University of California

About UC San Diego

The University of California, San Diego (also referred to as UC San Diego or UCSD) is a public research university located in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California, in the United States. The university occupies 2,141 acres (866 ha) near the coast of the Pacific Ocean with the main campus resting on approximately 1,152 acres (466 ha). Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego is the seventh oldest of the 10 University of California campuses and offers over 200 undergraduate and graduate degree programs, enrolling about 22,700 undergraduate and 6,300 graduate students.

UC San Diego is organized into six undergraduate residential colleges (Revelle, Muir, Marshall, Warren, Roosevelt, and Sixth), three graduate schools (Jacobs School of Engineering, Rady School of Management and School of Global Policy and Strategy), and two professional medical schools (UC San Diego School of Medicine and Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences).UC San Diego is also home to Scripps Institution of Oceanography, one of the first centers dedicated to ocean, earth and atmospheric science research and education. UC San Diego Health, the region’s only academic health system, provides patient care, conducts medical research and educates future health care professionals.

The university operates 19 organized research units (ORUs), including the Qualcomm Institute (a branch of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology), San Diego Supercomputer Center and the Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind, as well as eight School of Medicine research units, six research centers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and two multi-campus initiatives, including the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. UC San Diego is also closely affiliated with several regional research centers, such as the Salk Institute, the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine, and the Scripps Research Institute. According to the National Science Foundation, UC San Diego spent $1.067 billion on research and development in fiscal year 2015, ranking it 6th in the nation.

UC San Diego faculty, researchers, and alumni have won 20 Nobel Prizes, eight National Medals of Science, eight MacArthur Fellowships, two Pulitzer Prizes, and three Fields medals. Additionally, of the current faculty, 29 have been elected to the National Academy of Engineering, 70 to the National Academy of Sciences, 45 to the Institute of Medicine and 110 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Recognised as a Public Ivy, UC San Diego is a highly regarded research institution, ranked 14th in the world by the Academic Ranking of World Universities, 15th in U.S. News & World Report 's 2017 global university rankings, 17th in the world by the Center for World University Rankings, 39th in the world by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, and 40th overall in the world by QS World University Rankings. UC San Diego is also ranked 9th among public universities and 38th among all universities in the United States according to U.S. News & World Report.

• Revelle College

  Revelle College is a community of over 3,800 UC San Diego undergraduate students who represent diverse cultures, backgrounds, and experiences. At Revelle College, we focus on our students and are proud of their successes, while they are here, and after they graduate. At Revelle, students pursue academic excellence and explore research opportunities with support from individualized student services, eminent faculty, and world-class libraries. Students also enjoy a wide array of co-curricular programs and activities

• John Muir College

  UC San Diego’s second college, John Muir College, admitted its first students in 1967. The remarkable life of the college's namesake, the nineteenth-century nature writer and founder of the Sierra Club, continues to inspire and inform the college’s vision and core values. An inventor, businessman, and environmentalist, John Muir was a risk-taker and a remarkable person who forged his own path.

  Hence, the college’s motto, “Celebrating the Independent Spirit,” expresses our wish that all our students lead varied, successful, committed, and self-directed lives. In this spirit, the college’s GE requirements are the most flexible of all six colleges, offering students from every major maximum freedom to choose courses that meet individual goals and interests within a framework that insures breadth and depth of knowledge across three major disciplinary areas.

• Thurgood Marshall College

  Thurgood Marshall College, formerly known as Third College, was founded in 1970 in a fervent period of robust, social change in the United States and the world. From its beginning, the college has enriched the lives of students with a powerful commitment to the development of scholars as both professionals and engaged citizens. In 1993, the college was named in honor of former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Justice Marshall is well known for his profound dedication to educational opportunity for all, civil rights, freedom of speech, women’s rights, and the constitutional right to privacy. The college maintains cordial ties with the Marshall family based in Virginia.

• Earl Warren College

  Earl Warren College was established in 1974.  Named after the former California Governor and Chief Justice of the United States, the College continues the legacy of Earl Warren by encouraging students to explore the relationship between leadership and social justice.

  Warren College students represent all majors offered at UC San Diego, and the college motto, Toward a Life in Balance, serves as a guiding principle for our core courses in Ethics and Society, general-education requirements, and approach to living and learning in a vibrant community.

