Coordinates: 34°04′20.00″N 118°26′38.75″W / 34.07222°N 118.4440972°W / 34.07222; -118.4440972
The University of California, Los Angeles (generally known as UCLA ) is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, in the United States. It was founded in 1919 and is the second oldest of the ten major campuses affiliated with the University of California system. UCLA offers over 300 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines and enrolls about 26,000 undergraduate and about 11,000 graduate students from the United States and around the world every year. It is the only leading research institution in the world founded in the 20th century.
UCLA is organized into five undergraduate colleges, seven professional schools, and five professional Health Science schools. Eleven Nobel laureates have been affiliated with the university as faculty, researchers, or alumni, 37 have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, 20 to the National Academy of Engineering, and 97 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
UCLA has more applicants than any other university in the United States. Out of 55,676 undergraduate applicants for Fall 2009, 12,098 (21.73%) were admitted, the lowest acceptance rate in the UC system. Students come to UCLA from all 50 states and more than 100 countries, though according to statistics from 2001-05, an average 92.6% of the entire student body originated from California.
The 2010 edition of U.S. News & World Report ranked UCLA's undergraduate program 24th in the nation, and second among top public universities. UCLA is consistently ranked high in other college and university rankings. The university ranks 3rd nationally in The Washington Monthly , 12th in Newsweek's Top 100 Global universities ranking in 2007, and 13th in the world (11th in North America) by Top 500 World Universities , an annual list published by the Institute of Higher Education at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China. UCLA also ranks among the top 10 schools in the country with the most faculty awards.
UCLA faculty is "highly cited" for its research according to the Institute for Scientific Information In a ranking conducted in 1995 by the National Research Council, of the 36 Ph.D. programs examined, eleven departments were ranked in the top ten. and thirty-one in the top 20, the third highest number of those distinctions in the country.
UCLA student-athletes compete intercollegiately as the Bruins. As a member of the Pacific-10 Conference, the Bruins have won 125 national championships, including 104 NCAA team championships as of 2009, more than any other university. As a department, UCLA athletics finished as the #1 overall Collegiate Athletic Program of the 20th Century and continues to maintain its #1 status into the 21st Century.
In 2006, the university completed Campaign UCLA, which collected over $3.05 billion, the second most successful fundraising campaign in the history of higher education. In 2008, UCLA raised over $456 million, ranking the institution among the top 10 universities in the United States in total fundraising for the year.
History
Main article: History of University of California, Los AngelesBeginnings
In March 1881, after heavy lobbying by Los Angeles residents, the California State Legislature authorized the creation of a southern branch of the California State Normal School (which later became San Jose State University) in downtown Los Angeles to train teachers for the growing population of Southern California. The State Normal School at Los Angeles opened on August 29, 1882, on what is now the site of the Central Library of the Los Angeles Public Library system. The new facility included an elementary school where teachers-in-training could practice their teaching technique on children. In 1887, the school became known as the Los Angeles State Normal School.
In 1914, the school moved to a new campus on Vermont Avenue (now the site of Los Angeles City College) in Hollywood. In 1917, UC Regent Edward A. Dickson, the only regent representing the Southland at the time, and Ernest Carroll Moore, Director of the Normal School, began working together to lobby the State for the school to become the second University of California campus, after Berkeley. The Berkeley Alumni, Northern California members of the state legislature and Benjamin Ide Wheeler, President of the University of California from 1899 to 1919 fought the idea of a southern campus. David Prescott Barrows, the new President of the University of California did not have the objections of Wheeler. On May 23, 1919, the Southern Californians efforts were rewarded when Governor William D. Stephens signed Assembly Bill 626 into law, which turned the campus into the Southern Branch of the University of California and added its general undergraduate program, the College of Letters and Science. The Southern Branch campus opened on September 15 of that year, offering two-year undergraduate programs to 250 Letters and Science students and 1,250 students in the Teachers College, under Moore's continued direction.
University of California President William Wallace Campbell saw enrollment at the Southern Branch expanded so rapidly that by the mid-1920s the institution was outgrowing the 25 acre Vermont Avenue location. The Regents conducted a search for a new location and announced their selection of the so-called "Beverly Site"—just west of Beverly Hills—on March 21, 1925. After the athletic teams entered the Pacific Coast conference in 1926, the Southern Branch student council adopted the nickname "Bruins," a name offered by the student council at Berkeley. In 1927, the Regents renamed the school itself the "University of California at Los Angeles" (the word "at" was officially replaced by a comma in 1958, in line with other UC campuses) and the state broke ground in Westwood on land sold for $1 million, less than one-third its value, by real estate developers Edwin and Harold Janss, for whom the Janss Steps are named.
