University of California, San Diego

When the Regents of the University of California originally authorized the San Diego campus in 1956, it was planned to be a graduate and research institution, providing instruction in the sciences, mathematics, and engineering. Local citizens supported the idea, voting the same year to transfer to the university 59 acres (24 ha) of mesa land on the coast near the preexisting Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The Regents requested an additional gift of 550 acres (220 ha) of undeveloped mesa land northeast of Scripps, as well as 500 acres (200 ha) on the former site of Camp Matthews from the federal government, but Roger Revelle, then director of Scripps Institution and main advocate for establishing the new campus, jeopardized the site selection by exposing the La Jolla community's exclusive real estate business practices, which were antagonistic to minority racial and religious groups. This outraged local conservatives, as well as Regent Edwin W. Pauley.UC President Clark Kerr satisfied San Diego city donors by changing the proposed name from University of California, La Jolla, to University of California, San Diego.The city voted in agreement to its part in 1958, and the UC approved construction of the new campus in 1960. Because of the clash with Pauley, Revelle was not made chancellor. Herbert York, first director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, was designated instead. York planned the main campus according to the "Oxbridge" model, relying on many of Revelle's ideas.

UC San Diego was the first general campus of the University of California to be designed "from the top down" in terms of research emphasis. Local leaders disagreed on whether the new school should be a technical research institute or a more broadly based school that included undergraduates as well. John Jay Hopkins of General Dynamics Corporation pledged one million dollars for the former while the City Council offered free land for the latter.The original authorization for the San Diego campus given by the UC Regents in 1956 approved a "graduate program in science and technology" that included undergraduate programs, a compromise that won both the support of General Dynamics and the city voters' approval.Nobel laureate Harold Urey, a physicist from the University of Chicago, and Hans Suess, who had published the first paper on the greenhouse effect with Revelle in the previous year, were early recruits to the faculty in 1958.Maria Goeppert-Mayer, later the second female Nobel laureate in physics, was appointed professor of physics in 1960. The graduate division of the school opened in 1960 with twenty faculty in residence, with instruction offered in the fields of physics, biology, chemistry, and earth science. Before the main campus completed construction, classes were held in the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

By 1963, new facilities on the mesa had been finished for the School of Science and Engineering, and new buildings were under construction for Social Sciences and Humanities. Ten additional faculty in those disciplines were hired, and the whole site was designated the First College, later renamed after Roger Revelle, of the new campus. York resigned as chancellor that year and was replaced by John Semple Galbraith. The undergraduate program accepted its first class of 181 freshman at Revelle College in 1964. Second College was founded in 1964, on the land deeded by the federal government, and named after environmentalist John Muir two years later. The School of Medicine also accepted its first students in 1966.

Political theorist Herbert Marcuse joined the faculty in 1965. A champion of the New Left, he reportedly was the first protestor to occupy the administration building in a demonstration organized by his student, political activist Angela Davis.The American Legion offered to buy out the remainder of Marcuse's contract for $20,000; the Regents censured Chancellor McGill for defending Marcuse on the basis of academic freedom, but further action was averted after local leaders expressed support for Marcuse.Further student unrest was felt at the university, as the United States increased its involvement in the Vietnam War during the early 1960s, when a student raised a Viet Minh flag over the campus. Protests escalated as the war continued and were only exacerbated after the National Guard fired on student protesters at Kent State University in 1970. Over 200 students occupied Urey Hall, with one student setting himself on fire in protest of the war.

