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University of California, Los Angeles

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The University of California, Los Angeles, popularly known as UCLA, is a public, coeducational university located in the neighborhood of Westwood within the city of Los Angeles. It is the second-oldest campus in the University of California system, the largest university in the state of California, and consistently ranked among the top research universities in the world. Template:UC taxobox


History

In March 1881, after heavy lobbying by Los Angeles residents, the California Legislature authorized the creation of the state's second normal school in downtown Los Angeles to train teachers for the growing population of Southern California. The Los Angeles State Normal School opened on August 29, 1882, on what is now the site of the Central Library of the Los Angeles Public Library system. The new normal school included an elementary school where teachers-in-training could practice their teaching technique on real children.

In 1914, the school moved to a new campus on Vermont Avenue in Hollywood. In 1917, Director Ernest Carroll Moore suggested that the normal school should be added as the second campus of the University of California. Appropriate legislation was signed into law on May 23, 1919 which turned the school into the Southern Branch of the University of California (SBUC) and added its general undergraduate program, the College of Letters and Science.

In 1927, the school was renamed the "University of California at Los Angeles." The word 'at' was officially replaced by a comma in 1958, in line with other UC campuses. It has since simply been known around the world as "UCLA." Also in 1927, the state broke ground at a new campus on the chaparral-covered hills of a real estate development called Westwood. The first classes on the new 400 acre (1.6 km²) campus were held in 1929 in its four original buildings. In 1933, UCLA was permitted to award the master's degree, and in 1936, the doctorate.

In 1934, upon the death of William Andrews Clark, Jr., UCLA received its first major bequest, and still one of the most generous in its history, the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. The rare books and manuscripts collection includes some of the world's largest collections of English literature, history, and fine printing.

Campus

File:Roycehalluc.JPG
Royce Hall

The campus currently comprises 163 buildings across 419 acres (1.7 km²) in the western part of Los Angeles, north of the Westwood shopping district and just south of Sunset Boulevard. The campus is quite close, but not adjacent to the San Diego Freeway, an oversight avoided in the planning of such newer UC campuses like Irvine, next to Highway 73, and San Diego, which is split by Interstate 5.

The university campus is world-renowned and has been praised for its architecture and picturesque scenery. It is located in Los Angeles and is bordered by Westwood, Bel Air, Beverly Hills, and Brentwood. The campus is informally divided into North Campus and South Campus, which are both on the eastern half of the university's land. North Campus is the original campus core with its buildings being more old-fashioned in appearance and clad in imported Italian brick. North Campus is home to the arts, humanities, social sciences, law, and business programs. North Campus is centered around oak tree-lined Dickson Court, which has appeared in many movies such as The Nutty Professor. South Campus is home to the physical sciences, life sciences, engineering, psychology, mathematical sciences, all health-related fields, and the UCLA Medical Center. The campus is in a constant state of change with multiple construction projects, including new residence areas, teaching and laboratory space, and a new hospital.

Undergraduate housing for nearly 8,000 residents is spread across 14 complexes on a ridge on the western side of the campus, which is called "the Hill." Student life on the Hill is under the care of the Office of Residential Life (ORL), which is often considered to be a leading residential life department in the United States. Under the efforts of both student staff and professional staff, ORL provides a comprehensive living and learning environment, bridging academics, personal growth, leadership, and community. Housing facilities also include four restaurants and three boutique-style eateries. Students are currently guaranteed three years of on-campus housing, but the Housing Master Plan aims to guarantee housing to all undergraduates for four years by 2010.

File:Uclapowellsnow1932.JPG
Powell Library, covered in snow, January 15, 1932.

In 2002, the university began building a new graduate housing complex, Weyburn Terrace, in order to recruit top graduate students from around the world because there had been no university-operated graduate housing on or near the main campus since 2001. The new complex is located on the western edge of Westwood, a few blocks from the main UCLA campus, and was completed before the Fall term in 2005. Weyburn Terrace enables UCLA to provide housing to approximately fifty percent of incoming graduate and professional students.

