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Michele de Coteau:
Going beyond the call to help students succeed
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The daughter of a teacher who earned three graduate degrees at night school while working full-time, MEP director Michele de Coteau was devoted to her studies. Her role model was Shirley Jackson, the theoretical physicist who became the first black woman to earn a doctorate from MIT.
WENDY EDELSTEIN/UC BERKELEY PUBLIC AFFAIRS PHOTO
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It’s easy for the 33,000 students at Berkeley to get lost among the more than 15,000 faculty and staff that make the place tick. But Michele de Coteau (B.S.’88 MSE) stands apart from the crowd. She was singled out in a survey of undergraduates as one of Berkeley’s “everyday heroes,” remarkable employees who make day-to-day encounters memorable and give the campus experience a human face.
De Coteau is director of the Charles Tunstall Multicultural Engineering Program (MEP), designed to recruit underrepresented minority students to the College and make sure they thrive academically, complete their degrees and make a successful transition to graduate school and careers. Since the program’s inception in 1981, more than 1,000 underrepresented students have graduated in engineering, and many have gone on to earn graduate degrees, start their own businesses and hold leadership positions in industry and academia.
“My students are the best of the best,” de Coteau says. “They make me laugh, they make me proud, they make me cry, they drive me nuts. I never have a dull moment because they are so smart, challenging, inspiring, motivated, supportive and creative.” Her skill at inspiring students comes not only from her love of the job, de Coteau says, but also from her own Berkeley Engineering experience.
“I can relate to the students because I still remember what it was like to be an undergrad here,” she says. “I understand what they go through and help validate their experience. I tell them, ‘When you graduate as a Berkeley engineer, you can face anything the world throws at you.’” When she was a student in MSE, de Coteau participated in the program she now directs, one of several offered through the Center for Underrepresented Engineering Students (CUES). The MEP director at the time, Charles Tunstall, had a significant role in motivating her.
“He was my biggest cheerleader,” she says, “and that makes a difference in a place like Berkeley.” In 1988, she became the first Berkeley student in 25 years and the first American woman from Berkeley ever to win a Rhodes scholarship. She received her D.Phil. at Oxford, then returned to the Bay Area and taught MSE at Laney College before landing the MEP job.
De Coteau was one of 200 staff and faculty named by students responding to the undergraduate survey, conducted annually by the Office of Student Research, as someone who “went beyond the call of duty” on their behalf. All 200 individuals received personal letters from Chancellor Robert Birgeneau lauding their contribution.
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