University of California, San Francisco
The University of California, San Francisco is a public land-grant research university in San Francisco, California, United States. It is part of the University of California system and is dedicated entirely to health science and life science. It conducts research and teaching in medical and biological sciences.
UCSF was founded as Toland Medical College in 1864. In 1873, it became affiliated with the University of California as its medical department. In the same year, it incorporated the California College of Pharmacy and in 1881 it established a dentistry school. Its facilities were located in both Berkeley and San Francisco. In 1964, the school gained full administrative independence as a campus of the UC system, headed by its own chancellor, and in 1970 it gained its current name. Historically based at Parnassus Heights with satellite facilities throughout the city, UCSF developed a second major campus in the newly redeveloped Mission Bay district in the early 2000s.
In 2023, UCSF received the 2nd highest research funding from the National Institutes of Health. In 2021, the university spent $1.71 billion in research and development, the second most among institutions of higher education in the U.S. With 25,398 employees, UCSF is the second-largest public agency employer in the San Francisco Bay Area. UCSF faculty have treated patients and trained residents since 1873 at the San Francisco General Hospital and for over 50 years at the San Francisco VA Medical Center.
History
Beginnings
The University of California, San Francisco traces its history to Hugh Toland, a South Carolina surgeon who found great success and wealth after moving to San Francisco in 1852. A previous school, the Cooper Medical College of the University of the Pacific, entered a period of uncertainty in 1862 when its founder, Elias Samuel Cooper, died. In 1864, Toland founded a new medical school, Toland Medical College, and the faculty of Cooper Medical College chose to suspend operations and join the new school.The University of California was founded on March 23, 1868, with the enacting of its Organic Act. Section 8 of the Organic Act authorized the Board of Regents to affiliate the University of California with independent self-sustaining professional colleges. In 1870, Toland Medical School began to negotiate an affiliation with the new public university. Meanwhile, some faculty of Toland Medical School elected to reopen the Medical Department of the University of the Pacific, which would later become Stanford University School of Medicine. Negotiations between Toland and UC were complicated by Toland's demand that the medical school continue to bear his name, an issue on which he finally conceded. In March 1873, the trustees of Toland Medical College transferred it to the Regents of the University of California, and it became The Medical Department of the University of California. At the same time, the University of California also negotiated the incorporation of the California College of Pharmacy, the first pharmacy school in the West, established in 1872 by the California Pharmaceutical Society. The Pharmacy College was affiliated in June 1873, and together the Medical College and the Pharmacy College came to be known as the "Affiliated Colleges". The third college, the College of Dentistry, was established in 1881.
Expansion and growth
Initially, the three Affiliated Colleges were located at different sites around San Francisco, but near the end of the 19th Century interest in bringing them together grew. To make this possible, San Francisco Mayor Adolph Sutro donated 13 acres in Parnassus Heights at the base of Mount Parnassus. The new site, overlooking Golden Gate Park, opened in the fall of 1898, with the construction of the new Affiliated Colleges buildings. The school's first female student, Lucy Wanzer, graduated in 1876, after having to appeal to the UC Board of Regents to gain admission in 1873.Until 1906, the faculty of the medical school had provided care at the City-County Hospital, but the medical school still did not have a teaching hospital of its own. Following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, more than 40,000 people were relocated to a makeshift tent city in Golden Gate Park and were treated by the faculty of the Affiliated Colleges. This brought the Affiliated Colleges, which until then were located on the western outskirts of the city, in contact with significant population numbers. By fueling the Affiliated Colleges' commitment to civic responsibility and health care, the earthquake increased the momentum towards the eventual construction of their own healthcare facilities.