Ackerman Union, the John Wooden Center, the Arthur Ashe Health and Wellness Center, the Student Activities Center, Kerckhoff Hall, the J.D. Morgan Center, the James West Alumni Center, and Pauley Pavilion stand at the center of the campus. The Hill is linked to the remainder of campus by a heavily traveled pathway called Bruin Walk, which bisects the campus. In order to accommodate UCLA's rapidly growing student population, multiple construction and renovation projects are in progress, including expansions of the life sciences and engineering research complexes.

The campus has a large number of parking garages, both above-ground and below-ground. Yet, the university continues to suffer from a severe parking shortage which is further compounded by Southern California's regional housing shortage. The university has given priority in allocation of parking spaces to staff and students commuting from distant locations like Anaheim, while encouraging all students living within a 5 mile radius to use mass transit.

Academics

The Anderson School

UCLA is organized into the following schools and colleges:

The aforementioned health-related schools, plus the UCLA Medical Center and associated research centers are collectively known as the UCLA Center for Health Sciences. In 2005, UCLA announced its five year plan to establish the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Medicine; the state of California is rare in its public funding of research with new embryonic stem cell lines. The California NanoSystems Institute is another project that was created out of a partnership with the University of California, Santa Barbara to pioneer innovations in the field of nanotechnology.

Rankings

UCLA has a very distinguished academic program; in most surveys, it is invariably ranked among the best institutions of higher education on a national and global scale. Of the 36 Ph.D. programs examined by the National Research Council, UCLA had 31 ranked in the top 20 in terms of overall academic quality, third best in the United States. Twelve departments were ranked in the top 10:

Powell Library
  • Linguistics (3)
  • Psychology (4)
  • Physiology (4)
  • Sociology (5)
  • History (6)
  • Philosophy (6)
  • Geography (8)
  • Political Science (8)
  • Anthropology (8)
  • Chemistry (9)
  • Classics (9)
  • Aerospace Engineering (10)

In 2005, UCLA was ranked 14th in the world and 12th in North America by an annual listing of the Top 500 World Universities published by the Institute of Higher Education in Shanghai, China. In addition, the Washington Monthly ranked UCLA second in its 2005 rankings of the Top National Universities.

UCLA's oldest operating unit, the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies (GSEIS), is renowned among educators throughout the United States. Its faculty and students have direct access to willing experimental subjects in the on-campus elementary school. The 2006 edition of U.S. News and World Report, America's Best Graduate Schools, ranked GSEIS 2nd among American schools of education.

Admissions

In 2004, 42,207 prospective students applied to UCLA for the 2005-2006 academic year, more than any other American university, and 11,338 applicants were accepted - a 26.9% acceptance rate. The average weighted GPA and SAT score for an admitted freshman was 4.25 and 1347, respectively.

UCLA, ARPANET, and the Internet

In 1969, the progenitor of the Internet was established when the first ARPANET link was made at UCLA on November 21, between the Interface Message Processor (IMP) at UCLA through professor of computer science, Leonard Kleinrock, and the IMP at SRI International.

Turing Award laureate, Vinton Cerf, was a doctoral student in the computer science department under Kleinrock in early 1970s and also worked on the ARPANET. He would later team with Bob Kahn in the writing of the important 1974 paper, A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication. This work proved foundational for their later development of the Transmission Control Protocol - TCP/IP protocol.

In 1988, Kleinrock also chaired a group which produced the report Toward a National Research Network. This report was presented to congress and was so influential on then-Senator Al Gore that it proved to be the foundation for what would be passed as the High Performance Computing Act of 1991, written and developed by Gore. This act would prove pivotal towards the development of the Internet during the 1990s; in particular it led to the development of the MOSAIC web browser, which was funded by the High-Performance Computing and Communications Initiative.

On January 11, 1994, Vice-President Al Gore further articulated the goals of the Clinton administration in the development of the "Information Superhighway" at UCLA's Royce Hall. [1] Gore would also later join the faculty of UCLA as a visiting professor in the School of Public Policy and Social Research, Department of Policy Studies, family-centered community building, in 2001.

Athletics

The school's sports teams are called the Bruins, with colors true-blue and gold. The Bruins participate in NCAA Division I-A as part of the Pacific Ten Conference. Two notable sports facilities serve as home venues for UCLA sports. The Bruin football team plays home games at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California; the team won a national title in 1954. The men's and women's basketball and volleyball teams play at Pauley Pavilion on campus.

