The University of California, San Diego (popularly known as UC San Diego or UCSD) is a selective research-oriented public university located in the La Jolla community of San Diego, California. The university, one of ten University of California campuses, was founded in 1960 around the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The University is ranked 38th in United States by the US News National University rankings, ranked 14th in the world by Academic Ranking of World Universities, and holds many top 10 positions for its graduate programs in the same graduate rankings line up.

The University also operates the UCSD medical facilites.

The university is also situated near and associated with several research centers, such as the Salk Institute, the Burnham Institute for Medical Research and The Scripps Research Institute.

History

When the Regents originally authorized the San Diego campus in 1956, it was planned to start as a graduate school of science and engineering comparable in quality to Cal Tech. Citizens of San Diego enthusiastically supported the idea, voting the same year to transfer to the university fifty-nine acres of mesa land on the coast near the Scripps Institute. General Dynamics Corporation donated a large sum of money to be used for recruiting a distinguished founding faculty.

In 1957, an undergraduate curriculum was planned as part of the general science curriculum, and Roger Revelle, Director of Scripps, was named dean of the new school. UC San Diego was the first general campus of the UC to be designed "from the top down" in terms of curricular and research emphasis. Stellar faculty were recruited as they became available as opposed to the dictates of a pre-planned curriculum or academic schedule. The graduate division of the school opened in 1960, with instruction offered in the fields of physics, biology, chemistry and earth sciences, with 20 faculty in residence. Classes initially met in the Scripps Institute.

Before the selection of San Diego was made final, however, the Regents requested an additional gift of of undeveloped mesa land northeast of Scripps, as well as 500 acres (2 km²) in Camp Matthews, a United States Marine Corps rifle range adjacent to the site. The city voted in agreement to its part in 1958, and the UC, convinced that all its other conditions would be met, approved construction of the new campus in 1960. Herbert York was designated its first chancellor, and he worked out the planning of the main campus according to the "Oxbridge" model, relying on many of Revelle's ideas.

By 1963, new facilities on the mesa 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 of the new campus. The campus accepted its first undergraduate class of 181 freshman in 1964, and was designated Revelle College the next year.

Academics

Undergraduate colleges

Undergraduate housing is organized around a system of residential colleges modeled after those at the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge, and somewhat similar to the systems at Princeton University. The colleges each have their own campuses, places of residence, and offices. In addition, there are unique core writing courses as well as other general education requirements that are exclusive to each college.

UC San Diego's six colleges are: Revelle College, founded in 1964 as First College, which has highly structured requirements; John Muir College, founded in 1967 as Second College, which emphasizes a "spirit of self-sufficiency and individual choice" and offers loosely structured general-education requirements; Thurgood Marshall College, founded in 1970 as Third College, which emphasizes "scholarship, social responsibility and the belief that a liberal arts education must include an understanding of [one's] role in society"; Earl Warren College, founded in 1974 as Fourth College, which requires students to pursue a major of their choice while also requiring two "programs of concentration" in disciplines unrelated to each other and to their major; Eleanor Roosevelt College, founded in 1988 as Fifth College, which focuses its core education program on a cross-cultural interdisciplinary course sequence entitled Making of the Modern World; and Sixth College, founded in 2002 with a focus on "historical and philosophical connections among culture, art and technology."

Undergraduates may major in any discipline offered at UC San Diego, regardless of undergraduate college. However, each college issues unique undergraduate diplomas and holds an individual commencement ceremony.

Major divisions

In addition to academic division by college, courses and programs at UC San Diego are also divided into the following divisions:

• Division of Arts and Humanities
• Division of Biological Sciences
• Division of Physical Sciences
• Division of Social Sciences
• Jacobs School of Engineering

Graduate and professional schools

• Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS)
• Graduate Studies
• Rady School of Management
• UC San Diego School of Medicine
• Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences
• Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program

Professional Education and Public Service Division

• UC San Diego Extension

UC San Diego extension is the continuing education and public program branch of the university. As part of their goal, Extension strives to combine local impact with national reputation and global reach. Extension has been recognized for linking the community to expert professionals and the knowledge resources of the university.
Approximately 20,000 students per year are enrolled into the university-level professional courses. Extension provides over 100 certificate programs and over 25 specialized study programs. Most courses are held evenings and weekends for the convenience to working adults at one of the four locations; UC San Diego main campus in La Jolla, the Extension Sorrento Mesa Center, the Extension Rancho Bernardo Center, and the Extension Mission Valley Center.

