University Of California Riverside
UCR's undergraduate College of Letters and Science opened in 1954. The Regents of the University of California declared UCR a general campus of the system in 1959, and graduate students were admitted in 1961. To accommodate an enrollment of 21,000 students by 2015, more than $730 million has been invested in new construction projects since 1999. UCR plans to have 35,000 students by 2035. Preliminary accreditation of the UC Riverside School of Medicine was granted in October 2012 and the first class of 50 students was enrolled in August 2013. It is the first new research-based public medical school in 40 years. UCR is a member of the Association of American Universities.
In 2000, UC Riverside was classified as an "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity." UCR's sports teams are known as the Highlanders and play in the Big West Conference of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I. Their nickname was inspired by the high altitude of the campus, which lies on the foothills of Box Springs Mountain.
History
At the turn of the 20th century, Southern California was a major producer of citrus, the region's primary agricultural export. The industry developed from the country's first navel orange trees, planted in Riverside in 1873. Lobbied by the citrus industry, the UC Regents established the UC Citrus Experiment Station (CES) on February 14, 1907, on 23 acres (9 ha) of land on the east slope of Mount Rubidoux in Riverside. The station conducted experiments in fertilization, irrigation and crop improvement. In 1917, the station was moved to a larger site, 475 acres (192 ha) near Box Springs Mountain.
The 1944 passage of the GI Bill during World War II set in motion a rise in college enrollments that necessitated an expansion of the state university system in California. A local group of citrus growers and civic leaders, including many UC Berkeley alumni, lobbied aggressively for a UC-administered liberal arts college next to the CES. State Senator Nelson S. Dilworth authored Senate Bill 512 (1949) which former Assemblyman Philip L. Boyd and Assemblyman John Babbage (both of Riverside) were instrumental in shepherding through the State Legislature. Governor Earl Warren signed the bill in 1949, allocating $2 million for initial campus construction.
Gordon S. Watkins, dean of the UCLA College of Letters and Science, became the first provost of the new college at Riverside. Initially conceived of as a small college devoted to the liberal arts, he ordered the campus built for a maximum of 1,500 students and recruited many young junior faculty to fill teaching positions. He presided at its opening with 65 faculty and 127 students on February 14, 1954, remarking, "Never have so few been taught by so many."
UCR's enrollment exceeded 1,000 students by the time Clark Kerr became president of the UC system in 1958. Anticipating a "tidal wave" in enrollment growth required by the baby boom generation, Kerr developed the California Master Plan for Higher Education and the Regents designated Riverside a general university campus in 1959. UCR's first chancellor, Herman Theodore Spieth, oversaw the beginnings of the school's transition to a full university and its expansion to a capacity of 5,000 students. UCR's second chancellor, Ivan Hinderaker led the campus through the era of the free speech movement and kept student protests peaceful in Riverside. According to a 1998 interview with Hinderaker, the city of Riverside received negative press coverage for smog after the mayor asked Governor Ronald Reagan to declare the South Coast Air Basin a disaster area in 1971; subsequent student enrollment declined by up to 25% through 1979. Hinderaker's development of innovative programs in business administration and biomedical sciences created incentive for enough students to enroll at Riverside to keep the campus open.
In the 1990s, UC experienced a new surge of enrollment applications, now known as "Tidal Wave II". The Regents targeted UCR for an annual growth rate of 6.3%, the fastest in the UC system, and anticipated 19,900 students at UCR by 2010. By 1995, African American, American Indian, and Latino student enrollments accounted for 30% of the UCR student body, the highest proportion of any UC campus at the time. The 1997 implementation of Proposition 209—which banned the use of affirmative action by state agencies—reduced the ethnic diversity at the more selective UC campuses but further increased it at UCR.