File:Robinsonucla.jpg
Jackie Robinson, in his days as a Bruin, before integrating major league baseball.

When Red Sanders came to UCLA for the 1949 season he redesigned the uniforms. Sanders added a gold loop on the shoulders -- the UCLA Stripe. The navy blue was changed to a lighter shade of blue. Sanders figured that the baby blue would look better on the field and in film. He would dub the baby blue uniform "Powder Keg Blue", powder blue with an explosive kick.

The Bruin mascots are Joe and Josephine Bruin, and the current fight songs are Sons of Westwood and The Mighty Bruins. An older fight song that has not been used with any frequency since the early 1960s is "By the Old Pacific".

As of 2005, UCLA has won 118 national championships, including 97 NCAA championships, more than any other university. Among these championships, some of the more notable victories are the men's basketball championships. The rich legacy of UCLA basketball has produced 11 NCAA championships - 1964, 1965, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, and 1995. Holding the record for most basketball championships, however, is not the only incredible achievement possessed by UCLA's athletics program. From 1971 to 1974, UCLA men's basketball won an unprecedented 88 consecutive games, a record that many sports pundits consider unbreakable. Past rosters of UCLA basketball teams have been filled with such greats such as Jackie Robinson, Gail Goodrich, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Bill Walton, and Reggie Miller.

In addition to its basketball championships, UCLA has won NCAA Division I championships in the following events:

Men's sports: Golf (1), Gymnastics (2), Soccer (4), Swimming (1), Tennis (16), Track & Field (8), Volleyball (18), Water Polo (8).

Women's sports: Golf (2), Gymnastics (5), Softball (10), Track & Field (5), Volleyball (3), Water Polo (3).

In addition to the unparalleled success of its collegiate sports program, UCLA is always well represented at the Olympics, having medaled in every Olympics they have participated in. In the 2004 Athens games, UCLA sent 56 athletes, more than any other university, who won 19 medals.

UCLA shares a traditional sports rivalry with the nearby University of Southern California. The Lexus Gauntlet is the name given to a competition between UCLA and USC in the 18 varsity sports that both compete in head-to-head; in 2005, UCLA won the Lexus Gauntlet Trophy.

Heisman Trophy

The Heisman Trophy is awarded each year to the finest player in college football; one UCLA player, Gary Beban, has won the award.

Traditions and Events

The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, a two-day book fair held the last weekend of April, is the largest annual gathering of publishers and authors in the country and free to the public.

The UCLA Jazz Reggae Festival gathers musicians from both genres for a two day concert held every year over the Memorial Day weekend.

Spring Sing is an annually held show of student talent at the Los Angeles Tennis Center on campus.

The UCLA Dance Marathon is an annual event on campus with hundreds of student dancers committed to raising money and joining together to support the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation.

Peripheral Enterprises

UCLA Healthcare

The UCLA Medical Center is actually part of a larger healthcare system, UCLA Healthcare, which also operates a hospital in Santa Monica and seven primary care clinics throughout Los Angeles County. In addition, the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine uses two Los Angeles County hospitals as teaching hospitals: Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and Olive View-UCLA Medical Center.

In 1981, the UCLA Medical Center made history when an assistant professor named Michael Gottlieb first diagnosed an unknown affliction later to be called AIDS. As of 2005, U.S. News and World Report has ranked UCLA Medical Center as the best hospital in the Western United States for 16 consecutive years, and placed it among its honor roll of best hospitals in the United States. [2]

UCLA Housing and Hospitality Services

Besides operating the usual dormitories and apartment buildings, UCLA also runs a small, full-service, on-campus hotel, the UCLA Guest House, and a full-service conference center, the UCLA Conference Center, in the San Bernardino Mountains near Lake Arrowhead. This is a peripheral enterprise, as UCLA does not have a hotel management program, so it serves no direct educational purpose.

UCLA Trademarks and Licensing

The UCLA name also doubles as an overseas clothing and accessories brand; in certain Asian countries, it is considered fashionable to adorn oneself with the UCLA brand name. This trend may arise from popular images of the Southern California lifestyle, emphasizing freedom in a land of perpetual sunshine. High demand for UCLA apparel has inspired the licensing of its trademark to UCLA brand stores throughout East Asia. [3]

Notable UCLA People

Eateries

Student Life

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