Year-end letter from the Chancellor

Dear UC San Diego Friends:

As we approach the holiday season and the end of a challenging year, I’d like to thank you, our university community and friends, for your dedication and support during these unprecedented and difficult economic times.

I am grateful that we have a campus community that we can count on – our students, faculty, staff, alumni and community members. You have supported the university and each other; you believe in our mission and uphold our Principles of Community; you encourage our spirit of collaboration and our tradition of innovation; and you contribute to our education and research endeavors.

I appreciate your care, concern and efforts to preserve UC San Diego’s excellence. This year alone, UC San Diego suffered a severe 28 percent budget cut. It is more important than ever that we band together and make our voices heard in Sacramento. We need the state of California to recognize that an investment in higher education and our students are investments in our future and the success of our community and state. Our students are tomorrow’s leaders, the men and women who will tackle the world’s most pressing challenges, the innovators who will improve people’s lives through advances in technology and medicine.

We must continue to support our promising and deserving students, and ensure access to UC San Diego. To that end, we have launched Invent the Future: The UC San Diego Student Support Campaign to raise much-needed scholarship and fellowship funds.

We are fortunate to have the best and brightest students at UC San Diego and that helps us attract stellar faculty. In fact, we have some of the world’s top scholars teaching and conducting research. And we want to keep them here. Our award-winning faculty are leaders in their fields, creators and researchers, passionate about discovery and education. They attract state and federal funding to the university and, this year, they’ve been awarded more than $100 million in federal stimulus money. But that one-time funding source will soon vanish.

We’ve had many ups and downs this year and we may be in for more tumultuous times. But we will continue to seek out new funding sources, and continue to provide the best learning and working environment for our campus community, so our students, faculty and staff can thrive and innovate and work to their potential.

You, better than anyone, know the value of a UC San Diego education. I appreciate all that you do to sustain UC San Diego’s stature as one of the world’s premier research universities. Happy holidays, and I look forward to a new year and the opportunities it will present.

With Warm Regards,


Marye Anne Fox
Chancellor