University of California

The University of California, San Diego developed from the top down by initially recruiting stellar academicians to the developing campus and commencing instruction with graduate students in 1961. The first undergraduates were enrolled in 1964. The new campus was able to take advantage of and build upon the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, which was founded in 1912 as part of the University of California system and administratively transferred to the new campus. The first dean of the School of Medicine was appointed in 1964.

UCSD Giesel Library The aim of the school´s founding fathers was to merge the science faculties of the medical school and general campus. As former medical school dean Clifford Grobstein notes, the notion of basic scientists heavily influencing the new school was firmly established. And who better to teach the preclinical years than the exceptional pool of talent already on campus, the "pure" biologists for biochemistry, the mathematics and physics people for bioengineering and biostatistics?

It was to be a science-oriented medical school solidly integrated with the parent campus, so closely knit that no boundary could exist to hinder the free flow of ideas, persons, or dollars from one to the other. It was conceived from the academic basic scientists´ point of view, and clearly under the assumption that the net idea flow would be from campus to medical school, while net dollar flow, they hoped, would be from medical school to campus. In practice, the campus departments were given FTEs–resources to support the equivalent of a full-time professor - with which to hire instructors acceptable to them and to the medical school.

Moreover, traditionally separate medical school departments such as anatomy, physiology, and pharmacology would not be departmentally independent. Instead, those faculty members were incorporated into clinical departments (such as medicine, surgery, and pediatrics). The preclinical courses, consequently, would be taught by specialists from many departments. Social and behavioral science offerings, for example, would be taught jointly by sociologists, economists, anthropologists, and psychologists from the general campus, and by psychiatrists and community medicine specialists from the School of Medicine.

Again, the "La Jolla mystique" went to work, and the passenger lists on certain Boeings landing in San Diego in the late 1960s often read like some sort of biomedical Who´s Who: geneticist and pediatrician William L. Nyhan; neonatologist Louis Gluck; respiratory physiologist John West; rheumatoid arthritis expert Nathan Zvaifler, neurosurgeon John Alksne; neuroscientists Robert Galambos and John O´Brien; human biochemical genetics program originator Jarvis Seegmiller; psychiatrist Arnold Mandell; pathologist Kurt Benirschke; and a score of other top-notch scientists from the National Institutes of Health, including metabolic specialist, Daniel Steinberg.

The pre-clinical years, especially, were chock-full of extraordinary scientific minds, and the curriculum of the first two years reflected that.

The payoff came quickly and dramatically. In 1971, the sophomore class, competing with more than eighty other U.S. medical schools (including Harvard, Chicago, Yale, and Stanford), finished first in the nation in the pre-clinical National Board Examinations. The "mystique" was no longer remote; the upstart new school was suddenly under intense and national scrutiny--which became even more intense when the students again ranked first in 1973.

There currently are approximately 16,230 undergraduate and 2,648 graduate students Guyana Medical Mission - Dr. Jothi enrolled at UCSD, along with about 500 medical students and roughly the same number of intern and resident students, plus about 286 health sciences graduate students. The size of the medical school class at UCSD grew from 47 students initially to an entering class of 120 students this past year. The majority of the preclinical education during the first two years of medical school occurs on the main campus in La Jolla. Third and fourth year instruction, as well as most intern and resident instruction, occurs at the UCSD Medical Center, located 13 miles from the main campus in the Hillcrest area of San Diego; at the Thornton Hospital and the newly-opened Moores Cancer Center, located on the main campus of UCSD; and at the VA Medical Center, also located on the campus at UCSD. The Medical Center downtown contains 457 active beds, while the VA Hospital has 232 active beds. Thornton Hospital currently has 120 beds. In addition to these medical facilities, the school has approximately 800,000 square feet of scientific buildings and teaching facilities. The school also has a Howard Hughes Institute, as well as a Ludwig Foundation Institute for Cancer Research.

The UCSD hospitals reported 20,133 admissions in fiscal 1998-1999 and a total of 108,604 patient days. Outpatient visits to the hospital, E.R. and to the UCSD Medical Group´s satellite clinics totaled 504,867. At the present time, the school has approximbately 680 salaried faculty members, of whom approximately 220 have Ph.D. or M.D., Ph.D.degrees. The school receives approximately $150 million per year in contract and grant funding, $30 million per year in state funding and $70 million per year in faculty practice income.

As measured by the amount of extramural support, the research program at the School of Medicine is also thriving. The UCSD School of Medicine ranks in the top 10 in U.S. medical schools in biomedical research. Over 400 faculty members are involved in laboratory or clinical research, representing more than $130 million in sponsored research funding..

In keeping with this evolution into a first-class medical school, the Division of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery has emerged in this extremely fertile clinical-investigative environment as a "first-tier" academic department.

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