University Communications

Securing funding through research grants and private grants and private givings is a critical part of UCLA’s broad approach to ensuring its continuing excellence.

By Karen Mack ’79
Illustration by Gene Greif

ASSEMBLING A COMPREHENSIVE STRATEGY to elevate UCLA to the heights of the world’s great universities is a complex puzzle involving many different tactics. Two key pieces of that puzzle are the research and fund-raising programs, whose revenues can help to narrow the resource gap. Both areas have experienced significant growth in recent years, the result of focused attention by the campus leadership.

With some 5,000 funded projects every year, the research program represents about one-fifth of UCLA’s total enterprise. In 2001-’02, contract and grant revenues rose 17 percent to $767.8 million, enough to keep UCLA among the top five universities nationally for research funding from all sources. And for the first six months of the current fiscal year, funding from these sources is up 6 percent.

The federal government is the dominant source of these awards, accounting for 63 percent of the funding in 2001-’02. In recent years, UCLA has seen an upward trend in federal research support. For example, in the area of science and engineering research, UCLA has gone from 12th in the nation to third between 1997 and 2000, passing Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Michigan and the University of Pennsylvania, among others.

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