• Eleanor Roosevelt College

  The defining theme of ERC is captured by our motto: "Developing world citizens through scholarship, leadership, and service."  Our guiding spirit is Eleanor Roosevelt, a woman of passion, intelligence, and independence who dedicated her life to public service at home and abroad.  Through our core curriculum, Making of the Modern World, as well as co-curricular activities ranging from the Global Marketplace and intercultural workshops to Sunday Suppers at International House and alternative spring breaks held across the globe, students at ERC expand their knowledge and explore their identities and commitments as global citizens.

• Sixth College

  Inaugurated at the dawn of a new century, Sixth College prepares our students to become dynamic and engaged citizens of the 21st century —innovative, creative and interconnected. Our core academic programs develop skills in both traditional and emergent media literacy, emphasizing essential writing fundamentals, as well as, the latest forms of digital communication. The themes of Culture, Art and Technology are built into all of our extra-curricular and residential programs, and reinforce our commitment to experiential learning.

History of UC San Diego

When the Regents of the University of California originally authorized the San Diego campus in 1956, it was planned to be a graduate and research institution, providing instruction in the sciences, mathematics, and engineering. Local citizens supported the idea, voting the same year to transfer to the university 59 acres (24 ha) of mesa land on the coast near the preexisting Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The Regents requested an additional gift of 550 acres (220 ha) of undeveloped mesa land northeast of Scripps, as well as 500 acres (200 ha) on the former site of Camp Matthews from the federal government, but Roger Revelle, then director of Scripps Institution and main advocate for establishing the new campus, jeopardized the site selection by exposing the La Jolla community's exclusive real estate business practices, which were antagonistic to minority racial and religious groups. This outraged local conservatives, as well as Regent Edwin W. Pauley. UC President Clark Kerr satisfied San Diego city donors by changing the proposed name from University of California, La Jolla, to University of California, San Diego. The city voted in agreement to its part in 1958, and the UC approved construction of the new campus in 1960. Because of the clash with Pauley, Revelle was not made chancellor. Herbert York, first director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, was designated instead. York planned the main campus according to the "Oxbridge" model, relying on many of Revelle's ideas.

UC San Diego was the first general campus of the University of California to be designed "from the top down" in terms of research emphasis. Local leaders disagreed on whether the new school should be a technical research institute or a more broadly based school that included undergraduates as well. John Jay Hopkins of General Dynamics Corporationpledged one million dollars for the former while the City Council offered free land for the latter.The original authorization for the San Diego campus given by the UC Regentsin 1956 approved a "graduate program in science and technology" that included undergraduate programs, a compromise that won both the support of General Dynamics and the city voters' approval. Nobel laureate Harold Urey, a physicist from the University of Chicago, and Hans Suess, who had published the first paper on the greenhouse effect with Revelle in the previous year, were early recruits to the faculty in 1958. Maria Goeppert-Mayer, later the second female Nobel laureate in physics, was appointed professor of physics in 1960. The graduate division of the school opened in 1960 with 20 faculty in residence, with instruction offered in the fields of physics, biology, chemistry, and earth science. Before the main campus completed construction, classes were held in the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

By 1963, new facilities on the mesa had been finished for the School of Science and Engineering, and new buildings were under construction for Social Sciences and Humanities. Ten additional faculty in those disciplines were hired, and the whole site was designated the First College, later renamed after Roger Revelle, of the new campus. York resigned as chancellor that year and was replaced by John Semple Galbraith. The undergraduate program accepted its first class of 181 freshman at Revelle College in 1964.Second College was founded in 1964, on the land deeded by the federal government, and named after environmentalist John Muir two years later. The School of Medicinealso accepted its first students in 1966.

Political theorist Herbert Marcuse joined the faculty in 1965. A champion of the New Left, he reportedly was the first protestor to occupy the administration building in a demonstration organized by his student, political activist Angela Davis. The American Legion offered to buy out the remainder of Marcuse's contract for $20,000; the Regents censured Chancellor McGill for defending Marcuse on the basis of academic freedom, but further action was averted after local leaders expressed support for Marcuse.Further student unrest was felt at the university, as the United States increased its involvement in the Vietnam War during the early 1960s, when a student raised a Viet Minh flag over the campus. Protests escalated as the war continued and were only exacerbated after the National Guard fired on student protesters at Kent State University in 1970. Over 200 students occupied Urey Hall, with one student setting himself on fire in protest of the war.

