant Director
Joined the L&S Office of Undergraduate Advising in:
March 1977
What is your approach to advising?
To encourage and empower individual students in determining and meeting their intellectual wants, within the context of completing the University's academic requirements, for the college degree.
Education:
UC Berkeley, Elementary and Secondary Teaching Credentials, 1975
UC Berkeley, History, 1973
How did you get here?
Born and raised in La Habra, California (north Orange County about twenty miles form LA). Attended Cypress Community College before transferring to Berkeley in 1971. After graduate school, taught in the Burbank Public School system in 1975-76. Returned to the bay area in 1976 to get married.
What's your favorite part of your job?
Helping students help themselves.
Most unusual job you ever had:
My first job out of college was as warehouseman packing and loading boxes of cargo (TV antennas, cables, connectors, etc.) on trucks for local, regional, and national distribution. At the time, other than the owner, I was the only person in the entire operation with a college degree.
What's the best class you've ever taken?
American History to 1860. I took this course during my first year at community college. Ostensibly a lecture course, it was taught like a seminar. This was the first time in my college career when I felt that the success of a class depended a great deal on what I actually thought and said. Exhilarating and challenging. Course enrollment went from 50 to 9 students after one meeting because the instructor came into the first class and began by simply asking if anyone had any comments on, or questions about, what we had been assigned to read? When no one said anything, the instructor said he would see us at the next class and walked out. I learned more about what I thought about history and why in this class than ever before. This experience motivated me to major in History. I took two other history courses with this professor while I was at the community college. He remained a close friend of mine for many years thereafter. Needless to say that my peers viewed this instructor as very difficult and demanding. He looked like President James Garfield. It turned out that he had been educated at Cal and UCLA. He had degrees in English and History. The most important thing that I ever heard him say was: "A good way to judge intellect is by questions asked rather than answers offered." Several years later he switched from teaching history to cultural anthropology. I think that he valued both disciplines as interdisciplinary but felt anthropology to be more practical.
About me:
I am a sports enthusiast: played HS basketball; former manager of the year in the Orinda Baseball Association (1993); life-long and avid fan of professional and college baseball, football, basketball; now bowl and play golf for recreation, take Pilates classes and lift weights to stay healthy. Enjoy cooking and fine cuisine. Am an avid reader of non-fiction literature. Five children, three college graduates so far (Harvard, Cornell, Cal). Met my future wife at the Wells Fargo Bank on Bancroft Avenue.
What advice do you have for L&S students in general?
Put your own stamp on your college education. Make it personal. Your education is for a lifetime. Know the basic academic requirements so that you can work with them and gain as much of what you want as possible while earning a Berkeley degree. The undergraduate college years turn out to be the best opportunity to aggressively broaden one's academic and intellectual horizons. Take your education seriously, major in something that stimulates and challenges you to grow and change. Develop an appreciation for "the life of the mind," both yours and others.
