• The Wall Street Journal ranks the Paul Merage School of Business fourth in the nation for information technology education and 34th in the country among regional recruiters. U.S. News & World Report ranks the business school 49th overall in its annual rankings of graduate schools for 2005.

• Orange County's only university hospital and Level 1 trauma center, UCI Medical Center is ranked among the nation's best 50 hospitals by U.S. News & World Report for its specialty care in geriatrics and gynecology. It also was named among the 100 Top Hospitals by Solucient, a leading source of health care business information.

• UC Irvine Professors Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina first discovered the hole in the ozone layer that led to the ban on chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Dr. Molina is now at MIT. Professor Frederick Reines (who recently passed away) discovered the existence of the neutrino, an elementary subatomic particle. Professors Reines and Rowland were awarded coveted Nobel Prizes , the former in physics and the latter in chemistry. The day these Nobels were awarded, October 11, 1995, has become one of our proudest days as a university! Most recently the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Irwin Rose, a researcher in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at UCI.

• Two UC Irvine graduate programs in the School of Humanities are ranked among the best in the nation by the National Research Council. English and Comparative Literature is ranked eighth, and French Language and Literature is ranked tenth. The Philosophical Gourmet Report, 2004-06, ranked the graduate program in philosphy 17th in the English-speaking workld, with 11 specialty areas ranked in the top 10.

• The Beckman Laser Institute and Medical Clinic is a world center for laser studies in medicine. Besides research laboratories devoted to laser studies, the Institute offers educational and outreach programs. UC Irvine is very proud of the critical research being done at this institute and invites you to check it out!

• The Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory (Bonney Center) is where UC Irvine researchers explore the question of how we learn, store, and retrieve information. This is the biology of memory. The Center has gained an international reputation for its work in the neurosciences, and has helped UCI rank sixth in neurosicence research in the nation!

• The Reeve-Irvine Research Center, a partnership between the estate of the late actor Christopher Reeve, philanthropist Joan Irvine Smith, the American Paralysis Association, and UC Irvine, supports the study of spinal trauma and spinal diseases, and therapies that promote recovery and repair of neurological function.

• The Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (pronounced "tha soar us ling weye grac eye"), is where ancient civilization meets the compact disc! Researchers have compiled the world's ONLY computerized data bank of Greek literature from Homer to A.D. 1453. World-wide scholars can access the works of more than 3,500 authors and 11,000 works via a single read-only memory compact disc.

• The UC Humanities Institute convenes 25 scholars every year at UCI to study an annual research topic, such as biomedical ethics. Papers and lectures are presented to colleagues and students. Research is divided into area studies (cultures and world areas), historical studies (literary periods are studied comparatively or individually), discourse studies (including the examination of the languages of arts and sciences), and humanistic concerns (in disciplines such as the sciences, medicine, law, and business).

• UCI's Program in Writing, a nationally acclaimed graduate writing program, has fostered such well-known authors as Michael Chabon ("The Mysteries of Pittsburgh"), Whitney Otto ("How To Make an American Quilt") and Alice Sebold ("The Lovely Bones").

• The Center for International Education (CIE), offers opportunities for international experiences, academic credit from abroad, and many other kinds of learning experiences for globe-trotting Anteaters.

• UCI's Department of Physics and Astronomy boasts an on-campus observatory replete with an Autoscope computer-controlled, reflecting telescope. Used primarily as a teaching laboratory for physics and astronomy courses, students enrolled in advanced classes have the opportunity to study and make direct observations using the telescope.

• The English department's program in literary criticism and theory has been ranked No. 1 in the nation by U.S. News & World Report.

• Several prominent companies in Southern California have joined forces to fund a $150,000.00 state-of-the-art PC instructional lab for Information and Computer Science majors. Among those lending support are FileNet, Microsoft, Rockwell, Western Digital, Pacific Care, and ViewSonic.

• UC Irvine's School of Social Ecology is one of only a handful in the country to offer studies in environmental analysis, criminology, and social psychology. The program is dedicated to "..advancing the causes of peace, improving physical and mental health, a cleaner environment, and a more lawful and just society..."

• The Department of Defense granted UC Irvine's Beckman Laser Institute and Medical Clinic $2.5 million to refine free-electron lasers, or "star wars" lasers, for medical research aimed at treating glaucoma, near-sightedness, dental drilling, and improving in-vitro fertilization.

