A. Growth

• UCI will continue to grow at a rate comparable to that of the past six years, with state funding as in the past for new faculty positions, operations support and capital projects associated with growth. This growth should result in moving from 22,400 budgeted student FTE in 2003-04 to approximately 30,000 budgeted student FTE by 2011 and 32,000 FTE by 2015, with commensurate growth in faculty, staff and physical facilities. Growth in graduate enrollments, including graduate professional enrollments, will increase to at least 25 percent of total enrollment by 2015. A significant part of the growth in undergraduates will be accommodated in the state-funded Summer Session.
• UCI will target growth resources strategically by developing new programs in areas of special promise and by expanding the portion of existing programs that are now at or near the level of great distinction.
• To help support strategic development, at least 25 percent of the faculty FTE vacated for reasons other than denial of tenure will be returned to the EVC and provost for reallocation to selected areas of excellence. In most cases, untenured positions vacated through negative mid-career reviews also will be exempt from this return policy. This will apply to general campus faculty FTE, occupied by faculty in tenured positions and positions with security of employment. Those FTE occupied by faculty in nontenured positions or potential security of employment positions, regardless of reason for vacancy, will not count toward the total against which the 25 percent will be calculated.
• The campus will augment state-funded capital projects to provide additional space for academic and office buildings. The campus will continue its aggressive program to expand on-campus residential housing, reaching and maintaining 50-percent residency of both undergraduate and graduate students by 2010.
• All growth plans will include as a principal objective enhancing the diversity of students, faculty and staff.

B. Research

• We will protect and strengthen the quality of core research and academic programs while developing new areas appropriate for a major public research university.
• UCI will contribute to the creation of knowledge and wealth, enhance economic competitiveness of the region, create jobs, and generally improve the quality of life in the area by enhancing the transfer of innovation from the campus to the community in technology, policy, scholarship, social and cultural analysis, and artistic performance.

C. Academic Programs: Undergraduate and Graduate Education

• UCI will create new undergraduate and academic graduate programs and selectively augment existing programs according to specified areas of excellence. At the graduate level, new programs will include new master’s and professional programs compatible with our strong academic graduate programs. We will increase levels of support for all graduate students – especially international students – from UCOP and other sources. We will improve their professional and academic placement when they complete their degrees.
• The University of California will approve new professional programs and degrees to support UCI’s continuing development as a comprehensive public research university.
• Post-doctoral education will be expanded, integrated more thoroughly into the disciplines, and supported better in fields where it has become an essential part of the professional development of young researchers.
• UCI will develop organizational structures that are flexible enough to accommodate change and that can support first-rate departmental programs for undergraduate experiences as well as interdepartmental and interschool efforts in research and graduate education.

D. Staff

• A concentrated effort will be made to provide leadership training and growth opportunities for staff to develop their careers at UCI and step into the critical leadership roles vacated through retirement and attrition in the coming years.
• Retention of excellent staff will be emphasized even further as an important strategy for mitigating the potentially negative effects of the high number of retirements projected in the next decade.

E. Academic Support: Libraries, Information Technology and Physical Facilities

• The UCI Libraries must be strengthened and expanded to support academic growth, including expansion of its staff, physical space, technology and collections, and continued growth of access to online resources. Similar levels of support must be available for other facilities, such as laboratory space to support courses in the physical and life sciences, that are open to a wide range of users but that are not the sole responsibility of any single unit.
• Network and other information technology services and facilities available to support research, education and administration will scale with campus growth objectives and will be comparable in scope and quality to those offered at the best research universities in the country.
• Planning for the physical plant and information technology will continue to reflect pursuit of excellence in academic priorities, including research emphases and needs of educational programs, state-of-the-art learning facilities, and outstanding venues for artistic performance and exhibitions.
• Campus design and construction should reflect the same aspiration for quality and distinction that motivates our academic programs. The expansion associated with growth presents opportunities to increase the architectural distinction of the campus, already widely recognized.
• UCI will develop a comprehensive housing program that can help improve recruitment and retention of all segments of the campus community. Faculty housing is crucial for recruitment and hence should be the highest priority of housing types, followed by graduate and then undergraduate housing. Staff also must have access to housing, and the campus needs to provide residential opportunities for post-doctoral scholars and medical residents.
• Growth can be accommodated within current campus boundaries without radically changing the general land-use plans for the campus or the scale and style of campus architecture. However, consistent density discipline must be applied to decisions about land-use if the campus is to build out faculty and staff housing at present “suburban” densities and at the same time house 50 percent of the graduate and undergraduates, build additional sports fields for recreational and intercollegiate use, and leave parcels undeveloped for unforeseen research opportunities.

F. Campus Life

• The campus will support a stimulating social and cultural life, including artistic performances and exhibitions, intercollegiate and recreational sports, world-class campus visitors, active clubs and student affiliations, exciting student programs for study abroad and international experience, and on-campus entertainment.
• The campus will provide accessible and affordable campus-community services for students, staff and faculty, including counseling and health services, retail services, and career development advising and assistance. In particular, the campus needs to provide more access to high quality child care for faculty, including infant care and pre-school education. The need for child care is approaching crisis proportions with the hiring of many new junior faculty in the last five years, most of whom live in University Hills.
• Alumnae/i will play a greater role in campus life than they do now, and the campus will maintain its contact with graduates more consistently and substantially.
• Town-gown interaction will be enhanced to attract more members of the community to campus and improve their experience here, and to increase the diversity of our visitors.

G. UCI’s Public Role

• We will do a better job of explaining to the public who we are, what distinguishes us from other institutions of higher education, and what we can contribute to the society, culture and economy of the region, state, nation and world. As the campus clarifies and expands its central messages, this effort will entail a more comprehensive and integrated approach to communications and public relations.
• UCI will play an even more prominent and influential role in the educational, economic, cultural and social development of Orange County and all of Southern California. UCI also will extend its interaction with local populations in terms of health care, educational programs for non-traditional students and service to the community.

H. Resources

• To augment state funding, UCI will initiate a major fundraising campaign focused especially on resources necessary to support faculty and students. Another important focus will be necessary to support capital projects for facilities and buildings not funded (or funded only partially) by the state.
• Other sources of revenue will be pursued continually, including overhead from increased extramural funding for contracts and grants, various land-use agreements and other partnerships with the private sector, and systemwide opportunities to increase student fees in academic as well as professional programs to a level closer to the actual cost of a UC education.

University of California, Irvine • Irvine, CA 92697
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All Rights Reserved.

Last Updated: January 22, 2007