With UCR scheduled for dramatic population growth, efforts have been made to increase its popular and academic recognition. The students voted for a fee increase to move UCR athletics into NCAA Division I standing in 1998. In the 1990s, proposals were made to establish a law school, a medical school, and a school of public policy at UCR, with the UCR School of Medicine and the School of Public Policy becoming reality in 2012. In June 2006, UCR received its largest gift, 15.5 million from two local couples, in trust towards building its medical school. The Regents formally approved UCR's medical school proposal in 2006. Upon its completion in 2013, it was the first new medical school built in California in 40 years.
Campus
UCR's main campus sits at an elevation of 1,100 ft (340 m) to 1,450 ft (440 m) near Box Springs Mountain, 3 miles (5 km) east of downtown Riverside, 3 miles (5 km) south of neighboring Highgrove, CA, and comprises 1,112 acres (450 ha) divided into eastern and western areas by the State Route 60 freeway.
East Campus, occupying approximately 600 acres (243 ha), hosts the core cluster of academic buildings and services. The original buildings that formed the earliest kernel of the campus included the UC Citrus Experiment Station, residential buildings, and barn, all of which are still in use. They were designed by Lester H. Hibbard, in association with H.B. Cody. Built by 1917 at a cost of $165,000, the architecture of the major buildings followed the Mission Revival style suggesting the Spanish colonial heritage of Southern California.
Further major construction largely ceased on the site until the groundbreaking for the College of Humanities Arts and Social Sciences (CHASS) in April 1951. A group of five buildings designed by different architects in a decidedly more Modern style were completed by 1954: the Rivera Library, Webber Hall, Geology Building, Physical Education Building and Watkins Hall. After the Regents declared UCR a "general campus" of the UC system in 1958, many new buildings and additions were laid out over the following decade. Following an east–west axis, new student residence halls and athletic facilities were developed along the southeastern quadrant of the main campus, while academic and research facilities were built along the central campus area closer to the freeway. The Bell Tower, one of only five carillons in California, was built in this period. Designed by A. Quincy Jones, the tower is 161 ft (49 m) tall and contains 48 bells, each weighing from 28 pounds (13 kg) to 5,091 pounds (2,309 kg), covering four chromatic octaves.
After the drop in enrollment and subsequent restructuring of academic programs in the 1970s, little capacity construction was undertaken over the next two decades. However, enrollment growth in the late 1980s justified considerable further campus expansion over the 1990s. Major additions built in the period include: Bourns Hall, completed in 1995; the Humanities & Social Science building, completed in 1996; and the Science Library, completed in 1998. The Pentland and Stonehaven residence halls were completed in 2000, and the Arts building was completed in 2001. Active construction projects include the "Multidisciplinary Research Building," new residence halls located east of A-I and ongoing renovations to Pierce Hall. The first phase of a new Commons was completed in 2007, and phase II is in development. Other ongoing projects include a new CHASS Instructional and Research Center and Students Academic Support Services Building. Since 1999, more than $730 million has been invested in construction projects.
Of the 511 acres (207 ha) of UCR property constituting West Campus, approximately 216 acres (87 ha) along University Avenue have been developed. These include facilities such as University Extension, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Germplasm Repository, International Village (student housing), Human Resources and Highlander Hall. University Village, a mixed use commercial development, features a movie theater, stores, restaurants, office space, and an apartment complex, along with a parking structure and surface parking. Citrus groves and row crops occupy the remaining 295 acres (119 ha) stretching northwest to the intersection of Chicago Avenue and Le Conte Drive. Plans for future expansion include converting a portion of these fields into new UCR infrastructure.
The University of California, Riverside, has recently united its three downtown arts presentation venues under the umbrella name of the UCR ARTSblock. The ARTSblock is composed of the UCR/California Museum of Photography, The Sweeney Art Gallery, and the Culver Center of the Arts, a media lab and presentation facility. The three institutions reside side by side in the heart of downtown Riverside's historic pedestrian mall.