• UC Irvine's atmospheric chemistry laboratory analyzes up to 5,000 air samples per year--from as far away as Antarctica and South America--and is creating a database that can be be used for building models for predicting the atmosphere's future. Information about this research project and others can be found at the Chemistry Department's Research Site.

• UC Irvine's Brain Imaging Center has the only psychiatric research scanner capable of creating images that show brain metabolism.

• UC Irvine has the largest library in Orange County. UC Irvine's Science Library is the largest public medical library in the state and the largest west of the Mississippi.

• In addition, the UC Irvine Library has a first-edition folio of Shakespeare's plays printed in 1623. This rarity is among many in the Special Collections section of the Library. Students can make an appointment to view it! Come see what all the fuss is about!

• Ansel Adams was commissioned to photograph the newly-built campus in 1966. Mr. Adams' exhibition is called FIAT LUX: LET THERE BE LIGHT, which is the University of California motto. The collection now resides at the California Museum of Photography at UC Riverside.

• UC Irvine's first architect, William Pereira, designed LAX (Los Angeles International Airport), part of the Kennedy Space Center, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He is also creator of the "master-planned community" concept, such as the City of Irvine.

• In 1999, over 800 undergraduate researchers pursued faculty-supervised independent study in the biological and biomedical sciences. Countless other students pursued independent study of their choice with faculty in the social sciences, physical sciences, humanities, engineering, the arts, and social ecology. Check out the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program for more information on the opportunities YOU will have to conduct research at UCI!

Of Interest to New Students and Parents

• UC Irvine students have been awarded numerous prestigious fellowships including:
  
  • 5 Andrew Mellon Fellowship in Humanistic Studies
  • 20 Barry M. Goldwater Scholarships
  • 1 British Marshall Scholarship
  • 6 Jacob K. Javits Fellowships
  • 7 Harry S. Truman Scholarships
  • 29 National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowships
  • 17 U.S. Fulbright Fellowships

• Since UC Irvine's telephone registration system (TELE) was introduced in 1990, the percent of lower-division students with 12 or more units on the first day of fall instruction has increased from 69% to 92%! This will be very important to entering students.

• The average class size is 31 students. The number of courses with fewer than 30 students is at 79%! The student/faculty ratio is approximately 19:1. UC Irvine students, on average, complete their degrees in four years and one quarter.

• UC Irvine has hundreds of active and involved clubs on campus:
  • Some are academic clubs and honor societies.
  • Some are Greek organizations.
  • Others focus on political, religious, and service issues.
  • Still others are athletic and social in nature.

  For more information or to obtain a list of currently registered organizations, call the Dean of Students at (949) 824-5182.

• UC Irvine's School of the Arts offers a minor in Digital Arts designed to introduce students to the integration of the arts and technology, i.e., learning to appreciate and produce art through technology.

• The School of the Arts, through its "UCI Arts Bridge" initiative, provides scholarships of up to $3,000 per year for UCI students to teach drama, dance, music, studio, and digital arts K-12 classrooms in schools throughout Orange County.

• UCI's Intercollegiate Athletics participates in 21 sports in Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association - ZOT!
  • The men compete in baseball, basketball, crew, cross country, golf, soccer, swimming, tennis, track and field, volleyball, and water polo.
  • Women's teams compete in basketball, crew, cross country, golf, soccer, swim ming, tennis, track and field, and volleyball.

• UC Irvine also has a nationally-competitive coed sailing team. The majority of Anteater teams compete in the Big West Conference, with some in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation.

• Some of the more notable student-athletes to have competed at UCI include American mile record-holder and three-time Olympian Steve Scott; Olympic diving gold medalists Gred Louganis and Jennifer Chandler; world long jump record-holder Mike Powell; outfielder Brady Anderson; pitcher Doug Linton; Chicago Bulls assistant coach Bob Thornton; 12-year NBA veteran Scott Brooks was a member of the 1994 world champion Houston Rockets and is currently an assistant coach with the Denver Nuggets.

• The late Kevin Magee, a basketball All-American at UCI in 1981 and 1982, became the first Anteater athlete to have his number retired, as No. 44 was officially retired in a Bren Events Center ceremony February 4, 1995.

• UCI's Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences is the first in the UC system and among the fastest-growing programs of its kind in the nation.

• Internationally acclaimed artist Maya Lin, known for designing the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and other major environmental art installations, is creating a new outdoor plaza for UCI's Claire Trevor School of the Arts.