Research centers

• Scripps Institution of Oceanography
• San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC)
• California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology
• Center for Magnetic Recording Research (CMRR)
• Whitaker Institute of Biomedical Engineering (WIBE)

Recognition

UC San Diego is among the top eight public universities for undergraduate education in the United States by U.S. News & World Report, and it is ranked 38th among all universities in the United States by the same publication. For graduate studies, most of UC San Diego's Ph.D. programs are ranked in the top 20 for academic quality in the United States by the National Research Council. In 2007, the Academic Ranking of World Universities released by Shanghai Jiao Tong University ranked UC San Diego 12th in the United States and 14th in the world in terms of quality of scientific research leading towards a Nobel Prize. UC San Diego has a total of 12 Nobel Laureates affiliated with it. In the 2006 Newsweek Magazine review, "America's 25 Hottest Colleges," UC San Diego was selected as the "Hottest for Science," noting the school's location, research grants, tradition, and diverse topics of study as key points. For 2008, US News and World Report ranks UC San Diego as 38th in the nation overall and 7th among public universities for its undergraduate program. When compared to other public universities in California, UC San Diego is ranked third behind Berkeley and UCLA. The 2007 Academic Ranking of World Universities released by Shanghai Jiao Tong University ranked UC San Diego 12th in the United States and 14th in the world based on achievements and publications of the faculty. In 2007, The Times Higher Education Supplement ranked UC San Diego as 58th in the world overall, 11th in the world for biomedicine, and 27th in the world for natural sciences. In its 2007 annual college rankings, The Washington Monthly ranks UC San Diego fourth nationally with criteria based on research, community service, and social mobility. In its 2008 report on best values in public colleges, Kiplinger ranked UC San Diego 11th in the nation for in-state value and 17th in the nation for out-of-state value.

The National Collegiate Scouting Association (NCSA) 2007 Collegiate Power Rankings rate colleges and universities comprehensively based on student-athlete graduation rates, academic strength and athletic prowess of the university. The institutions posted in the 2007 Power Rankings represent less than 6% of colleges and universities across the nation. UC San Diego placed 4th on the overall ranking list, trailing behind Williams College, Amherst College, and Duke University, and first on the Division II list. The most recent 'National Research Council review of PhD programs' performed in 1995 ranks UC San Diego as 10th overall (2nd among public universities, behind UC Berkeley), including 4th in biological sciences, 9th in physical sciences, 9th in engineering, as well as 12th in social sciences and 19th in arts and humanities. Several of its individual graduate programs ranked first, such as neuroscience and oceanography.

In 2008, US News and World Report ranked the graduate School of Medicine as 14th in the nation for medical research and 35th for primary care. UC San Diego's graduate program in behavioral neuroscience was ranked second in the nation while its cognitive psychology program was ranked third. The Jacobs School of Engineering overall was ranked 11th in the nation. All five of the Jacobs School's academic departments were ranked in the top 20: The Department of Bioengineering, ranked 2nd in the nation for biomedical engineering behind Johns Hopkins. The department has ranked among the top five programs in the nation every year for the past decade. The Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), ranked highly in all categories surveyed: computer systems (9), computer science (13), theory (14), programming language (17) and artificial intelligence (19). The Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, ranked 16th in mechanical engineering and 19th in aerospace engineering; the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), ranked 16th in electrical engineering and communications, and 17th in computer engineering; and the Department of Structural Engineering, ranked 17th in the specialty of civil engineering. The interdisciplinary Bioinformatics program, which is offered jointly by eight UC San Diego departments including the Jacobs School's bioengineering and computer science and engineering departments, ranked 6th in the nation. The Jacobs School of Engineering is also the 10th best in the world for engineering/technology and computer sciences, according to an academic ranking of the top 100 world universities published online in February 2008 by the Institute of Higher Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Other fields in which UCSD is ranked among the world’s elite universities include: Life and Agriculture Sciences (14th); the Natural Sciences and Mathematics (19th); Clinical Medicine and Pharmacy (25th); and the Social Sciences (26th).

