Graduate students participate in a Humanities Commons study group. Courtesy of the School of Humanities

UCI is No. 30 among the top 50 universities in the country for awarding Ph.D.s in the arts and humanities, according to a recent analysis by The Chronicle of Higher Education. For the 2014-15 academic year, UCI conferred 51 doctoral degrees in humanities and two in the arts. “For decades now, we have been a primary international destination for the humanities, attracting top faculty and students to the most vibrant intellectual community on the West Coast,” said Georges Van Den Abbeele, dean of the School of Humanities. “We bisect the line between engineering and the arts while offering the best career paths to law and medicine. Our exciting cross-collaboration ventures are taking UCI into uncharted territory as we explore the limitless avenues of humanities education.” University of California campuses are also leaders in the integration of STEM – science, technology, engineering and math – into the arts and humanities, offering a variety of academic programs that blend disciplines. At UCI, the newly launched Institute for 21st Century Creativity is a platform for projects across the campus in which art, technology and design intersect. “21C transcends the individual disciplinary boundaries and enables a new kind of creative research that could not have happened in a single department, single program or even a single school,” said Stephen Barker, dean of the Claire Trevor School of the Arts and 21C founder. “We want to initiate and support creative projects within the CTSA and catalyze creative approaches to research throughout UCI to demonstrate how other schools can benefit from a connection with the arts.”