The University of California, San Diego (UCSD, also commonly referred to as UC San Diego) is a public research university in San Diego, California. The school's nearly 2,000-acre (810 ha) campus contains 694 buildings and is located in the La Jolla community. UC San Diego is one of ten University of California campuses and was founded in 1960 around the pre-existing Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
22,048 undergraduate and 5,073 graduate students enrolled in Fall 2007 and the university awarded 6,802 degrees in 2005/06. The university is organized into six undergraduate colleges and six graduate divisions and offers 125 undergraduate majors, 52 masters degrees, 51 doctoral programs, and four professional degrees. The four year, full-time undergraduate program is classified as "more selective, higher transfer-in" by the Carnegie Foundation and was ranked 35th among national universities and 7th among public schools by U.S. News & World Report. The university was ranked 14th internationally in the Academic Ranking of World Universities.
The university employs 7,566 faculty members including eight Nobel Laureates, eight MacArthur fellows, three National Medal of Science laureates, and one Fields medallist. UCSD has a very high level of research activity and total research funding for 2006/07 was $714 million. The university operates the UC San Diego Medical Center and is affiliated with several regional research centers, such as the Salk Institute, the Burnham Institute for Medical Research, and The Scripps Research Institute. The university was admitted to the Association of American Universities in 1982.
UC San Diego's 19 intercollegiate sports teams are known as the Tritons and participate in the NCAA's Division II (DII) level in the California Collegiate Athletic Association.
History
When the Regents of the University of California 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 Caltech. Citizens of San Diego enthusiastically supported the idea, voting the same year to transfer to the university 59 acres (240,000 m2) 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, when it had 20 faculty in residence, with instruction offered in the fields of physics, biology, chemistry and earth science. Classes initially met in the Scripps Institute.
Before the selection of San Diego was made final, however, the Regents requested an additional gift of 550 acres (2.2 km2) 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.
In 2007, UC San Diego became the first university in the western region to top $1 billion in their fundraising campaign. To date, more than $1.01 billion dollars in private support has been designated to the university.
Research
UC San Diego’s total research expenditures for 2007-08 was $798 million. The National Science Foundation ranks UC San Diego 6th in the nation in federal R&D expenditures.
The Power of Academic Medicine: The UC San Diego Medical Center is the only San Diego hospital ranked among the best in the nation in eight specialty areas (respiratory diseases, rheumatology, kidney disease, gynecology, cancer, urology, psychiatry, and ear, nose and throat) in the 2008 U.S. News and World Report annual “Best Hospitals” issue.
The Milken Institute ranks UC San Diego 6th among the world’s leading universities in the strength of its biotechnology research publications and 8th in the number of biotech patents issued.
Thomson Scientific ranks UC San Diego the 7th highest-impact research institution in the nation from 2001-2005, based on the citation impact of published research in science and the social sciences. Based on the number of citations, UC San Diego ranks 2nd in the nation in the field of pharmacology, 4th in the nation for molecular biology and genetics, and 5th in the nation for clinical medicine.
In the 2008 survey of graduate programs by U.S. News, the Jacobs School of Engineering ranked 4th and the School of Medicine ranked 2nd in the nation for research expenditures per faculty member.
Academic Reputation
UC San Diego's undergraduate program is ranked 35th among National Universities (7th among public universities) according to the 2009 U.S. News & World Report college rankings. 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. 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. 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). 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. 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.UC San Diego has been called a Public Ivy by Greene's Guides.
In the Biological and Physical Sciences, 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. 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 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. In the Social Sciences, 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 Department of Visual Arts is ranked 15th overall. UCSD is also ranked among the world’s elite universities in Life and Agriculture Sciences (14th); the Natural Sciences and Mathematics (19th); Clinical Medicine and Pharmacy (25th); and the Social Sciences (26th).
The Jacobs School of Engineering overall was ranked 11th in the nation. All six 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 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. 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.
Divisions & Schools
- Arts & Humanities
- Biological Sciences
- Intl' Relations/Pacific Studies
- Jacobs School of Engineering
- Physical Sciences
- Rady School of Management
- School of Medicine
- Scripps Inst. of Oceanography
- Skaggs School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences
- Social Sciences
University of California, San Diego was ranked 58th in the 2008 THES-QS World University Ranking.
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