NEW NAMES, NEW FACES
An auspicious start
by stan paul and chris sutton
ucla today
UCLA is beginning the school year with some positive changes, including
a new name for a graduate school.
The School of Public Policy and Social Welfare is now the School
of Public Affairs.
“We are delighted to have a name that better captures the
full breadth of our research, teaching and service,” said
Dean Barbara J. Nelson. “Public Affairs encompasses all work
in the public interest, involving government, nonprofits, business
and citizenship.”
Ten years ago, UCLA’s academic leaders brought together
the departments of Social Welfare and Urban Planning and created
the Department of Policy Studies. That department will now be renamed
the Department of Public Policy.
“The School of Public Affairs’ 10th anniversary confirms
UCLA’s stated commitment to serving public needs in Los Angeles,
the state of California and beyond,” said Chancellor Albert
Carnesale, who holds a faculty appointment in the public policy
department.
The new bioengineering department in the Henry Samueli School
of Engineering and Applied Science is welcoming its first freshman
class. About 800 students applied for 44 spots in the inaugural
class. Seven who were successful are coming in with unweighted perfect
GPA and SAT scores.
The campus is an exceptional environment for bioengineering students
with the top hospital in the western United States, top-ranked medical
and engineering schools and numerous nationally recognized programs
in the basic sciences, said new department chair Carlo Montemagno.
The bioengineering curriculum includes 20 innovative courses developed
specifically for the new major, said Montemagno. “Our program
is really an engineering and applied biology program in which physical
and engineering sciences are fully woven with modern biology.”
In another change, the unit in the UCLA College that used to be
the Department of Organismic Biology, Ecology and Evolution is now
the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
The name change accomplishes several goals, said chair Victoria
Sork, including clarifying the conceptual focus of the department
“to be more closely aligned with our mission to generate new
knowledge within ecological and evolutionary theories.”
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