Early research activity and faculty quality, notably in the sciences, was integral to shaping the focus and culture of the university. Even before UC San Diego had its own campus, faculty recruits had already made significant research breakthroughs, such as the Keeling Curve, a graph that plots rapidly increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and was the first significant evidence for global climate change; the Kohn–Sham equations, used to investigate particular atoms and molecules in quantum chemistry; and the Miller–Urey experiment, which gave birth to the field of prebiotic chemistry. Engineering, particularly computer science, became an important part of the university's academics as it matured. University researchers helped develop UCSD Pascal, an early machine-independent programming language that later heavily influenced Java, the National Science Foundation Network, a precursor to the Internet, and the Network News Transfer Protocol during the late 1970s to 1980s. In economics, the methods for analyzing economic time series with time-varying volatility (ARCH), and with common trends (cointegration) were developed. UC San Diego maintained its research intense character after its founding, racking up 20 Nobel Laureates affiliated within 50 years of history; a rate of four per decade.

Under Richard C. Atkinson's leadership as chancellor from 1980 to 1995, the university strengthened its ties with the city of San Diego by encouraging technology transfer with developing companies, transforming San Diego into a world leader in technology-based industries. He oversaw a rapid expansion of the School of Engineering, later renamed after Qualcomm founder Irwin M. Jacobs, with the construction of the San Diego Supercomputer Center and establishment of the computer science, electrical engineering, and bioengineering departments. Private donations increased from $15 million to nearly $50 million annually, faculty expanded by nearly 50%, and enrollment doubled to about 18,000 students during his administration. By the end of his chancellorship, the quality of UC San Diego graduate programs was ranked 10th in the nation by the National Research Council.

The university continued to undergo further expansion during the first decade of the new millennium with the establishment and construction of two new professional schools — the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Rady School of Management—and the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, a research institute run jointly with UC Irvine. UC San Diego also reached two financial milestones during this time, becoming the first university in the western region to raise over $1 billion in its eight-year fundraising campaign in 2007 and also obtaining an additional $1 billion through research contracts and grants in a single fiscal year for the first time in 2010. Despite this, due to the California budget crisis, the university loaned $40 million against its own assets in 2009 to offset a significant reduction in state educational appropriations. The salary of Pradeep Khosla, who became chancellor in 2012, has been the subject of controversy amidst continued budget cuts and tuition increases.

Accreditation

Institutional Accreditation or Recognition - WASC Senior College and University Commission

Year of first Accreditation - 1960

Rankings

Global Rankings

• The University of California, San Diego is ranked 14th by the Academic Ranking of World Universities, and is ranked 17th "Best University in the World" by the Center for World University Rankings for 2016.
• U.S. News & World Report named UC San Diego the 15th best university in the world for 2017 for research, global and regional reputation, international collaboration and number of highly cited papers.
• In 2015, UC San Diego was ranked 39th in the world by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings and in 2015, UC San Diego was ranked 40th overall in the world, and 14th in life sciences and medicine, by QS World University Rankings.
• In 2015 the Centre for Science and Technology Studies at Leiden University named UC San Diego 16th in the world for scientific impact.

National Rankings

• Washington Monthly has ranked UC San Diego first in the nation since 2010 based on its contribution to the public good in three broad categories: social mobility (recruiting and graduating low-income students), research (producing cutting-edge scholarship and PhDs), and service (encouraging students to give something back to their country).
• UC San Diego ranked fifth in the nation in terms of research and development expenditures in 2013, with $1.076 billion spent.
• Kiplinger in 2014 ranked UC San Diego 14th out of the top 100 best-value public colleges and universities in the nation, and 3rd in California.
• UC San Diego was ranked 44th among the top universities in the United States and 10th among public universities by U.S. News & World Report's 2017 rankings.
• The Daily Beast ranked UC San Diego 38th in the country out of the nearly 2000 schools it evaluated for its 2013 Best Colleges ranking.
• The university is ranked 12th and 15th in the U.S. by Academic Ranking of World Universities and Center for World University Rankings respectively.
• Money Magazine ranked UC San Diego 46th in the country out of the nearly 1500 schools it evaluated for its 2014 Best Colleges ranking.
• ScienceWatch ranks UC San Diego 7th of federally funded U.S. universities, based on the citation impact of their published research in major fields of science and the social sciences and 12th globally by volume of citations.
• The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education featured UCSD as one of its 2016 "10 Worst Colleges for Free Speech".

Graduate School Rankings

• The UC San Diego School of Medicine is ranked 17th for research-intensive programs and 19th for primary care in the 2016 U.S. News & World Report Best Graduate Schools Guidebook.
• The Rady School of Management at UC San Diego is ranked 17th in the world for faculty research and 8th for alumni entrepreneurship in the 2014 Financial Times’ Global MBA.
• In 2014 Rady School ranked 1st in the nation in intellectual capital by Bloomberg Businessweek, which measured faculty research published in the top 20 business journals from 2009-2013.
• UC San Diego was named 8th in the nation among doctoral institutions for the number of students who study abroad for a full academic year, according to the Institute of International Education Open Doors report.
• Three doctoral programs at UC San Diego—biological sciences, bioengineering and Scripps Institution of Oceanography—are 1st in the nation in the National Research Council’s Data-Based Assessment of Research-Doctorate Programs report.

