December 13, 2016
By the numbers: 1.1 billion reasons to feel good about 2016
It was a year of firsts … and a year of records
As the University of California, Irvine ended its 50th anniversary celebration and entered its second half-century, 2016 brought other important milestones: An aggressive new strategic plan. Record amounts of research and philanthropic funding. The most-ever freshman and transfer applications. The first eSports arena at a public college. As always, it was a good year to be an Anteater.
UCI astronomer Aaron Barth and colleagues used data from the Atacama Large Millimeter Array in Chile to determine the mass of a supermassive black hole at the heart of galaxy NGC 1332 to be 660 million times greater than that of the sun. ALMA (NRAO/ESO/NAOJ); Hubble Space Telescope (NASA/ESA); Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey
Here are the highlights in numbers.
| 660 million | Times larger than the mass of the sun – the measurement of the mass of a black hole determined by UCI astronomer Aaron Barth using the ALMA observatory in Chile |
| 395 million | Research funding in dollars (record) |
| 132.5 million | Philanthropic support in dollars (record) |
| 230,000 | Square feet of Bermuda grass planted on Microsemi Field for the Rams’ preseason training camp |
| 200,000 | Times that chemistry graduate student Mya Le Thai cycled a specially coated gold nanowire battery electrode; current lithium-ion batteries can be cycled only around 7,000 times |
| 98,000 | Freshman and transfer student applications to UCI (record) |
| 75,000 | Square feet in the new Anteater Learning Pavilion |
| 50,000 | Hours of community service completed by UCI volunteers as part of the “Fifty for 50” campus challenge |
| 20,521 | California-resident Chicano/Latino freshman applicants (most in UC system) |
| 8,000 | Pounds of trash recycled each day |
| 6,000 | Students fed on opening day of the Anteatery, the food court in the new Mesa Court Towers housing complex |
| 2,000 | Peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches made by UCI students for local soup kitchens during Hunger & Homelessness Awareness Week |
| 1,500 | People – some in elaborate costumes – who mobbed the grand opening of the eSports arena, the first of its kind at a public college |
| 1,200 | Pieces of California impressionist art donated by the Irvine family to UCI |
| 935 | Beds in the three new, six-story Mesa Court Towers dorms |
| 700 | Anteaters who participated in an early voting opportunity at the flagpoles Nov. 1 |
| 100 | Orange County K-12 educators who will receive training in teaching computer science by the year 2020 through UCI’s CS1C@OC program |
| 7 | Consecutive years UCI has made the top 10 of Sierra magazine’s “Cool Schools” (only university to do so) |
| 4.10 | Mean grade-point average of new class of California residents admitted to UCI (highest ever) |
| 2 | New pedestrian bridges opened, one connecting Mesa Court to the UCI Student Center and the other linking the Division of Continuing Education building with the main campus loop |
| 1 | New strategic plan, unveiled in February |