University of California, San Diego

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“UCSD” redirects here. For the Santo Domingo Catholic University, see Universidad Católica Santo Domingo.

University of California, San Diego


Motto	Fiat Lux Let there be light
Established	1960
Type	Public Space Grant
Endowment	$351.6 million [1]
Chancellor	Marye Anne Fox
Faculty	1,471
Undergraduates	21,369
Postgraduates	4,878
Location	La Jolla, San Diego, California, USA
Campus	Suburban, 1,152 acres (4.66 km²)
Athletics	23 varsity teams
Colors	Navy Blue & Gold
Mascot	Tritons
Affiliations	AAU, WUN
Website	www.ucsd.edu

The University of California, San Diego (popularly known as UCSD, or sometimes UC San Diego) is a public, coeducational research university located in La Jolla, a seaside resort community of San Diego, California. The university, one of ten University of California campuses, was founded in 1960^[1] around the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. UCSD is one of the largest universities in the state with around 26,000 students.

UCSD is consistently ranked among the top ten public universities for undergraduate education in the United States by U.S. News & World Report^[2]. For graduate studies, most of UCSD's Ph.D. programs are ranked in the top 20 for academic quality in the United States by the National Research Council. In 2006, the Academic Ranking of World Universities released by Shanghai Jiao Tong University ranked UCSD 11th in the United States and 13th in the world in terms of quality of scientific research leading towards a Nobel Prize. UCSD has a total of 12 Nobel Laureates affiliated with it.

1 Organization
2 Admissions
3 Athletics
4 Recognition
5 Public art
6 Notable people
7 References
8 See also
9 External links

[edit] Organization

[edit] Undergraduate colleges

The Library Walk leading toward the Geisel Library; it is the geographical center of the colleges on campus.

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 UC Santa Cruz and 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.

Jacobs School of Engineering

UCSD's six colleges are: Roger 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 UCSD, regardless of undergraduate college. However, each college issues unique undergraduate diplomas and holds an individual commencement ceremony.

UCSD's distinctive Geisel Library, named for Theodor Seuss Geisel ("Dr. Seuss") and featured in UCSD's logo.

[edit] Student life

The campus's undergraduate population is represented by a formal student government, known as the A.S. Council. The 2006-2007 A.S. President is Harry Khanna. Recently, the council made national news over a controversy regarding pornography broadcast over the A.S.-funded television station by members of The Koala. 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.

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 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 a "Watermelon King/Queen" is elected. 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 UCSD, 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 2006-2007 GSA President is Garo Bournoutian. The Association's membership is comprised of 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 attempt to cultivate a sense of community among faculty, staff, and students: the Cross-Cultural Center, the Women's Center and the LGBT Resource Center.

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 bad taste and lack of political correctness and also funded by the A.S. ^[3]

[edit] Major divisions

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

[edit] Graduate and professional schools

Jacobs School of Engineering

[edit] Research centers

[edit] 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.

[edit] Admissions

For the 2006-2007 academic period, UCSD received 43,587 freshmen applications of which 19,933 students were offered fall admission, making the admission rate about 45.7%. Also, the number of students applying to UCSD makes it the second most popular UC campus, after UCLA.[2] Admitted students attained a mean weighted high school GPA of 4.04 and average SAT scores of 630, 667, and 639, for Critical Reading, Math and Writing, respectively. [3]

Matriculating students tend to indicate a preference for the University's large environment and largely renowned professors and programs. The top four overlapping schools for applicants are UCLA, UC Berkeley, USC, and Stanford.

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

[edit] Athletics

UCSD’s sports teams are called the Tritons. This mascot is largely unknown due to the university lacking a football team, with UCSD's perennial strengths lying in swimming, water polo, soccer, volleyball, crew, track and field, and tennis instead. UCSD participates in the NCAA's Division II, in the California Collegiate Athletic Association, although water polo, fencing, and men's volleyball compete at the Division I level. Before joining Division II in 2000, for years the school participated at the Division III level and won numerous national championships there. However, due to its comparatively large student body and a lack of west-coast Division III opponents, UCSD moved up to Division II.

UCSD is the only NCAA Division II school that does not offer athletic scholarships. In 2005, the NCAA created a rule that made it mandatory for Division II programs to award athletic grants; a measure has been proposed to begin offering small grants to all intercollegiate athletes in order to meet this requirement. As of February 2007, a 78 dollar fee increase was issued for all students in order to maintain athletic grants. The undergraduate student body now pays $110 per academic quarter for intercollegiate athletics, and this fee rises with inflation.

In addition to UCSD's NCAA teams, the school fields a number of club sports teams. The UCSD surfing team has won the national title six times. The UCSD kendo team won the national title in 2005 and many UCSD kendo team graduates compete for the USA Kendo Team.[4][5]

[edit] Recognition

In the 2006 Newsweek Magazine review, "America's 25 Hottest Colleges," UCSD was selected as the "Hottest for Science," noting the school's location, research grants, tradition, and diverse topics of study as key points [6]. For 2006, US News and World Report ranks UCSD as 32nd in the nation overall and 7th among public universities for its undergraduate program. When compared to other public universities in California, UCSD is ranked third behind Berkeley and UCLA. The 2006 Academic Ranking of World Universities released by Shanghai Jiao Tong University ranked UCSD 11th in the United States and 13th in the world in terms of quality of scientific research leading towards a Nobel Prize. In 2005, The Times Higher Education Supplement ranked UCSD as 42nd in the world overall, 14th in the world for biomedicine, and 48th in the world for science [7]. Also, in 2006, the Washington Monthly, which considers community service in addition to conventional criteria, ranked UCSD 6th. Kiplinger's ranked UCSD 11th in the nation for “First-Class Education at Bargain Prices." [8]

In 2007, US News and World Report ranked the graduate School of Medicine as 14th in nation for medical research and 33rd for primary care. UCSD'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, and 6th in the nation among public universities. [9] 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 UCSD 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 9th 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 2007 by the Institute of Higher Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. [10] This is the first year the ARWU ranked universities by subject fields. 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 (23rd); and the Social Sciences (25th).

UCSD has total annual research funding of more than $600 million. The National Science Foundation has ranked UCSD 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 fifth in the world for highest research impact, based on papers published and cited in the field of molecular biology and genetics[11].

Sixteen UCSD faculty members have won the Nobel Prize, nine of whom are currently on the faculty. UCSD 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 UCSD 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). UCSD also counts among its research centers the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the San Diego Supercomputer Center.

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

[edit] Public art

The Sun God statue by Niki de Saint Phalle.

Main article: Stuart Collection

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 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 CALIT 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.

[edit] Notable people

See List of University of California, San Diego people

[edit] References

[edit] See also

Nobel Prize Ranking

[edit] External links

[edit] Informational links

Maps and aerial photos Coordinates: 32.880966666666666° -117.23823333333334°
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[edit] Student government

[edit] Student publications

[edit] Student organizations

The UCSD Student Foundation. A student-run philanthropic organization

University of California, San Diego
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