September 2005

Dear Colleagues:

It’s already September and I am incredibly excited about the new quarter starting. We are getting prepared to welcome new and existing students, faculty and staff to campus for what promises to be an action-packed fall quarter. As exciting as our last year was, the one ahead of us promises to be even better. We have a record 26,140 students enrolled this quarter, including 3,800 freshmen, 1,700 transfer students, 3,600 graduate students, 1,380 medical students, and 180 pharmacy students. The academic credentials of our freshmen class clearly show that these students are the crème of the crop: with an average GPA of 3.93 and an SAT 1 score above 1250.

Last year, we launched an “On-line Chat with the Chancellor” and invited students to come online and “talk” to me about campus issues such as, student life, academic challenges, career choices and other related topics. To welcome students back this quarter, a Chancellor’s chat will be held Oct. 19. I would like to invite all UCSD students to participate in this live online conversation with me from 11 a.m. - noon. This is an opportunity for students to ask questions and get personal feedback from me on topics related to UCSD. To participate in the online chat, merely log on to: http://chancellorschat.ucsd.edu at the designated time on Wednesday, Oct. 19.

Breaking New Ground

We are breaking new ground on the stem cell research initiative. With our partners on the Mesa (The Burnham Institute, Salk Institute, and The Scripps Research Institute), we have taken our first critical step towards establishing a collaborative stem cell “boot camp.” This fall, UCSD was awarded $3.6 million from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine to expand the number of scientists trained to use stem cells in research and clinical settings to improve our understanding and treatment of a wide variety of human diseases. The three-year award is part of the first round of grants to be doled out by the state’s stem cell agency.

Among the numerous campus activities and events planned for fall quarter, few stand out like the opening of our new futuristic Calit2 building set for Oct. 28. The 215,000-square-foot facility is optimized for wireless communications and contains specialized spaces and labs including a nanoscale fabrication laboratory, a wide array of circuits labs, material characterization labs, new media arts facilities, reconfigurable research neighborhoods, and a rooftop "antenna garden." The six floors of the Calit2 building will house close to 900 faculty, researchers, staff, and students working on diverse research initiatives bringing together engineering, medicine, science, and the arts.

Reaching New Levels of Success

Although looking ahead is always a great motivator, I would like to give you a brief sampling of what a great last year we had: Among other things, we celebrated the graduation of our 100,000th student and surpassed the $750 million mark in our $1 billion Campaign for UCSD, receiving a record $147.3 million in private support during the last fiscal year. Against a backdrop of steadily declining state revenues, private support has become essential to our success and we are extremely grateful to our donors and supporters for helping us reach this impressive benchmark.

Our faculty continued to break new ground with their innovative research. Scripps scientists produced the first clear evidence of human-produced warming in the world’s oceans and research by a team of archaeologists established the scientific basis for important dates in the Bible. With three new faculty named to the National Academy of Sciences, UCSD now has nearly 70 members, the nation’s sixth highest faculty membership in the NAS. Five faculty were also named to the National Academy of Arts & Sciences, boosting UCSD membership to 76.

A Banner Year for Rankings!

It would appear that our many achievements of the last year have not gone unnoticed. In August, UCSD was named “the hottest school for science” in the U.S. by the Newsweek/Kaplan Guide. The university was also named the 7th best public university in the nation by U.S. News & World Report and in a guide published by Washington Monthly examining “what colleges are doing for the country,” UCSD was ranked 8th in the nation. And, UCSD is equally prominent in international rankings: Shanghai Jaio Tong’s Institute of Higher Education rated UCSD as 13th best university in the world among 1000 institutions. An earlier international ranking by the London Times tapped UCSD as the 24th best university in the world. While individual rankings may not be definitive indicators, collectively they confirm the high academic quality of UCSD’s programs and faculty.

And last, but certainly not least, UCSD historian Emily Thompson has been named a 2005 MacArthur Fellow by the MacArthur Foundation. The $500,000-no-strings-attached “genius” award recognizes the creativity, originality and potential of Thompson’s research in the ephemeral and elusive history of the American soundscape. Thompson is the 14th UCSD scholar to receive a MacArthur Fellowship and the fourth so honored from the university’s Division of Arts and Humanities.

Reaching Out To Help New Orleans Communities

We were deeply saddened by the tragic events in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi brought on by Hurricane Katrina. Many members of the UCSD community have contributed or volunteered to help the many individuals who were impacted by this disaster. In addition to offering a variety of academic assistance options to students who were impacted, at UCSD, a group of researchers at the Jacobs School of Engineering and Calit2 have deployed an experimental communications system in the New Orleans area to help keep emergency officials connected.

The researchers, led by Ramesh Rao, director of UCSD’s Calit2 division, have collaborated with FEMA, Qualcomm, and other communication companies to convert RV’s to mobile communication hubs complete with cell phone and internet capabilities. By mid-September, they had provided more than 400 cell phones to doctors and other relief workers. The group also helped to re-link hurricane-affected areas and sped up the process of getting medical aid to the Gulf region.

The UCSD Medical Center-sponsored Disaster Medical Assistance Team (DMAT San Diego CA-4) was deployed in late August to provide medical assistance to the victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, La. The 30-member team, led by DMAT commander and UCSD emergency medicine professor Dr. Jake Jacoby, provided medical assistance to thousands of victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Data experts at SDSC, in collaboration with the Red Cross and other rescue organizations, are creating a consolidated database of survivors and missing persons to make it easier for people to connect with family and friends.

I applaud these and the many other support efforts by our researchers, doctors, staff and students. It is these types of collaborations—at all levels—that truly define a community.

Thank you for viewing our Web site and for your continued interest in UCSD.

With warm regards,

Marye Anne Fox