Dear Colleagues:

The University of California, Irvine admitted its first class in 1965 following the formal dedication of the campus by President Lyndon Johnson a year earlier. One hundred nineteen faculty members and 1,589 students began their work on a university still very much under construction. Only a third of the central ring of buildings planned by architect William Pereira was complete; Irvine was still six years away from incorporation as a city; and the agrarian history of the region was evident in the neighboring orange groves and the cattle grazing next to the campus.

Since then, we have secured a place among the best research universities in the United States through an unparalleled combination of rapid growth in enrollment and an equally impressive increase in the size, quality, and influence of our research and educational programs, performing arts, and professional schools. We now have an annual enrollment of 27,000 undergraduate, graduate, and professional students from California, across the nation, and around the world. Our 1,400 faculty members include Nobel laureates, recipients of the National Medal of Science, and many members of the most important scholarly, scientific and professional organizations. UCI is a member of the prestigious Association of American Universities (and is the youngest institution in that group), and more than 40 of our educational programs are ranked among the best in their fields. UCI students have received some of the most prestigious fellowships in the country, including 21 Fulbrights, 23 Goldwater awards, 31 fellowships from the National Science Foundation, and five Truman fellowships. Our alumnae/i include successful and influential people in many fields around the world, including four Pulitzer Prize winners in poetry, fiction and editorial cartooning.

In addition to its academic and professional programs on the general campus, UCI also has a growing presence in the health sciences. In 2005, the UC Regents approved the creation of a College of Health Sciences at UCI which includes new programs in public health, pharmaceutical sciences and nursing science, along with our School of Medicine, which was established at UCI in 1967, and the University of California, Irvine Medical Center in the city of Orange. The School of Medicine has 550 faculty, approximately 400 M.D. students, 600 residents and 120 graduate students. Recently, the School of Medicine also instituted PRIME-LC, the first medical education program in the nation dedicated to the distinctive health care needs of the Latino community. PRIME-LC is being hailed as a model for similar programs within the state and across the country.

With more than 300 specialty physicians and 50 primary care doctors, UC Irvine Medical Center is the only university hospital in Orange County and has the only Level I Trauma Center in the county. In 2005 Solucient, a national ranking service, named the medical center one of the nation’s top 100 hospitals for the second year in a row, and two years ago the medical center was one of only 78 hospitals nationally (and the first in Southern California) to receive the prestigious Magnet Designation for nursing excellence from the American Nurses Association. The medical center is currently undergoing major renovation and expansion that will result in a brand new university hospital by 2009, with state-of-the-art teaching and research facilities and expanded support for medical and surgical treatment. Upon completion of this project, UCI will provide a world-class academic medical center for our community with a patient-focused healing environment that also trains practicing physicians for the future.

Reflecting on these accomplishments on the occasion of our 40th anniversary, we are proud to be a part of this remarkable university and grateful to our founders for their vision, confidence and determination. Their success sets a high standard as we turn toward the future and imagine what UCI will be on its 50th anniversary in 2015. 

By that time, we will be approaching the end of the rapid growth in size that has characterized our campus since its beginning. Over the next decade, the pace of scholarly and scientific discovery on the campus will continue to accelerate even beyond today’s impressive levels, but increases in undergraduate enrollment will be tapering off, replaced by growth in graduate and professional programs including our new School of Law, which was approved by the UC Regents in November 2006.

The perception of UCI as meaning “Under Construction Indefinitely” will be more apt than ever as the physical infrastructure of the campus expands to support our constantly evolving needs in research and teaching. We will house well over half of our undergraduates and almost all of our graduate and professional students and post-doctoral scholars, and they will create an intellectual and social community on campus as stimulating as any in the UC system. Our many lecture series and artistic exhibits and performances will attract people from the community to our campus, and our place in that community will have expanded to make UCI not just an educational center but an even more vital part of the social, cultural and economic life of the whole region.

Coordinating our pursuit of these ambitious objectives over the next decade will be a formidable task. The first step in that process was taken in spring 2004 when six groups of faculty, staff and administrators were convened under the auspices of the Chancellor’s Advisory Council and charged with defining specific campuswide goals associated with key areas of planning: undergraduate education and academic breadth, research and graduate programs, campus life, physical facilities, budget, and UCI’s public role. More than 100 people were involved in those initial discussions, including all our deans and vice chancellors; assistant deans and staff from many different academic and administrative units; faculty including the chair and chair-elect of the Academic Senate, chairs of Senate Councils, and members the Senate’s Council on Planning and Budget; representatives of the Staff Assembly and the Associated Graduate Students; alumnae/i, and emeritae/i faculty.

Results of those initial discussions were published on the Web and circulated for formal review. Through this process of discussion and revision, a strong consensus rapidly emerged on campus regarding our principal objectives, including continued growth particularly in our graduate and professional programs, an enhanced intellectual and social community on the campus, and a concerted effort to extend the influence and visibility of UCI throughout the state, nation, and world.

These general objectives, more specific goals covering different aspects of campuswide planning, and some strategies for achieving them are described in A Focus on Excellence: A Strategy for Academic Development at the University of California, Irvine, 2005-2015. This plan is comprehensive in the connections it establishes among the various activities that make up a great university, and it is ambitious, as it must be to build on the original vision and aspirations that made UCI what it is today. It is also clearly within the reach of a university that has already accomplished so much in its brief history and that is bold enough to declare that accomplishment only the beginning.

UCI cannot reach these goals alone. All great research universities depend on a close relationship with the communities they serve, and over the next decade we will work hard with our partners in the community to build on and extend the productive relationship we have enjoyed in the past. We are pleased to provide this plan for review and welcome comments and suggestions. You can address your remarks to us in care of the Office of the Vice Provost for Academic Planning, University of California, Irvine, 535 Administration, Irvine, CA 92697-1000; or by e-mail at strategicplan@uci.edu. We look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Michael V. Drake Chancellor

Michael R. Gottfredson Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost

University of California, Irvine • Irvine, CA 92697
949-824-5011
© 2007 The Regents of the University of California.
All Rights Reserved.

Last Updated: January 22, 2007