A message from Chancellor Linda P.B Katehi
By any measure, UC Davis has had an extraordinary year, guided by its new vision for the future—to be an engine of innovation, to create more sustainable technologies, to address pressing global problems, to foster learning and scholarship of the highest quality, to advance a culture of organizational excellence and to be rightfully recognized as one of the world’s top public research universities.
In 2010, the entire UC Davis community joined together to develop and support a Vision of Excellence to help us reach our goals. I am pleased to say that, despite the financially difficult times in which we launched this vision, we have already made great progress, propelling this premier learning institution toward greater heights of distinction, scholarship and service.
As you will see from this report, the academic strength here has never been greater. UC Davis is now ranked ninth among the nation’s top 10 public research universities by U.S. News & World Report. We are among the top 10 public universities in research funding, with a university record of $678.6 million for 2009-10. We enrolled the highest-scoring, most-competitive and most-diverse freshman class in our history.
In October we launched The Campaign for UC Davis, the university’s first-ever comprehensive fundraising campaign to raise $1 billion from 100,000 donors by 2014 to support our students, faculty, staff and programs. This year, we also announced the appointment of our distinguished new provost, Ralph J. Hexter, a classics scholar and former president of Hampshire College, and the appointment of 2011 Wolf Prize recipient and UC Davis alumnus Harris A. Lewin to lead the Office of Research.
All these accomplishments have taken place while university personnel implement measures to make the university a more efficient and effective enterprise in support of the academic mission. We are restructuring UC Davis, already a global leader in many respects, to ensure that we bring even more of our scholarship to the outside world.
Although our vision is ambitious, it is one I know we can accomplish because of our 100-plus-year history of being a land-grant, academic powerhouse that, through excellence in scholarship, research, interdisciplinary collaboration and public service, has improved the quality of life in our state and around the world. My view of the future is optimistic because I believe in our stellar student body, our distinguished faculty, our skilled and committed staff, our innovative academic programs, our accomplished alumni and our unwavering supporters. As I said when we launched The Campaign for UC Davis in October, “Our foundation is strong. Our vision is bold. And our potential is great.” I believe in UC Davis—now and for the future.