Student-initiated courses have been a fixture of UC Berkeley's academic landscape since the early 1980s. Since that time, thousands of students have educated tens of thousands of their peers in subject areas ranging from dance practica to media studies to language instruction to breaking political issues.
Some classes that have first appeared as "DeCals" have gone on to become part of their departments' regular offerings (e.g. Tagalog); some have been passed on as DeCals continuously for over 15 years (e.g. Joy of Garbage); some provide departments with no other undergraduate presence an opportunity to draw undergrads into the field (e.g. West Wing and Public Policy); some have generated curriculum for the sponsoring professor's core classes and won the student facilitator the Departmental Citation (e.g. Intro to Carnivorous Plants). In short, student-initiated class topics can be as widely varied as those offered by faculty in the Freshman-Sophomore Seminar series, and they have the potential to offer the students who facilitate them, as well as their peers who take them, no less exceptional an educational experience.
Sponsoring a student-initiated class offers faculty the opportunity to provide rich research and pedagogical mentorship on a project which bears immediate fruit--an impact in the classroom, arguably the most relevant discursive space for undergraduates. Many students undertaking these projects are doing so as an opportunity to build research and teaching skills in anticipation of post-graduate work in the discipline. Most who launch such an undertaking have the kind of initiative, passion, and intellectual curiosity that characterize the best scholar-leaders; choosing to sponsor a DeCal means taking an active role in guiding and helping further develop this exciting energy!