Dean's Letter

 
Greetings

We are pleased to learn of your interest in graduate study at UCLA, one of the nation’s most outstanding public research universities. As a graduate student here, you will learn from a distinguished cadre of faculty researchers, including two Nobel Laureates, a Presidential Medal of Freedom winner, and three Pulitzer Prize winners. Better still, you will join them in the scholarly exploration that has built UCLA’s international reputation. The professors who will be your teachers and mentors are committed to building the next generation of scholars.

At UCLA, the largest of the University of California’s ten campuses, you will join a community of 12,000 graduate and professional students, among a total student body of 38,000. UCLA's letters and science departments and 11 professional schools offer a wide range of graduate and professional degree programs, all of them dynamic and at the cutting edge of research and professional practice. Because all programs are conducted on the main campus, you will study in an environment rich in opportunities for interdisciplinary research and instruction.

To support your work, UCLA offers an extensive library of more than eight million volumes, housed in a campuswide network of libraries serving programs of study in many fields. Research centers in the humanities and social sciences, as well as institutes in the physical and life sciences, provide additional information sources, as do the unique collections of the Hammer Museum, the internationally renowned Fowler Museum of Cultural History, and the UCLA radio, film, and television archives.

UCLA is a campus whose character is shaped by a unique confluence of cultural and artistic traditions. In the normal course of your academic day, you may pass by August Rodin’s The Walking Man or a reclining figure by Henry Moore, among more than 70 pieces in the Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden. Nearby, you may stop to read or chat with friends in a quadrangle of Romanesque buildings that include a library patterned after a cathedral in Verona and an auditorium based on the basilica of San Ambrogio in Milan. At noon concerts, you may hear a mariachi band, the compositions of Bach, or the rhythms of Duke Ellington. Dance, theater, and music performances in tradition-rich Royce Hall showcase the choreography of George Balanchine and Alvin Ailey, the plays of Ron Milner and Shakespeare, and the jazz of Ornette Coleman and Keith Jarrett.

Besides its highly regarded sports teams, UCLA also offers an array of athletic facilities and intramural sports for all of its students. An active Graduate Student Association sponsors an orientation to help introduce you to UCLA, as well as a full calendar of opportunities to meet with fellow graduate students or to participate in campus governance. UCLA offers a variety of opportunities for students to get involved with the community through various departments and professional schools. Through the Center for Community Partnerships, you may help build bridges to agencies throughout Southern California at the same time that you further your own research and professional goals.

Beyond the campus boundaries lies the cosmopolitan, culturally diverse community of Los Angeles, internationally famous for its art museums, theaters, music, and restaurants, a city that is one of the capitals of the Pacific Rim and a trendsetter in American society.

On our campus, you will find facilities for both graduate and family student housing.  We offer five complexes designed especially for graduate students and students with families. As part of our commitment to child care, UCLA has established a preschool child care facility at the University Village.

In the diversity of its staff, student body, and faculty, in its curricular content, and in its cultural and recreational activities, UCLA is an institution prepared to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century and to enrich your graduate years. We are committed to professionally developing our graduate students through research conference travel, recruitment visitation funding, and domestic and international fellowship opportunities.  We welcome your application and offer best wishes for success in your pursuit of graduate study at UCLA.

Claudia Mitchell-Kernan
Dean, Graduate Division
Vice Chancellor Graduate Studies