July 2, 2007

At UC San Diego, anything is possible.  The success of our seven-year, $1 billion fundraising campaign is a case in point.  Many people, including our fundraising consultants, told us our goal might be too ambitious for a university not yet 50 years old.  But thanks to the support of forward-thinking alumni, parents, faculty and staff, students and friends, UCSD’s history-making campaign is an overwhelming success.    

Imagine What’s Next
I’d like to offer my heartfelt gratitude to our more than 100,000 donors who made The Campaign for UCSD: Imagine What’s Next a tremendous success.  You started it!  Your belief and confidence in UC San Diego made this campaign possible.  Your generous gifts will ensure educational opportunity and enrich student life, support outstanding faculty, advance academic excellence and launch inventive programs, improve lives through research and health care, and help us meet our highest-priority needs. 

In addition to being pleased with the success of the campaign, we’re also thrilled that we surpassed our goal nearly a month ahead of our scheduled campaign conclusion.  UC San Diego is also the region’s first university to top this ambitious fundraising milestone, and one of the youngest in the nation to reach this goal.

While UCSD has met important funding goals for research, academic programs and health sciences during the course of the campaign, more remains to be done to support the university’s efforts to recruit and retain faculty, and to finance undergraduate and graduate scholarships and student life initiatives.  These are areas that require continuous support and we will always have a need for private support since the state of California only provides 12 percent of our funding for education.  But for now, we have much to be grateful for and much to celebrate.

Congrats to Our New Grads
Our recent graduates also have much to celebrate.  More than 5,000 undergraduates and more than 1,000 graduate students received their degrees last month, transitioning from students to UC San Diego alumni.  We are so proud of our students and their accomplishments.  We are especially awed by our students who not only worked hard while they were here, but worked hard just to get here.  Some served in the military and the Peace Corps before attending college; some took care of their family members and held down two jobs while they were in school.  Roughly 20 percent of our undergraduates are first-generation students, meaning they are the first in their families to attend a four-year university.  UC San Diego students know how to overcome challenges and they have a determination to make things happen, to affect change, to make a difference in our society.  We are proud to have more than 6,000 new alumni who are now applying their top-notch education to solving the world’s problems and making the world a better place.

We are also proud of our 78 Preuss School graduates.  A record 96 percent of Preuss’s graduating class was accepted to a four-year college or university, including all UC campuses and many top private universities such as Harvard, Yale and Stanford.  The college-bound students will be the first in their families to attend and graduate from college.  The Preuss School continues to be a source of pride for UC San Diego.  The school was recently listed as the ninth best high school in the nation by Newsweek.  The school was also the only charter school in San Diego County to be selected as a 2007 California Distinguished School, an annual award that recognizes some of the state’s exemplary public schools.  This recognition, and the many achievements of our students, demonstrate the success of the school.  Congratulations Class of 2007!

Campus Construction Continues
It’s amazing to see how much our campus has grown, even in the past year.  We’ve added two new buildings to our campus, the Rady School of Management’s Otterson Hall and the new Student Services Center.  We also completed renovations at the Ida and Cecil Green Faculty Club and at the Biomedical Library.  As part of our 10-year growth plan and goal to house a minimum of 50 percent of our campus’ students, we also constructed a new single graduate housing complex for 800 students.  Our next big housing project will kick off this fall on the north end of campus.  The project will provide housing for more than 1,000 undergraduate transfer students.

We’re currently constructing a new state-of-the-art Music Center in the heart of campus named for philanthropist Conrad Prebys who generously donated $6 million to jumpstart construction.  The Price Center expansion continues and should be completed early next year.  We’re also still in the process of building a new wing of the Shiley Eye Center and expanding the Anne F. and Abraham Ratner Children’s Eye Center. 

To meet the demand for parking on campus, this fall we will open a new 1,400 space parking structure near RIMAC.  Even though we are adding parking spaces, we continue to have the goal of reducing the number of single-occupancy vehicles entering our campus.  I am happy to report the number of single-occupancy vehicles has been dramatically reduced over the last six years, from 66 percent in 2001 to 54 percent this year.  We’re pleased more and more people are using alternative transportation options, such as buses and carpools.  Now let’s see if we can get the drive alone rate down below 50 percent!  In addition to easing congestion on campus, we are also reducing our carbon emissions, an achievement that impacts and improves our campus, our local community and our world.

We appreciate the support, dedication and generosity of our students, staff, faculty, researchers, alumni, and university friends.  You are the reason anything is possible at UC San Diego.  Enjoy your summer.

                                                                        With warm regards,

                                                                        Marye Anne Fox
                                                                        Chancellor