Early research activity and faculty quality, notably in the sciences, was integral to shaping the focus and culture of the university. Even before UC San Diego had its own campus, faculty recruits had already made significant research breakthroughs, such as the Keeling Curve, a graph that plots rapidly increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and was the first significant evidence for global climate change; the Kohn–Sham equations, used to investigate particular atoms and molecules in quantum chemistry; and the Miller–Urey experiment, which gave birth to the field of prebiotic chemistry.Engineering, particularly computer science, became an important part of the university's academics as it matured. University researchers helped develop UCSD Pascal, an early machine-independent programming language that later heavily influenced Java,the National Science Foundation Network, a precursor to the Internet, and the Network News Transfer Protocol during the late 1970s to 1980s.In economics, the methods for analyzing economic time series with time-varying volatility (ARCH), and with common trends (cointegration) were developed. UC San Diego maintained its research intense character after its founding, racking up 20 Nobel Laureates affiliated within 50 years of history; a rate of four per decade.

Under Richard C. Atkinson's leadership as chancellor from 1980 to 1995, the university strengthened its ties with the city of San Diego by encouraging technology transfer with developing companies, transforming San Diego into a world leader in technology-based industries. He oversaw a rapid expansion of the School of Engineering, later renamed after Qualcomm founder Irwin M. Jacobs, with the construction of the San Diego Supercomputer Center and establishment of the computer science, electrical engineering, and bioengineering departments. Private donations increased from $15 million to nearly $50 million annually, faculty expanded by nearly 50%, and enrollment doubled to about 18,000 students during his administration. By the end of his chancellorship, the quality of UC San Diego graduate programs was ranked tenth in the nation by the National Research Council.

The university continued to undergo further expansion during the first decade of the new millennium with the establishment and construction of two new professional schools — the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Rady School of Management—and the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, a research institute run jointly with UC Irvine. UC San Diego also reached two financial milestones during this time, becoming the first university in the western region to raise over $1 billion in its eight-year fundraising campaign in 2007and also obtaining an additional $1 billion through research contracts and grants in a single fiscal year for the first time in 2010.Despite this, due to the California budget crisis, the university loaned $40 million against its own assets in 2009 to offset a significant reduction in state educational appropriations. The salary of Pradeep Khosla, who became chancellor in 2012, has been the subject of controversy amidst continued budget cuts and tuition increases.

Panorama of the Jacobs School of Engineering on Earl Warren College mall. From left to right: Geisel Library, Engineering Building Unit (EBU) I, the Powell-Focht Bioengineering Building, the Computer Science Building, and EBU II (visible through trees)

UC San Diego is located in the residential neighborhood of La Jolla of northern San Diego, California, bordered by the communities of La Jolla Shores, Torrey Pines, and University City. The main campus consists of 761 buildings that occupy 1,152 acres (466 ha), with natural reserves covering about 889 acres (360 ha) and outlying facilities taking up the remaining area.The San Diego Freeway passes through the campus and separates Thornton Hospital and Mesa apartment housing from the greater part of the university. The Preuss School, a college-preparatory charter school established and administered by UC San Diego, also lies on the eastern portion of the campus.

Standing at the center of the university is the iconic Geisel Library, named after Dr. Seuss. Library Walk, a heavily traveled pathway leading from the library to Gilman Drive, lies adjacent or close to Price Center, Center Hall, International Center, and various student services buildings, including the Student Services Center and the Career Services building. The layout of the main campus centers on Geisel Library, which is roughly surrounded by the six residential colleges of Revelle, Muir, Marshall, Warren, Roosevelt, Sixth, and the School of Medicine. The six colleges maintain separate housing facilities for their students and each college's buildings are differentiated by distinct architectural styles. As residential colleges were added while the university expanded, buildings in newer colleges were designed with styles that were starkly different from that of the original campus. The disparate architectural styles led Travel + Leisure, in its October 2013 issue, to name the university as one of the ugliest campuses in America, likening it to "a cupboard full of kitchen appliances whose function you can't quite fathom."

In addition to its academic and housing facilities, the campus features eucalyptus groves, the Birch Aquarium and museum, and several major research centers. The Scripps Institution owns a sea port and several open ocean vessels for marine research.Several large shake facilities, including the world record holding Large High Performance Outdoor Shake Table, used for earthquake simulations, are also maintained by the university.

