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The 1999-2000 academic year saw outstanding accomplishment across the full spectrum of UCLA’s enterprise. Once again, our campus community of students, faculty and staff led the University to new heights of individual and collective achievement.
Superb students continue to seek admission to UCLA in record numbers. An unprecedented 37,700 high school seniors vied for places in the 2000 freshman class, and a record 40 percent of those admitted chose to enroll here. They are joined by nearly 200 new faculty members who will enrich the campus with their perspectives, knowledge and ideas.
Our concerted efforts to nurture and enhance the diversity of the student body are paying off, although not nearly as quickly as we would like. Underrepresented students – including African Americans, Chicanos and Latinos, and American Indians – make up 17.1 percent of the 2000 freshman class, compared to 15 percent of entering freshmen in 1998, when California’s Proposition 209 first had its effect.
Last year, UCLA maintained its involvement with 58 local high schools and intensified its commitment to expanding and diversifying the pool of transfer students from the California Community Colleges. These outreach programs are a crucial part of our efforts to recruit and retain the finest students, and they are one of the principal avenues by which the University engages in mutually beneficial partnerships with organizations and institutions in the Los Angeles region.
The excellence of UCLA’s faculty is reflected in the array of honors accorded them in 1999-2000. For example, Cruz Reynoso, Professor of Law and a former Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. Physiology Professor Jared Diamond received the National Medal of Science. And mathematician Terence Tao, considered to be a once-in-a-generation talent, was promoted to full professor at the youthful age of 24.
The qualities that draw exceptional students and faculty to UCLA also make our campus the location of choice for many high-level academic events. In 1999-2000, for instance, UCLA hosted the Global City-Regions Conference, a gathering of policymakers, scholars, and business and community leaders from two dozen countries on six continents. And last August, a distinguished international assemblage of scholars convened at Royce Hall for the most important mathematics meeting in a century: the Millennium Conference of the American Mathematical Society.
1999-2000 proved to be a banner year for UCLA’s research program, which garnered a total of $530.5 million in extramural funds, 15 percent more than in the previous year. UCLA researchers generated an array of exciting discoveries, including identification of the cause of the sleep disorder narcolepsy; a major step toward creation of an HIV vaccine; and the first sighting of stars accelerating around a black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.
UCLA’s physical landscape continues to change with the construction of new facilities and the revitalization of some of our older landmark buildings. Haines Hall, scheduled to reopen in Spring 2001, is the latest core campus project in our ongoing seismic correction program. Last year we began site excavation for a new building for the Physics and Astronomy Department, and on the northwest campus, the DeNeve undergraduate student housing complex neared completion.
UCLA Medical Center received its 10th consecutive "Best in the West" ranking and prepared for its future with the start of construction on the Westwood Replacement Hospital. Phase I of this most extensive of UCLA’s capital projects, which also includes three new research buildings and the Santa Monica/Orthopaedic Replacement Hospital, was proceeding on schedule and under budget at the close of the fiscal year.
Success in private fund-raising was one of the premier achievements of 1999-2000; the University received $330 million in philanthropic gifts and grants, surpassing the previous annual record by 30 percent. The excellent progress of Campaign UCLA prompted us to increase its goal by $400 million to $1.6 billion – enabling pursuit of additional funding opportunities in support of the College of Letters and Science and the professional schools.
The University’s fiscal health depends upon multiple sources of funds, both public and private, and the responsible stewardship of those resources. Our performance on this crucial dimension in 1999-2000 is documented in the following pages. But it is on another dimension – the fulfillment of our institutional mission of teaching, research and service to society – that UCLA’s success ultimately is defined. As we prepare to meet the challenges of the 21st century, we can take pride in knowing that UCLA, already, is the place "Where Great Futures Begin."
Albert Carnesale
Chancellor