The original four buildings were the College Library, Royce Hall, the Physics-Biology Building, and the Chemistry Building (now Powell Library, Royce Hall, the Humanities Building, and Haines Hall, respectively), arrayed around a quadrangular courtyard on the 400 acre (1.6 km²) campus. The first undergraduate classes on the new campus were held in 1929 with 5,500 students. In 1933, after further lobbying by alumni, faculty, administration and community leaders, UCLA was permitted to award the Master's degree, and in 1936, the doctorate, against resistance from Berkeley.
Maturity as a university
By the 1950s, UCLA had developed into a serious and widely respected research institution. University of California President Robert Gordon Sproul, called Berkeley and Los Angeles, "a two legged-university." The campus received its first chancellor in 1951, thereby establishing itself as an autonomous entity within the UC system. The appointment of Franklin Murphy to the position of Chancellor in 1960 helped to spark an era of tremendous growth of facilities and faculty honors. By the end of the decade, UCLA had achieved distinction in a wide range of subjects. This era also secured UCLA's position as a proper university in her own right and not simply a branch of the UC system. This change is exemplified by an incident involving Chancellor Murphy, which was described by him later on:
"I picked up the telephone and called in from somewhere, and the phone operator said, 'University of California.' And I said, 'Is this Berkeley?' She said, 'No.' I said, 'Well, who have I gotten to?' 'UCLA.' I said, 'Why didn't you say UCLA?' 'Oh,' she said, 'we're instructed to say University of California.' So the next morning I went to the office and wrote a memo; I said, 'Will you please instruct the operators, as of noon today, when they answer the phone to say, "UCLA."' And they said, 'You know they won't like it at Berkeley.' And I said, 'Well, let's just see. There are a few things maybe we can do around here without getting their permission.'"
Campus
When UCLA opened its new campus in 1919, it had four buildings. Today, the campus includes 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 close but not adjacent to the San Diego Freeway.
The first campus buildings were designed by the local firm Allison & Allison. The Romanesque Revival style of these first four structures remained the predominant building style on campus until the 1950s, when architect Welton Becket was hired to supervise the expansion of the campus over the next two decades. Becket greatly streamlined the general appearance of the campus, adding several rows of minimalist, slab–shaped
About the Center: Volunteer Opportunities
All volunteers will be interviewed, and must become registered with the UCLA Medical Center volunteer office thereby meeting the requirements established by the UCLA Health System
Health Care [UCLA Gateway]
... Health System includes the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center ... Student Health and Wellness Center; Volunteers and Donors. Blood and Platelet Center; Giving to UCLA Medical Sciences
UCLA Portal
UCLA Medical Center, Mattel Children's Hospital, Neuropsychiatric Hospital:: Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center and Orthopaedic Hospital
UCLA Health Sciences
UCLA Medical Center Santa Monica Mattel Children's Hospital at UCLA Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital at UCLA ... Medical 'pay for performance' programs help improve care - but ...
Volunteer in Westwood - UCLA Health System Volunteer Services
Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center Volunteer Services 757 Westwood Blvd. Suite B-791 Los Angeles, CA 90095 (310) 267-8180 Click here for map and directions
UCLA Healthcare
Volunteering | Jobs | FAQs | Biomed Library | Site Map | Contact Us ... Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center; David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Volunteer Services - volunteering opportunities: UCLA Health System
Volunteer at UCLA's Westwood or Santa Monica facilities ... Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center Rated One of the Top Hospitals in the Nation
UCLA Volunteering | UCLA Volunteer Center
Volunteers help recruit participants for the center’s vital work providing blood and platelets for the UCLA Health System and other medical organizations.
UCLA Medical Center
UCLA Medical Center Department of Volunteer Services Permission Slip for Students Under the Age of 18 Wishing to Volunteer Anywhere in the Medical Enterprise Dear Parent or Legal ...
UCLA Medical Center - 50 years
UCLA Medical Center to Form Volunteer Office (9-6-55) Auxiliary to Medical Center Launched (9-23-55) Great Robots Aid in War on ...