University of California, Santa Barbara

University of California, Santa Barbara

University of California, Santa Barbara

The University of California, Santa Barbara (commonly referred to as UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public research university and one of the 10 campuses of the University of California system. The main campus is located on a 1,022-acre (414 ha) site near Goleta, California, United States, 8 miles (13 km) from Santa Barbara and 100 miles (160 km) northwest of Los Angeles. Tracing its roots back to 1891 as an independent teachers' college, UCSB joined the University of California system in 1944 and is the third-oldest general-education campus in the system.

UCSB is one of America's Public Ivy universities, which recognizes top public research universities in the United States. The university is a comprehensive doctoral university and is organized into five colleges and schools offering 87 undergraduate degrees and 55 graduate degrees. UCSB was ranked 37th among "National Universities", 8th among U.S. public universities and 28th among Best Global Universities by U.S. News & World Report 's 2016 rankings.^[4] The university was also ranked 39th worldwide by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings^[5] and 38th worldwide (tied for 17th worldwide in engineering) by the Academic Ranking of World Universities in 2015.^[6][7]

UC Santa Barbara is a "very high activity" research university with twelve national research centers,^[8]including the renowned Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics.^[9] Current UCSB faculty includes six Nobel Prize laureates, one Fields Medalist, 29 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 27 members of the National Academy of Engineering, and 31 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.^[10] UCSB was the No. 3 host on the ARPAnet and was elected to the Association of American Universities in 1995.

The UC Santa Barbara Gauchos compete in the Big West Conference of the NCAA Division I. The gauchos have won NCAA national championships in men`s soccer and men`s water polo.

History

Main article: History of the University of California, Santa Barbara

UCSB traces its origins back to the Anna Blake School which was founded in 1891 and offered training in home economics and industrial arts.^[11][12] The Anna Blake School was taken over by the state in 1909 and became the Santa Barbara State Normal School, which then became the Santa Barbara State College in 1921. Intense lobbying by an interest group in the City of Santa Barbara, led by Thomas Storke and Pearl Chase, persuaded the State Legislature, Governor Earl Warren, and the Regents of the University of California to move the State College over to the more research-oriented University of California system in 1944. The State College system sued to stop the takeover, but the Governor did not support the suit. A state initiative was passed, however, to stop subsequent conversions of State Colleges to University of California campuses.^[13] From 1944 to 1958 the school was known as Santa Barbara College of the University of California, before taking on its current name. When the vacated Marine Corps training station in Goleta was purchased for the rapidly growing college, Santa Barbara City College moved into the vacated State College buildings.^[14]

Originally, the Regents envisioned a small, several thousand-student liberal arts college, a so-called "Williams College of the West", at Santa Barbara. Chronologically, UCSB is the third general-education campus of the University of California, after Berkeley and UCLA (the only other state campus to have been acquired by the UC system). The original campus the Regents acquired in Santa Barbara was located on only 100 acres (40 ha) of largely unusable land on a seaside mesa. The availability of a 400-acre (160 ha) portion of the land used as Marine Corps Air Station Santa Barbara until 1946 on another seaside mesa in Goleta, which the Regents could acquire for free from the federal government, led to that site becoming the Santa Barbara campus in 1949. Originally, only 3000–3500 students were anticipated, but the post WWII baby boom led to the designation of general campus in 1958, along with a name change from "Santa Barbara College" to "University of California, Santa Barbara," and the discontinuation of the industrial arts program for which the State college was famous. A Chancellor, Samuel B. Gould, was appointed in 1959. All of this change was done in accordance with the California Master Plan for Higher Education.