Student life @UC San Diego

In 2010, The Daily Beast ranked UC San Diego as one of the happiest colleges in the United States, based on nightlife, number of student organizations, retention rate, and sunny days. In all, the university offers classical orchestras, intramural sports, and over 550 student organizations. 38 national and local Greek organizations are hosted on campus, with fraternity and sorority members representing 20% of the student population. The university operates on an academic quarter system, with three primary quarters beginning in late September and ending in mid-June. 44% of undergraduate students receive federal Pell Grants.

The undergraduate student body government is the UC San Diego Associated Students, organized as a cabinet and senate, while graduate students are represented by the Graduate Student Association, a proportional representative body with membership depending on the number of students in each graduate department. Additionally, graduate students who serve as teaching assistants are represented by the UC-wide union of Academic Student Employees. Each of the six residential colleges has its own student council as well. Most student media publications distributed on-campus are services provided and governed by ASUCSD, including Triton TV, a film studio and TV station, and the KSDT radio station. A notable exception is The Guardian, which is directly governed by the university's Student Affairs department.

Price Center, often referred to as PC, is the main student hub and is located in the center of campus, just south of Geisel Library. The building houses multiple restaurants, the central bookstore, a movie theater, and office space for student organizations, organization advisers, and university faculty. A student referendum was passed in 2003 to expand the Price Center to nearly double its original size. The Price Center East expansion was officially opened to the public on May 19, 2008. There are also three campus centers that cultivate a sense of community among faculty, staff, and certain students: the Cross-Cultural Center, the Women's Center, and the LGBTResource Center. UC San Diego was the last UC campus to have such centers. All three, especially the Cross-Cultural Center that was created first, were founded in the mid-1990s as a result of student movements that demanded change despite opposition by the campus administration.

The Ché Café is a student worker cooperative and social center that is perhaps best known for its role as a venue for underground music scene. It is an on-and-off again vegan cafe and catering operation as well. The Ché also acts as a resource for the music and art departments on campus through hosting art shows, performances, and film screenings. Some of the most notable touring bands or musicians who have played at the Ché include: Bon Iver, Green Day, Rise Against, Jimmy Eat World, Matt & Kim, Billy Corgan, Blonde Redhead, Bomb the Music Industry!, The Get Up Kids, Deerhoof, Bright Eyes, Chumbawamba, Mike Watt, Hella, Dan Deacon, Unwound, and Jawbreaker. Prominent local San Diego bands such as The Locust and Pinback, and national tours such as Mates of State and The Dillinger Escape Plan have given the Ché Café some fame and praise as a radical vegan collective despite its small size and limited sound equipment.

Traditions

The student body government coordinates a wide variety of concerts and events during the year. UC San Diego begins the fall quarter with Welcome Week to introduce new students to campus clubs and activities,[citation needed] starting the week with the All Campus Dance. The Hullabaloo music festival takes place every November as part of the university's Founders' Celebration. Bear Garden, a carnival held near Price Center, takes place every quarter throughout the year. Additionally, events are frequently held at the Loft, a performance lounge within Price Center. Sun God Festival, named after the statue part of the Stuart Collection, is the largest and most significant event of the year, held annually in mid-May on the seventh week of the spring quarter. The festival has grown over its 30-year history into a 20,000 person event, featuring an eclectic mix of art, dance, and musical performances. Past performers have included: Kendrick Lamar, Porter Robinson, Macklemore, Silversun Pickups, Wiz Khalifa, Drake, T.I., Third Eye Blind, Ludacris, Michelle Branch, Sara Bareilles, The Roots, and My Chemical Romance. The 2015 festival featured Snoop Dogg, Jhené Aiko, OK Go, and STRFKR.

Two other popular campus traditions include the Pumpkin Drop and the Watermelon Drop, which take place during Halloween and at the end of the spring quarter, respectively. The Watermelon Drop is one of the campus' oldest traditions, famously originating in 1965 from a physics exam question centering on the velocity on impact of a dropped object. A group of intrigued students pursued that line of thought by dropping a watermelon from the top floor of Revelle's Urey Hall to measure the distance from the splat to the farthest travelling piece of fruit. A variety of events surround the Watermelon Drop, including a pageant where an occasionally male but generally female "Watermelon Queen" is elected. The Pumpkin Drop is a similar event celebrated by the dropping of a large, candy-filled pumpkin from 11-story Tioga Hall, the tallest residential building on the Muir college campus.