According to the US News and World Report rankings of graduate programs, the UC San Diego biology program is ranked 2nd in neuroscience and neurobiology, 6th in genetics and genomics, and 10th in cell biology. The UC San Diego physics program is ranked 6th in plasma and 10th in condensed matter and low temperature physics. UC San Diego chemistry program is ranked 7th in biochemistry. UC San Diego's earth sciences program is ranked 5th in geophysics and seismology. UCSD computer science program is ranked 9th in systems, and math program is ranked 2nd in discrete mathematics and combinatorics. The UC San Diego Economics department is ranked 10th in the nation; Econometrics, a subdiscipline of Economics, is ranked 2nd in the nation, right below Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Department of Political Science is ranked 7th overall.

The Graham-Diamond report ranks UCSD 8th overall in the country, including top-10 rankings in biological sciences (3rd), economics (5th), social and behavioral sciences (7th) and physics (9th).

UCSD has total annual research funding of more than $600 million. The National Science Foundation has ranked UC San Diego first in the UC system and sixth in the nation in terms of Federal research expenditures. Some 200 San Diego companies have been founded by UCSD faculty and alumni, and over 40% of the people employed in the San Diego biotechnology industry work in UCSD spin-offs. Science Watch ranked UCSD the eighth most cited institution during the period 1995 to 2005 in the field of molecular biology and genetics.

Sixteen UC San Diego faculty members have won the Nobel Prize, nine of whom are currently on the faculty. UC San Diego faculty also include nine MacArthur Fellows and 146 Guggenheim Fellows. UCSD ranks sixth in the nation in terms of National Academy of Science membership.

In 1995, the National Research Council ranked UC San Diego faculty the 10th-best in the nation, and ranked numerous graduate programs among the top ten in the United States in terms of quality: neurosciences (1st), oceanography (1st), bioengineering (2nd), physiology (2nd), pharmacology (3rd), theatre and dance (3rd), genetics (6th), geosciences (6th), cell and developmental biology (7th), anthropology (9th), biochemistry and molecular biology (2nd), political science (2nd), aerospace engineering (10th), and mechanical engineering (10th).

UC San Diego also counts among its research centers the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the San Diego Supercomputer Center.

UC San Diego's biological science related research, aided by a strong local biotechnology sector, is especially well-respected.

Admissions

UC San Diego received 47,364 freshmen applications of which 19,022 students were offered fall admission for the Fall 2008 quarter, making the admission rate 40.1%. Also, the number of students applying to UC San Diego makes it the second most popular UC campus, after UCLA. Admitted students attained a mean weighted high school GPA of 4.06 and average SAT scores of 629, 670, and 641 for Critical Reading, Math and Writing, respectively. Of the 18,547 freshmen that were admitted, 99% were in the top ten percent of their high school class It is number 3 among just the UC system. The top four overlapping schools for applicants are: Berkeley, UCLA, USC, and Stanford respectively.

31% of admitted students receive federal Pell grants.

Graduate admissions are largely centralized through the Office of Graduate Studies. However, the Rady School of Management, Scripps Institute of Oceanography, and the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS) handle their own admissions.

Charter school

The Preuss School is a charter school established on the UCSD campus in 1999 to provide an intensive college preparatory curriculum for low-income students from the greater San Diego area. The Preuss school has been ranked as one of the top ten best high schools in the United States by US News & World Report.

Student life

The campus's undergraduate population is represented by a formal student government, known as the A.S. Council The A.S. Council also funds three quarterly festivals during the year: FallFest, WinterFest, and Sun God. Sun God, named after the statue created by artist Niki de Saint Phalle, is the best-known of the three festivals. During the event, there are day long series of concerts, performances, free items, and celebration before the final free concert takes place in the evening.

