UCLA has reached its goal of raising $1.2 billion in private donations more than two years ahead of schedule, university officials announced Friday.
Buoyed by such early success, leaders of the Westwood campus have decided to raise the goal by another $400 million. The idea is to use the extra money, in part, for interdisciplinary studies that can expand the "frontiers of knowledge" in biology, medicine and computers.
The $1.2-billion campaign, which was formally launched in 1997, was the most ambitious ever attempted by a public university campus, said Chancellor Albert Carnesale.
So far, UCLA has received about $800 million. The remaining $400 million has been pledged.
About half of the donations are for the medical sciences, including a substantial sum to help rebuild the UCLA Medical Center, which was damaged in the Northridge earthquake.
Other donations have been added to the university's growing endowment. The rest are being spread around the campus for various construction projects, faculty salaries and research grants, fellowships and student scholarships.
Expanding the campaign gives Carnesale, three years into his tenure, a chance to make his own imprint on the campus that had been dominated by former Chancellor Charles E. Young for nearly three decades.
"We are not raising the goal of the campaign because we can raise more money," he said. "It's because we have very real needs and objectives for these funds."
Carnesale wants to use a portion of the extra $400 million to help UCLA get more involved in the surrounding community, especially in the arts and local schools.
On campus, he wants to stimulate more multidisciplinary education and research in two burgeoning fields: the biological sciences and information technology.
For instance, he wants to expand the university's activities outside the traditional confines of academic departments, bringing together engineers with experts in biology, genetics, computer science and medicine.
"The frontiers of knowledge nowadays are at the intersections between disciplines," he said. "We have to work across those fields in designing our new areas of focus."
Unlike state tax dollars, which are restricted to specific purposes, he said private donations "give us an opportunity to invest in research, education and public service across traditional disciplinary lines."