Housing

The six undergraduate residential colleges have separate, unique housing facilities for their students. First-year students are usually housed in the residence halls while upperclassmen live in the college apartments. Transfer students are housed in separate facilities from the residential colleges, in an area adjacent to Eleanor Roosevelt College called The Village at Torrey Pines. The housing facilities vary in design, though nearly all of them are of modern or brutalist style. The vast majority of entering freshmen and about 40 percent of all undergraduates in Fall 2012 chose to live in campus residence halls or apartments, with roughly 70 percent of all incoming freshman living in triple occupancy rooms. Graduate students can choose to live in one of six apartment complexes apart from undergraduate housing. Three of these facilities are several minutes away from UC San Diego while the remaining are located on university grounds.

Accommodations are made for students with specific needs. Undergraduate couples and families have the option of living in housing facilities that are normally available only to graduate students. The university also dedicates a portion of its facilities for those who wish to live in gender-neutral or LGBT housing.

Reflecting UC San Diego's diversity, International House, a complex of apartments located in Eleanor Roosevelt College, is dedicated to cross-cultural exchange between American and international students, housing about 350 students from more than 30 countries. International learning is fostered through formal programs including current affairs discussions, cultural nights, and a community newsletter. Upper-division undergraduates from all six colleges, graduate students, faculty, and researchers are eligible to live in International House, located in the Eleanor Roosevelt College townhouses. Demand is very high for this special program and there is often a waitlist. Spaces in International House are not guaranteed and admission requires a separate application.

Housing plans also offer students access to dining facilities, which were named by PETA as the most vegan-friendly in the United States. Each student is allotted a certain number of "Dining Dollars" to purchase meals at any dining hall and groceries at any on-campus market. Six distinct dining halls are located at each of the six colleges, with markets located adjacent or near them, except at Eleanor Roosevelt College which shares a marketplace with The Village. In addition to the six dining halls, there are also four specialty dining facilities and two food trucks on campus that accept dining dollars. UC San Diego currently offers two years guaranteed housing to both its incoming freshmen and its incoming transfer students.

Athletics

Most of UC San Diego's 23 intercollegiate varsity athletic teams participate in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division II 12-member California Collegiate Athletic Association, though some compete independently. Only the water polo, fencing, and men's volleyball teams compete as part of Division I conferences. The Tritons have been ranked 1st in the National Collegiate Scouting Association’s NCAA Division II Power Rankings for seven consecutive years. The teams compete at the university's RIMAC facility, Triton Ballpark, and RIMAC Arena. Before joining Division II in 2000, the school participated at the Division III level. In all, the Tritons have won a total of 30 national championships in golf, soccer, softball, tennis, volleyball, and water polo.

Until 2007, UC San Diego was the only Division II school that did not offer athletic scholarships. In 2005, the NCAA created a rule that made it mandatory for all D-II programs to award athletic grants. Consequently, a measure was proposed to begin offering $500 "grants-in-aid" to all 600 intercollegiate athletes in order to meet this requirement. A student referendum was passed in February 2007, authorizing a $329 annual student fee to fund a raise in coaches' salaries, hire more trainers, and provide all athletes with a $500 scholarship.

The 2006–07 season was marked as UC San Diego's best since moving to Division II, with 19 athletic programs qualifying for post-season competition, including 17 for the NCAA Championships. Eight of those teams finished with a top five national ranking.

The athletic department considered a move to Division I in 2011. The student body would have needed to approve a doubling of student fees to allow the university to meet minimum scholarship requirements for D-I participation. However, students overwhelmingly rejected this measure in 2012, halting any efforts for a move to Division I.

UC San Diego does not have a football team. However, the university participated in intercollegiate football for one year during the 1968 season. The newly recruited Tritons lost all seven games that they played.

The university also offers 29 sports club teams, including rugby, badminton, baseball, cycling, dancesport, ice hockey, sailing, soccer, snow skiing, tennis, volleyball, ultimate, water polo, and waterskiing. The UC San Diego surf team has won the national championship six times and is consistently rated one of the best surfing programs in the United States.

As of May 24, 2016, students at UC San Diego passed the vote to move their athletics to NCAA Division I. The school's newspaper, The Guardian, reports that voter turnout was 35 percent of the undergraduate population, when the measure only needed 20 percent to pass.