As a campus in the University of California, UCI participates in the mission of the UC system as a whole. Formally articulated as part of A Master Plan for Higher Education in California, 1960-1975, that mission was written into law in 1960 as the Donahoe Higher Education Act:

The University of California may provide undergraduate and graduate instruction in the liberal arts and sciences and in the professions, including the teaching professions. It shall have exclusive jurisdiction in public higher education over instruction in the profession of law and over graduate instruction in the professions of medicine, dentistry and veterinary medicine. It has the sole authority in public higher education to award the doctoral degree in all fields of learning, except that it may agree with the California State University to award joint doctoral degrees in selected fields. The University of California shall be the primary state-supported academic agency for research.⁷

These objectives were formally endorsed by the University of California in the University of California Academic Plan, 1974-1978, which is still cited by the Office of the President as the mission statement of the university:

The distinctive mission of the university is to serve society as a center of higher learning, providing long-term societal benefits through transmitting advanced knowledge, discovering new knowledge, and functioning as an active working repository of organized knowledge. That obligation, more specifically, includes undergraduate education, graduate and professional education, research, and other kinds of public service, which are shaped and bounded by the central pervasive mission of discovering and advancing knowledge.⁸

The mission thus joins public service to research in a way that defines the distinctive character and structure of the University of California as a modern public research university. To accomplish the mission, the university must integrate the fundamental academic activities of research, creative performance and teaching in all fields in ways that address the world’s most important issues.

The most obvious and visible benefits of such a university to the society that helps support it are often associated with its professional schools and the performing arts. They are an important source for direct applications of scientific research to identifiable and pressing needs in medicine and the health sciences; for advances in engineering, technology and patents; for influence on social and environmental policies, laws, and education; and for new artists and new forms of cultural expression. Such applications of knowledge are one of the most important objectives of the University of California and are central to its role as a public institution. Professional schools are major contributors to the economic impact of the university, and for much of the population they represent not only personal career goals but also the general ideals of social mobility and public service.

The land grant movement in higher education incorporated professional training because it recognized that the curriculum of traditional universities was unlikely to provide the direct social benefits that would justify public funding at the level required by the expanding population of the United States. As we have seen, however, land grant universities were characterized from the beginning not only by the inclusion of technical or professional education but also by the integration of that education with the much broader range of basic research in the natural sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities that has come to characterize the modern research university. This combination of pure and independent research, distinct from but coupled with the application of its results in areas far beyond the campus, defines the University of California’s unique contribution to the state. It is also a primary factor in the university’s academic preeminence among systems of public education.

Among the consequences of this broader ideal of public service is a balance and continuity among kinds of research associated with traditionally distinct fields of academic inquiry. The mission of the University of California has thus always included not only research and teaching in the professional fields and natural sciences but also forms of research, teaching and creative work associated with the social sciences, humanities and the arts: the analysis of social systems and cognitive processes, artistic performance, the study of classical and contemporary languages and arts, research on present and past cultures, and analysis of the symbolic and technological dynamics underlying those cultures around the world.

This more comprehensive and profound sense of the application of knowledge and the social benefits of research complicates traditional distinctions between pure and applied research. Interdisciplinary connections among the social sciences, humanities, arts, computing, engineering, the natural sciences and the health sciences will be increasingly important in the future. Much of what we know as Western humanism arose in response to revolutions in the technology of printing; similarly, rapid advances in biomedical engineering, computer hardware and software, and genetics are changing what we understand as “human.” At the same time, the global dispersal of populations and revolutions in the technology of communications are eroding provincial generalizations about national identities and ethnic stereotypes. In such a world, the possibility for ethical action, a sense of values and effective social engagement will depend on a high degree of cultural and technological literacy coupled with a precise understanding of the social and cognitive processes that are shaping our international community.

To benefit society and accomplish our mission in that global context, UCI must offer the widest possible range of opportunities for scientific inquiry, intellectual discovery and cultural understanding, all thoroughly integrated at the highest level of quality, sophistication and insight. And to realize its advantages and obligations as a public research university, UCI must make those opportunities available to people from the full range of cultures and communities in California if the knowledge that the university discovers, preserves and disseminates is to keep pace with the rapidly changing society it serves.

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