Palm Desert Graduate Center
The Richard J. Heckmann International Center for Entrepreneurial Management was founded in Palm Desert in 2001. After the 540-acre (219 ha) Coachella Valley Agricultural Research Station, it is UCR's second institutional presence in the Coachella Valley. Initially by a $6 million gift from Richard J. Heckmann, a water treatment entrepreneur, the institution was planned as a teaching and research center of the A. Gary Anderson Graduate School of Management at the UCR School of Business. The center encourages local entrepreneurship through the Coachella Valley Angel Network, an angel investment network. A further investment of $10 million from the State of California and a donation of 20 acres (8 ha) of land from the City of Palm Desert allowed for the opening of an expanded graduate center on April 15, 2005, adjacent to the California State University, San Bernardino Palm Desert Campus. The center is also home to university researchers in conservation biology, technology transfer and Native American studies. Master's level instruction in business management and creative writing is available at the center.
Academics
As a campus of the University of California system, UCR is governed by a Board of Regents and administered by a president. The current president is Michael V. Drake, and the current chancellor of the university is Kim A. Wilcox. UCR's academic policies are set by its Academic Senate, a legislative body composed of all UCR faculty members.
UCR is organized into three academic colleges, two professional schools, and two graduate schools. UCR's liberal arts college, the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, was founded in 1954, and began accepting graduate students in 1960. The College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, founded in 1958, incorporated the CES as part of the first research-oriented institution at UCR; it eventually also incorporated the natural science departments formerly associated with the liberal arts college to form its present structure in 1974. UCR's newest academic unit, the Bourns College of Engineering, was founded in 1989. Comprising the professional schools are the Graduate School of Education, founded in 1968, and the UCR School of Business, founded in 1970. These units collectively provide 81 majors and 52 minors, 48 master's degree programs, and 42 Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) programs. UCR is the only UC campus to offer undergraduate degrees in creative writing and public policy and one of three UCs (along with Berkeley and Irvine) to offer an undergraduate degree in business administration. Through its Division of Biomedical Sciences, founded in 1974, UCR offers the Thomas Haider medical degree program in collaboration with UCLA. UCR's doctoral program in the emerging field of dance theory, founded in 1992, was the first program of its kind in the United States, and UCR's minor in lesbian, gay and bisexual studies, established in 1996, was the first undergraduate program of its kind in the UC system. A new BA program in bagpipes was inaugurated in 2007.
Rankings
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Institutional rankings of UC Riverside vary widely, depending on the criteria of the publication. For instance, U.S. News & World Report has named UC Riverside the top university in the nation for social mobility in 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, and 2019. In the 2025 edition of U.S. News & World Report's "America's Best Colleges", UCR was ranked tied for 76th among national universities, 36th among public schools, and 1st for social mobility (5th year in a row); criteria include professor peer assessment, student selectivity and retention, as well as faculty resources, financial resources, and alumni giving. In the 2020 edition of the Washington Monthly college rankings, UCR ranked 27th among national universities. Washington Monthly assesses the quality of schools based on social mobility (recruiting and graduating low-income students), research (producing cutting-edge scholarship and PhDs), and service (encouraging students to give something back to their country). In the 2021 edition of Webometrics Ranking of World Universities based in Spain, UCR was ranked 67th among national universities and 132nd among world universities. Money magazine ranked UC Riverside 48th in the country out of the nearly 1500 schools it evaluated for its 2020 Best Colleges ranking. According to the Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index published by Academic Analytics in 2006, UCR as an institution ranked 46th among top research universities considering such criteria as faculty publications, citations, research funding and other honors. Since 1997, more than 110 UCR faculty members have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Over the course of UCR's history, seven current or former faculty members have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, and more than 50 have received Guggenheim Fellowships. UCR currently has two Nobel Laureates on its faculty.
