At a time when the pace of life seems to speed ever faster, the beginning of a new year gives us pause for a microsecond to reflect back at how far we have come as a campus community over the past year.

What will we remember from the year 2000? Plenty. There was the first-ever campus gender-equity study, the first findings of a long-term Internet impact study, preparations for a new physics and astronomy building, the unveiling of a redesigned UCLA home page and the creation of five Community Education Resource Centers that will broaden UCLA's service to low-income areas.

Here's a look at some other memorable milestones for 2000:

• The California NanoSystems Institute, a UCLA/UC Santa Barbara collaborative project, is established with $100 million by Gov. Gray Davis as a California Institute for Science and Innovation.
• Campaign UCLA reaches its $1.2-billion goal two years early and pushes its new goal to $1.6 billion. The additional money will fund bold academic initiatives at the "frontiers of knowledge."
• Three major gifts keep UCLA a leader in high tech, the arts and medicine. Alumnus, professor and Broadcom Corp. co-founder Henry Samueli and his wife, Susan, donate $30 million to the engineering school. Business executive/philanthropist Eli Broad and his wife, Edythe, give $20 million for a new arts complex. And the future medical center will be named for former President Ronald Reagan after a pledge of $150 million is made by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation.
• UCLA Athletics ends the 1999-2000 season with five national titles and ranks second-best overall in the Sears Directors Cup standings. Also, 58 Bruin Olympians, the most for any school, come back from Sydney with 18 medals, eight of them gold.
• Two faculty members receive the nation's highest scientific and civilian honors: Physiology Professor Jared Diamond receives the National Medal of Science, and law Professor Cruz Reynoso wins the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
  o UCLA remains the most popular university in the country when 37,460 freshman hopefuls apply to be admitted for fall 2000.