University of California, Irvine
The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a public land-grant research university in Irvine, California, United States. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, UCI offers 87 undergraduate degrees and 129 graduate and professional degrees, and roughly 30,000 undergraduates and 6,000 graduate students are enrolled at UCI as of Fall 2019.[6] The university is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity", and had $523.7 million in research and development expenditures in 2021.[10][11] UCI became a member of the Association of American Universities in 1996.[12]
The university administers the UC Irvine Medical Center, a large teaching hospital in Orange, and its affiliated health sciences system; the University of California, Irvine, Arboretum; and a portion of the University of California Natural Reserve System. UC Irvine set up the first Earth System Science Department in the United States.[13][14] The university was rated as one of the "Public Ivies" in 1985 and 2001 surveys comparing publicly funded universities the authors claimed provide an education comparable to the Ivy League.[15][16]
The UC Irvine Anteaters currently compete in the NCAA Division I as members of the Big West Conference.[a] During the early years of the school's existence, the teams played at the NCAA Division II level. The Anteaters have won 28 national championships in nine different team sports, 64 Anteaters have won individual national championships, and 53 Anteaters have competed in the Olympics, winning a total of 33 Olympic medals.[17] As of January 2022, there have been 5 Nobel Prize laureates,[18] 7 Pulitzer Prize winners, 6 MacArthur "Genius Grant" recipients, 37 Guggenheim Fellows, and 1 Turing Award winner affiliated with the university as alumni, faculty or researchers.[19][20][21]
History[edit]
Early years[edit]
The University of California, Irvine (with San Diego and Santa Cruz) was one of three new University of California campuses established in the 1960s under the California Master Plan for Higher Education.[22] During the 1950s, the University of California saw the need for the new campuses to handle the expected increase in enrollment from the post-war baby boom. One of the new campuses was to be in the Los Angeles area; the location selected was Irvine Ranch, an area of agricultural land bisecting Orange County from north to south. This site was chosen to accommodate the county's growing population, complement the growth of nearby UCLA and UC Riverside, and allow for the construction of a master planned community in the surrounding area.[23]
Washington Center[edit]
The University of California, Irvine, created the University of California, Washington Center (UCDC) program in 1982. It is a student program of the university, located on Scott Circle in Downtown Washington ( 38°54′23.4″N 77°2′14″W / 38.906500°N 77.03722°W). The center serves as the headquarters of the University of California Office of Federal Governmental Relations and supports UC students interning in the District of Columbia. UC Washington Center is currently led by UC Santa Cruz economist Helen Shapiro.
Like other University of California campuses, UC Irvine operates under a system of shared governance, or a partnership between the Chancellor and his administration and the faculty through the Academic Senate. The Chancellor is the chief campus officer and has authority over the campus budget.[48] The Academic Senate has authority to determine the conditions for admission and supervise courses and curricula.[49] The Chancellor is nominated by and is responsible to the Regents of the University of California and the UC President.[50] UCI's Chancellors are listed below:
After the Chancellor, the second most senior official is the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost,[51] the university's chief academic and operating officer. Every school on campus reports to the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost through a Dean, and all other academic and administrative units report to his office through a Vice Chancellor or chief administrator. A partial list of these units includes Campus Recreation, Intercollegiate Athletics, Planning and Budget, Student Affairs, UC Irvine Libraries, UC Irvine Medical Center, and University Advancement.
Discoveries and innovation[edit]
Machine Learning Repository[edit]
The University of California Irvine hosts the UCI Machine Learning Repository, a data resource which is very popular among machine learning researchers and data mining practitioners.[97] It was created in 1987 and contains 622 datasets from several domains including biology, medicine, physics, engineering, social sciences, games, and others.[98] The datasets contained in the UC Irvine Machine Learning Repository have been used by thousands of students and researchers in the computer science community and facilitated the publication of approximately 26 thousand scientific articles.[99]