Historical rankings
Organization | 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 |
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ARWU | 60–78 | 62–82 | 63–85 | 63–89 | 66–94 | 59–66 | 59–60 |
Forbes | 97 | 75 | 84 | 101 | - | - | 199 |
Money | 5.0/5.0 | 4.5/5.0 | 40 | 48 | 12 | 32 | 29 |
U.S. News & World Report | 76 | 76 | 89 | 83 | 88 | 91 | 85 |
Wall Street Journal | 108 | 181 | 184 | 192 | 192 | 189 | 272 |
Washington Monthly | 79 | 64 | 69 | 53 | 27 | 27 | 28 |
Research and economic impact
UCR operated under a $727 million budget in fiscal year 2014–15. The state government provided $214 million, student fees accounted for $224 million and $100 million came from contracts and grants. Private support and other sources accounted for the remaining $189 million. Overall, monies spent at UCR have an economic impact of nearly $1 billion in California. UCR research expenditure in FY 2018 totaled $167.8 million. Total research expenditures at Riverside are significantly concentrated in agricultural science, accounting for 53% of total research expenditures spent by the university in 2002. Top research centers by expenditure, as measured in 2002, include the Agricultural Experiment Station, the Center for Environmental Research and Technology, the Center for Bibliographical Studies, the Air Pollution Research Center, and the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics.
Throughout UCR's history, researchers have developed more than 40 new citrus varieties and invented new techniques to help the $960 million-a-year California citrus industry fight pests and diseases. In 1927, entomologists at the CES introduced two wasps from Australia as natural enemies of a major citrus pest, the citrophilus mealybug, saving growers in Orange County $1 million in annual losses. This event was pivotal in establishing biological control as a practical means of reducing pest populations. In 1963, plant physiologist Charles Coggins proved that application of gibberellic acid allows fruit to remain on citrus trees for extended periods. The ultimate result of his work, which continued through the 1980s, was the extension of the citrus-growing season in California from four to nine months. In 1980, UC Riverside released the Oroblanco grapefruit, its first patented citrus variety. Since then, the citrus breeding program has released other varieties such as the Melogold grapefruit, the Gold Nugget mandarin (or tangerine), and others that have yet to be given trademark names.
To assist entrepreneurs in developing new products, UCR is a primary partner in the Riverside Regional Technology Park, which includes the City of Riverside and the County of Riverside. It also administers six reserves of the University of California Natural Reserve System. UCR recently announced a partnership with China Agricultural University to launch a new center in Beijing, which will study ways to respond to the country's growing environmental issues. UCR can also boast the birthplace of two name reactions in organic chemistry, the Castro-Stephens coupling and the Midland Alpine Borane Reduction.
Admissions and enrollment
Undergraduate admissions statistics | |
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2019 entering classChange vs. 2014 | |
Admit rate | 57.1% ( −0.5) |
Yield rate | 17.1 ( −2.4) |
High school GPA | |
Average | 3.87 ( +0.19) |
Admission to UC Riverside is rated as "more selective" by U.S. News & World Report.
For Fall 2018, UCR received 49,079 freshmen applications; 24,820 were admitted (50.6%). The average GPA of the enrolled freshmen was 3.83, while the average SAT scores were 620 for reading & writing and 635 for math.
In 2006, 43.4 percent of admitted students were first generation college students, 38.7 percent came from low family income backgrounds, and 24 percent graduated from low-performing high schools as measured by Academic Performance Index (API) scores. In 2007, U.S. News ranked UCR as the third most ethnically diverse and, by the number of undergraduates receiving Pell Grants (42 percent), the 15th most economically diverse student body in the nation.
According to statistics released by the Education Trust, a national nonprofit, in 2005 UC Riverside graduated 65.3 percent of its students in six years, a figure consistent with national averages but behind the average set by the top five public research universities by as much as 22 percent. However, UCR's consistency with the national average is well above the median of 39 percent for low-income-serving institutions as calculated in 2006 by the National Center for Education Statistics, making the campus a model for successful approaches to diversity in higher education.