The university has actively sought to reduce carbon emissions and energy usage on campus, earning a "gold" sustainability performance rating in the Sustainability Tracking Assessment and Rating System (STARS) survey. It was also praised in The Princeton Review's Guide to 322 Green Colleges: 2013 Edition for its strong commitment to sustainability in its academic offerings, campus infrastructure, activities and career preparation.

Center Hall, a lecture hall near the center of campus

When the campus opened in 1964, it consisted only of Revelle College and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The school's rapid increase in enrollment and opening to undergraduate students over its first decade spurred major campus expansion. Muir, Marshall, and Warren Colleges were established and built during the late 1960s through 1980s as the student population continued to grow considerably. Initially, the campus followed a rough north-south axis alongside Historic Route 101, though construction in the following decades deviated from this, with the core of the campus shifting towards Geisel Library.

Since the merging of the school's two engineering departments into a single School of Engineering in 1982, new buildings have been continually added as the division expands. Major additions include: the San Diego Supercomputer Center, completed in 1986; the Powell-Focht Bioengineering Hall, completed in 2003; and the Structural and Materials Engineering building, completed in 2012.Significant construction work on the previously undeveloped northern part of campus also took place during this time. Two graduate professional schools, the School of Global Policy and Strategy and Rady School of Management, were constructed in the area adjacent to and near the Supercomputer Center, as well as Roosevelt College, a transfer student apartment complex called The Village at Torrey Pines, and the RIMAC athletic facilities. Additionally, the Conrad Prebys Music Center was completed in 2009 as part of an expanding arts district to house UC San Diego's music department, renowned for its programs in experimental music.

Further information: Stuart Collection

More than a dozen public art projects, part of the Stuart Collection, decorate the campus. Perhaps the most famous of these is the Sun God, a large winged creature located near the Faculty Club. Other collection pieces include a collection of Stonehenge-like stone blocks, a house sitting atop an engineering building in Warren College called Fallen Star, a table by Jenny Holzer, a building that flashes the names of vices and virtues in bright neon lights, and three metallic Eucalyptus trees.

Image of the Snake Path taken from one of the upper floors in Geisel Library.

Snake Path, east of Geisel Library.

The collection also includes a large coiling snake path whose head guides towards Geisel Library, with a quote from John Milton's Paradise Lost carved along its length: "And wilt thou not be loath to leave this Paradise, but shalt possess a Paradise within thee, happier far." The path circles around its own garden and a large granite book-shaped block. One of the newest additions to the collection is Tim Hawkinson's giant teddy bear made of six boulders located in between the newly constructed Calit2 buildings.Another notable campus sight was the graffiti staircase of Mandeville Hall, a series of corridors that had been tagged with graffiti by generations of students over decades of use; this was recently replaced with the Graffiti Art Park.Students in the university's visual arts department also create temporary public art installations as part of their coursework. The university is sponsoring a $56,000 performance art project to develop a sense of community at the sprawling campus.

Graffitied staircase in Mandeville Hall

Shepard Fairey, most notable for his Barack Obama "Hope" poster, painted a mural at the Ché Café, one of UC San Diego most famous buildings and collectives, on an outside wall facing Scholars Drive, that features the likenesses of Martin Luther King, Jr. and other political figures. Underground street artist, Swampy, created a large piece inside the Ché Café, visible through the courtyard depicting his signature mammoth skeleton. Local San Diego artist Mario Torero, in collaboration with university art students, painted a mural at the Café in commemoration of Angela Davis and Rigoberta Menchú, along with other notable political figures. The Ché Café remains a hub for underground and politically progressive artists. Torero was invited back to the university in 2009 to create a mural called "Chicano Legacy" based on content suggested by Chicano students. The mural is a $10,000 digital image on a 15-by-50-foot (4.6 by 15.2 m) canvas mounted on the exterior of Peterson Hall, which includes representations of César Chávez and Dolores Huerta as well as the kiosk structure at Chicano Park.