The UC Office of the President has approved our proposal to rename the four discipline-based academic divisions as schools, making consistent that units titled as “Schools” denote discipline-based major academic units on our campus. Our four existing academic divisions will be retitled as the School of Arts and Humanities, School of Biological Sciences, School of Physical Sciences, and School of Social Sciences. This change will streamline and better organize the campus structure, providing clarity for prospective students, employers, donors, funding agencies, and competitors.
No curricular, organizational, programmatic or financial changes will be made. The change is in name only, as these four existing divisions are well-established major discipline-based academic units. This change should also make manifest the intellectual parity among schools on our campus, and provide an equalizing framework that benefits our university as a whole.
The proposal to make this change was initiated at UC San Diego and was reviewed and approved by the Academic Senate, San Diego Division. It was subsequently endorsed by the systemwide University Committee on Educational Policy, Coordinating Committee on Graduate Affairs, University Committee on Planning and Budget, and the Academic Council.
This change officially goes into effect July 1, 2022, however we encourage the campus community to start transitioning over to these new names in communications now. Campus communications leadership will be providing revised branding materials and campus CMS templates to the renamed schools in the coming months and additional communications will be sent regarding these materials and their availability dates in spring quarter.
Additionally, in alignment with the addition last year of postdoctoral affairs to the Division of Graduate Education’s portfolio, the division will be renamed the Division of Graduate Education and Postdoctoral Affairs. This also is a name change only and will not result in any curricular, organizational, programmatic or financial changes. With this update in place, our three cross-cutting academic units, the Division of Undergraduate Education, the Division of Graduate Education and Postdoctoral Affairs, and the Division of Extended Studies, can be seen to jointly span the full range of learners at UC San Diego.
Thank you for embracing this change for the betterment of our university and the greater UC San Diego community.
