University of California, Riverside
The University of California, Riverside (UCR or UC Riverside) is a public land-grant research university in Riverside, California. It is one of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The main campus sits on in a suburban district of Riverside with a branch campus of in Palm Desert. In 1907, the predecessor to UCR was founded as the UC Citrus Experiment Station, Riverside which pioneered research in biological pest control and the use of growth regulators. UCR's undergraduate College of Letters and Science opened in 1954. The Regents of the University of California declared UCR a general campus of the system in 1959, and graduate students were admitted in 1961. To accommodate an enrollment of 21,000 students by 2015, more than $730 million has been invested in new construction projects since 1999. Preliminary accreditation of the UC Riverside School of Medicine was granted in October 2012 and the first class of 50 students was enrolled in August 2013. It is the first new research-based public medical school in 40 years. UCR is a member of the Association of American Universities. In 2000, UC Riverside was classified as an "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity." UCR's sports teams are known as the Highlanders and play in the Big West Conference of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I. Their nickname was inspired by the high altitude of the campus, which lies on the foothills of Box Springs Mountain. The UCR women's basketball team won back-to-back Big West championships in 2006 and 2007. In 2007, the men's baseball team won its first conference championship and advanced to the regionals for the second time since the university moved to Division I in 2001. History of the University of California, Riverside At the turn of the 20th century, Southern California was a major producer of citrus, the region's primary agricultural export. The industry developed from the country's first navel orange trees, planted in Riverside in 1873.