The main student hub is the UCSD Price Center located in the center of campus, just south of Geisel Library. The Price Center offers a variety of services, places, and spaces geared to the needs of students including restaurants, the central bookstore, movie theater, and various student organizations. In the Spring of 2003 a Student Referendum was passed to expand the Price Center to nearly double the original size. The expansion is currently open but not yet complete.

Two other popular campus events include the Pumpkin Drop and the Watermelon Drop, which take place during Halloween and at the end of the third (Spring) academic quarter, respectively. The Watermelon Drop is one of the campus's 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 size of the resulting splat. A variety of events surround the Watermelon Drop, including a pageant where an occasionally male but generally female "Watermelon Queen" is elected. In 1979 the Queen rode to Urey Hall in a theatrical-prop sedan chair that had been knocking around the Revelle dorms for years. The Pumpkin Drop is a similar event celebrated by the dropping of a large, candy-filled pumpkin from the tallest residential building on the Muir college campus.

Each of the undergraduate colleges focuses on enhancing student life through various programs and organizations as well as through residential life programs. Upon admission to UC San Diego, each undergraduate student is assigned to a college. Currently there are six colleges--Revelle, Muir, Marshall, Roosevelt, Warren, and Sixth College (not yet named). The college a student is assigned to determines their General Education requirements. Each college also has a unique college specific writing class that all students must take.

The campus's graduate population is represented by a separate formal student government, known as the Graduate Student Association (GSA). The Association's membership comprises representatives from each of the graduate departments. The number of representatives is proportional to the number of graduate students within that particular department. Additionally, graduate students who serve as teaching or research assistants are represented by the UC-wide union of Academic Student Employees, UAW Local 2865.

There are also three campus centers that cultivate a sense of community among faculty, staff, and students: the Cross-Cultural Center, the Women's Center and the LGBT Resource Center. UC San Diego was the last UC campus to have such centers. All three centers, especially the Cross-Cultural Center that was created first, were founded in the mid-1990s and were the result of student movements that demanded change despite opposition by the campus administration.

One of the more controversial aspects of student life at UCSD is the student-run comedy paper, The Koala, a satirical paper often criticized for its provocative articles and drawings, which is also funded by the A.S. In 2005, the student council made national news over a controversy regarding pornography broadcast over the A.S.-funded television station by members of The Koala.

The campus newspaper, operated independent of student funds, is the UCSD Guardian. The campus also hosts a small independent radio station, KSDT, which no longer broadcasts over the airwaves, but still operates online. There is a music venue on the campus grounds of some fame called The Che Cafe, a collective organization serving multiple functions as an underground music venue, vegan food collective, center for grassroots organizations such as Food Not Bombs, and similar groups and activities. Prominent local San Diego bands such as The Locust and Pinback, and national tours such as Mates of State and Dillinger Escape Plan have given the Che Cafe some fame and praise as a radical vegan collective despite its small size (it fits a few hundred people) and limited sound equipment.

Public art

More than a dozen public art projects, part of the Stuart Collection, decorate the campus. Perhaps the most famous of these is the Sun God, a large winged creature located near the Faculty Club. Other Stuart Collection art includes a collection of Stonehenge-like stone blocks, a large coiling snake path, a building that flashes the names of vices and virtues in bright neon lights, and three metallic Eucalyptus trees, the Music Tree, the Literary Tree and the Third Tree commonly referred to as the Silent Tree. One of the newest additions to the collection is Tim Hawkinson's giant teddy bear made of six boulders located in between the newly constructed Calit2 buildings. Another notable campus sight are the graffiti tunnels of Mandeville Hall, a series of corridors that have been tagged with graffiti by generations of students over decades of use. Students in the university's visual arts department also often create temporary public art installations as part of their coursework.

The university is also sponsoring a $56,000 performance art project to develop a sense of community at the sprawling campus.

Athletics

UC San Diego offers student participation in a wide range of sports including swimming, water polo, soccer, volleyball, crew, track and field, fencing, basketball, golf, cross country, softball, baseball, and tennis, many of which have become perennial strengths. UC San Diego participates at the NCAA's Division II (DII) level in the California Collegiate Athletic Association, although water polo, fencing, and men's volleyball compete at the Division I level. Before joining DII in 2000, the school participated at the Division III level and won numerous national championships.

