EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Letter from the Chancellor and the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost
Where We Are Now
Michael R. Gottfredson EVC/Provost
Michael V. Drake Chancellor
The University of California, Irvine admitted its first students in 1965. Since then, we have enjoyed an unparalleled combination of rapid growth in enrollment and an equally impressive increase in the size, quality and influence of our research programs, performing arts and professional schools. With a current enrollment of 25,000 students and a faculty of more than 1,800, we are a member of the prestigious Association of American Universities and have secured our place among the best public research universities in the United States.
Our faculty includes three Nobel laureates, recipients of the National Medal of Science, and many members of the most important scholarly, scientific and professional organizations. In 2005-06, the faculty was awarded extramural funding exceeding $310 million, and more than 40 of our academic programs are ranked among the best in their fields.
These established strengths are accompanied by continuing innovation across the campus and especially in our new College of Health Sciences, which is home to our School of Medicine (established in 1967) and new programs in public health, pharmaceutical sciences and nursing science. The University of California, Irvine Medical Center, which is undergoing major renovation and expansion, is the only university hospital in a county of 3 million people. It has been named one of the nation’s top 100 hospitals two years in a row and is one of only 78 hospitals nationally (and the first in Southern California) to receive the prestigious Magnet Designation for nursing excellence.
At the heart of any university are its students, and among UCI’s 100,000 graduates are four Pulitzer Prize winners and successful and influential leaders in academic and professional fields around the world. Our graduating seniors have received the nation’s most prestigious awards for graduate study, including 21 Fulbrights, 23 Goldwater awards, five Truman fellowships, and 31 fellowships from the National Science Foundation. Our athletic teams have earned 24 national titles in eight sports, and more than 30 UCI alumnae/i have competed in the Olympics.
Supporting the work of our faculty and students is a highly skilled staff of 8,600 that supports research and teaching and manages the award-winning facilities and grounds for our 1,500-acre campus. UCI has received 12 national awards for administrative best practices and innovations; two medals for advancement and gift and trust administration; and four more awards in athletics marketing and promotion. Our newest student housing, completed in 2005, has already won seven state and national awards including “Best Student Housing Apartment Community” from the National Home Builders Association.
This success would not have been possible without the equally remarkable support and generosity of our surrounding community, including many national leaders of business and industry. Private support for UCI in 2005-06 rose to $101.4 million, a 189-percent increase since 2001-02. The total endowment for UCI has reached nearly $195 million, with 60 endowed chairs in academic units across the campus.
That community support reflects the importance of UCI to the economic vitality of our region and state. Research at UCI has helped launch more than 30 companies, and we receive $6 million annually from intellectual property rights. University Research Park houses 30 tenant corporations, including divisions of AOL, CISCO and Canon, and the future corporate headquarters and research and development laboratory for Broadcom. With an annual budget of $1.3 billion, UCI is Orange County’s second-largest employer and has an estimated economic impact on the area of approximately $3.7 billion per year.
Where We Are Going
The success of our founders sets a high standard as we turn toward the future and imagine what UCI will look like on its 50th anniversary in 2015. The first step in that process was taken in spring of 2004 when six groups of faculty, staff and administrators were convened and charged with defining broad goals associated with key areas of planning for the whole campus. Through campuswide discussion and revision of their reports over the following year, a strong consensus rapidly emerged on our principal objectives for the next decade.
These broad objectives, more specific goals covering different aspects of campuswide planning, and strategies for achieving them are described in our new strategic plan. Academic units and administrative offices are now at work applying these campuswide goals to their own plans, which will be posted on our strategic planning Web site and updated regularly. That site also will include a set of benchmarks to measure our progress and a page devoted to updates and revisions of the original plan as it evolves.
Comprehensive in the connections it establishes among the various activities that make up a great university, the plan 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. Over the next decade we will work hard with our partners in the region and state to extend the productive relationship we have enjoyed in the past. We are pleased to provide our plan for review and welcome comments and suggestions.
Michael V. Drake
Chancellor
Michael R. Gottfredson
Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost
Vision: Growth with Excellence
The University of California, Irvine is dedicated to the discovery and dissemination of knowledge through research, teaching and creative expression. That mission is pursued in acclaimed academic programs in letters, arts, sciences, engineering and the health sciences, and in highly regarded professional schools of medicine, management and law.
In the next decade, discoveries at UCI will continue to yield scientific and cultural impacts that help shape the future of society. We will set standards and influence policy in the sciences and arts at the local, state, national and international levels. UCI will produce highly educated graduates dedicated to lifelong learning whose knowledge and talents contribute to the economic and cultural vitality of the region, state and nation, and to the global community of the 21st century. Cultivation of the public role of UCI as a scientific, scholarly and cultural center of the region will be among its top priorities, and its contributions in that role will be widely recognized for their value and influence.
The number and quality of UCI’s undergraduates, graduate students and graduate professional students will reflect those of the strongest public research universities in their quality, numbers and diversity. The research and teaching that constitute UCI’s educational programs will be conducted by a faculty of the highest quality, who come to UCI and spend their careers here because of the widespread recognition of the outstanding scholarly, scientific and creative accomplishments of the campus. Staff who support research and teaching will see UCI as the most desirable employer in the region, with competitive compensation and benefits, a supportive working environment, and ample opportunities for professional development.
Components of the Plan
The strategic plan consists of four sections:
- Where We Are Now offers an overview of UCI in 2005, its 40th anniversary.
- Our Mission as a Public Research University discusses several key issues that have informed our academic planning.
- Where We Are Going focuses on the issues identified as focal points for development over the next 10 years as we approach our 50th anniversary.
- Resources analyzes the campus’s past and present funding, looks at external factors including trends in higher education funding, and projects state, extramural and private support necessary to realize the plan.
Principal Objectives
- Continue our pursuit of the essential research and educational mission of UCI as a public research university by maintaining and strengthening core academic disciplines.
- Continue our state-supported growth to reach 32,000 students by 2015, with 25 percent of that enrollment at the graduate level in our academic and professional programs. New professional schools and programs will be developed to help support that growth in graduate enrollment.
- Reinforce existing centers of excellence across the campus and elevate more of our academic and professional programs to the top of their fields through the differential allocation of resources. Included in those resources are more than 300 new faculty positions associated with enrollment growth over the next decade.
- Develop innovative programs in emerging disciplines, support interdisciplinary collaboration and establish new research centers by reserving some of the growth resources for these initiatives.
- Make UCI the best choice for the best graduates of California’s high schools by strengthening our undergraduate programs, increasing the number of majors across the campus, and expanding undergraduate research opportunities in all fields.
- Enhance the quality of our educational programs and enrich the intellectual and cultural life of the campus by increasing the diversity of our faculty and students.
- Support recruitment and retention of the best faculty, staff and students by expanding housing for all segments of the UCI community, including accommodations for 50 percent of our graduate and undergraduate students on campus by 2010.
- Increase the transfer of innovation from the campus to the community by expanding collaboration between the university and the extraordinary regional strengths in business and industry.
- Expand our contributions to the region, state and nation by improving health care for our community, developing more effective social and public policies, supporting the arts and enriching the cultural vitality of the area, and preparing more teachers for service in our public schools, particularly in the fields of science and mathematics.
- Support those aspects of the strategic plan not funded by the state by launching a major fundraising campaign.
