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>> As we begin the 2010-2011 academic year, I want to welcome you to UC Irvine. Whether
you are a new student, a dedicated staff member or a returning professor with many years of
service, I appreciate your unique contributions to our campus community, and I hope you share
my excitement about the university's future. UC Irvine is built on four pillars of excellence:
academic excellence, research excellence, leadership excellence and character excellence.
As the fall quarter begins, I would like to share more with you about our academic excellence.
We're distinctive in our mission to educate the whole person, combining the full benefits
of a large research university with the highly personalized experience of a small college.
This unique combination has made UC Irvine more popular than ever, and in fact nearly
60,000 students applied for admission to UC Irvine this year. We selected only the very
best of these, so that our incoming freshmen boast an average GPA of 4.01. In the law school,
the incoming class's GPAs and LSAT scores are on par with the top 20 schools in the
nation, and our yield rate was surpassed only by Harvard and Yale. I'm especially proud
that this quarter our campus is home to greater numbers of underrepresented minority students
and international students than ever before. One example is in our medical school, where
just over 20 percent of the entering students are from groups traditionally underrepresented
in the medical profession. As we do every summer at UC Irvine, we have been engaged
in programs to seed future academic excellence and nurture our current students. The California
Alliance for Minority Participation, CAMP, has helped bolster math and science proficiency
among our local youth. Our academically competitive COSMOS program offered intensive training
for young students destined to become tomorrow's top researchers. Other programs, such as the
American Indian Resource Project serving Native American students and Competitive Edge for
underrepresented minority graduate students, provided support that will enable success
at the highest level. Amid all of this, we have continually improved our classrooms,
labs and other facilities to ensure the very best educational environment possible. And,
despite the challenging economy, we've brought online nearly 1.8 million square feet of new
space just since March of 2009. This includes the Sue & Bill Gross Hall stem sell research
facility, the Medical Education building, the behavioral sciences building, Humanities
Gateway, Engineering 3, and new student housing on East Campus. Later this fall, I look forward
to dedicating the new media arts building. This new construction provides our students,
faculty and staff with the cutting edge facilities they need to excel academically and to advance
all of our pillars of excellence. From our classrooms and labs to our outstanding students,
UC Irvine is committed to fostering academic excellence. Soon, I look forward to sharing
more with you about research excellence, leadership excellence and character excellence. As classes
begin this week, I wish you all the very best of luck in your academic endeavors.