Until the 2007-2008 school year, UC San Diego was the only DII school that did not offer athletic scholarships. In 2005, the NCAA created a rule that made it mandatory for DII programs to award athletic grants; a measure was proposed to begin offering US$500 "grants-in-aid" to all 600 intercollegiate athletes in order to meet this requirement. In February 2007, a US$78 fee referendum was passed in the largest vote in UC San Diego history. This fee increase put the UCSD athletic department budget on par with rival DII schools for the first time since the transition. The new monies will go primarily to bringing talented coaching staff salaries up to competitive levels.

In 2006-2007, UC San Diego's best season since moving to DII, 19 of 23 athletic programs qualified for post-season competition, including 17 to the NCAA Championships. Eight of those teams finished in the top-5 in the nation.

UC San Diego fields a number of club sports teams. The UC San Diego surfing team has won the national title six times and is consistently rated one of the best surfing programs in the nation. The UC San Diego triathlon team is continually one of the top triathlon teams in the nation. In 2008, the women's triathlon team won the US collegiate national championship and UCSD athlete Amanda Felder was the Overall Nation Champion. UC San Diego also has sport clubs in badminton, cycling, dancesport, dance team, equestrian, ice hockey, lacrosse, roller hockey, rugby union, sailing, soccer, snow skiing, table tennis, ultimate, volleyball, water polo, and water skiing.

Boosters

UC San Diego recognizes two external organizations of athletic boosters: the Triton Athletic Associates is a booster group of parents, alumni and friends who have each donated between US$50 and $2,500; and the UCSD Athletic Board is made up of donors who have given US$10,000 or more to athletic programs. On campus, booster groups comprise the UCSD Pep Band, the Triton Tide (a student booster club), the UCSD Cheerleaders, the Triton Twirl Flag Squad and the UCSD Dance Team. King Triton occasionally appears as a costumed character mascot. Further opportunities for athletic involvement are available to students interested in team staffing and management.

Football

UC San Diego has not fielded a football team except in Fall 1968 when a newly-formed pigskin organization turned in a winless season and then folded for lack of interest. Since then, the subject of bringing NCAA football back to UC San Diego has been a recurring topic. Tom Ham, a local restaurateur and a supporter of UCSD football since the 1960s, has said that UCSD would have no future in San Diego without "big-time" football. Proponents of a major football team have projected benefits that include greater school spirit and a more well-rounded school experience for students as well as enhancing the school's national profile. Opposition to "big-time" football comes from a wide range of school faculty and administrators such Daniel Wulbert, a provost at Revelle College, who says that any boost to school spirit wouldn't be worth the sacrifice, and that he wants UC San Diego to "have a life for reasons other than watching hired athletes come and play." It's acknowledged by both sides that adding an 80- to 100-man football team would not only cost some US$1-1.5M annually, but that the initial outlay in equipment and facilities would be in the tens of millions. Furthermore, in order to comply with Title IX's requirement for equal sports opportunities for both sexes, some three women's teams (80-100 athletes) would have to be added, or three existing men's teams disbanded. Without the expense of football, UC San Diego has been characterized as having "the best all-around program, with the most success by the most student-athletes" in San Diego.

Alumni

The UCSD Alumni Association was formed by a small group of honorary members in 1964. The Association has grown today to represent over 116,000 alumni. Its mission is to foster a lifelong, mutually beneficial relationship of alumni and students with UC San Diego. The Association works to provide alumni with continued access to the resources of the University, communicate UC San Diego news and happenings, and facilitate a network for alumni and student interaction through UCSD Alumni Activities and Programs. The Association also awards undergraduate scholarships, recognizes outstanding alumni, faculty and students, assists the University with legislative advocacy, and brings alumni together in social, educational and networking forums - in San Diego and across the nation.

Notable people

• See List of University of California, San Diego people

References

External links

• Official website
• Official athletics website
• Historical Overview of UCSD