Within a month after the 1906 earthquake, the faculty of the medical school voted to make room in their building for a teaching hospital by moving the three departments responsible for the first two years of preclinical instruction—anatomy, pathology, and physiology—across San Francisco Bay to the Berkeley campus. As a result, for over 50 years, students pursuing the M.D. degree took their first two years at Berkeley and their last two years at Parnassus Heights. By October 1906, an outpatient clinic was operational on the first floor of the medical building, and by April 1907, the new teaching hospital started to admit inpatients. This created the need to train nursing students, of whom the first was informally admitted in June; in December 1907, the UC Training School for Nurses was formally established, adding a fourth professional school to the Affiliated Colleges.
Around this time, the Affiliated Colleges agreed to submit to the Regents' governance during the term of President Benjamin Ide Wheeler, as the Board of Regents had come to recognize the problems inherent in the existence of independent entities that shared the UC brand but over which UC had no real control. The last of the Affiliated Colleges to become an integral part of the university was the pharmacy school, in 1934.
Post-War 20th century
The schools continued to grow in numbers and reputation in the following years. One notable event was the incorporation of the Hooper Foundation for Medical Research in 1914, a medical research institute second only to the Rockefeller Institute. This addition bolstered the prestige of the Parnassus site during the long-running dispute over whether the schools should consolidate at Parnassus or in Berkeley. The final decision came in 1949 when the Regents of the University of California designated the Parnassus campus as the UC Medical Center in San Francisco. After the medical facilities were updated and expanded, the preclinical departments returned to San Francisco in 1958, and from that point forward the M.D. degree program was again provided entirely in Parnassus Heights.During this era, a number of research institutes were established, and many new facilities were added, such as the 225-bed UC Hospital, the Clinics Building, the Langley Porter Clinic and the Herbert C. Moffitt Hospital. In 1958, the addition of the Guy S. Millberry Union offered dorms and services for students.
With medical education again concentrated in San Francisco, the UC Medical Center gained more independence and autonomy from the Berkeley campus during the 1950s and 1960s. The deans of the Affiliated Colleges reported directly to the UC president at Berkeley for several decades. In 1954, an administrative advisory committee chaired by the dean of the School of Medicine was created to run the campus. In 1958, the Medical Center got its own chief campus officer with the title of provost. In 1961, the four departments were renamed as "School of..." and the Graduate Division was founded.
Finally, in 1964 the institution obtained full administrative independence from Berkeley under the name University of California, San Francisco Medical Center, becoming the ninth campus in the University of California system and the only one devoted exclusively to the health sciences.
The first Chancellor under the new independent configuration was John B. de C.M. Saunders, previously provost, a White South African who had a strong preference for clinical medical training over research. The resulting controversy "became front-page news in San Francisco". On one side was most of the clinical faculty, who owed their appointments to Saunders. On the other side was the basic sciences faculty, many of whom were recent transplants from Berkeley. UC President Clark Kerr and the regents ultimately decided in favor of the research model. As part of a compromise designed to heal the UCSF community, Kerr and Board of Regents chair Edward W. Carter negotiated the simultaneous resignations of both Saunders and Dean William Reinhardt of the UCSF School of Medicine, who had been held responsible for the researchers' rebellion by Saunders' supporters.
In 1966, Willard C. Fleming, DDS, was named UCSF's second Chancellor. Fleming brought balance between clinicians and researchers and a new level of stability to the administration. By the end of the 1960s, the university was starting to become a leading research center; its research enterprise was bolstered by the opening of Health Sciences East and Health Sciences West the same year.
Under the guidance of the third Chancellor, Philip R. Lee, the institution was renamed to its current form, the University of California, San Francisco , a symbol of its coequal status as a UC campus and a research university, while the Medical Center name was kept for its hospital facilities. Lee also was crucial in guiding UCSF through the turmoil of the late 1960s and worked to increase minority recruitment and enrollment. By then, UCSF had already reached the top ranks of US schools in the health sciences through its innovative programs that blended basic science, research, and clinical instruction. This stature was further augmented by Francis A. Sooy, fourth Chancellor, who dedicated his ten years to recruiting the top physicians and scientists in the field.