We are thrilled to announce today an ambitious effort to hire 100 additional Senate faculty over the next decade. These new positions are part of a broader effort to advance student success and research excellence, firmly establishing UC Santa Cruz as a global leader at the intersection of innovation and social justice, amplifying our positive impact on California, the nation, and the world.
These hires — the most significant faculty-hiring effort our campus has pursued since its founding nearly 60 years ago — will be transformative. Students will experience the benefits of a lower student-to-faculty ratio, have access to new courses and areas of study, and discover more opportunities to join in research and creative scholarship, experiences that contribute to academic and later professional success. The faculty additions will strengthen our academic and research enterprises, allowing us to move quickly into emerging fields and to build on existing areas of excellence. The new hires, plus 200 to 250 additional faculty hires anticipated over the next decade due to faculty retirement and separations, provides an unparalleled opportunity to increase the diversity of our faculty, which is already one of the most diverse in the UC system.
We aim to bring our campus community together during the year ahead for conversations that will inform this effort as we plan to increase the size of our faculty. This process will facilitate input on directions for future investments and inform the development of a comprehensive plan that will focus on ways to advance student success, expand our research excellence and increase faculty diversity. Staffing levels and roles will be analyzed, taking the evolution of in-person, online and hybrid instruction modalities into consideration. This strategic thinking will also explore how our operations and processes can support the future campus enterprise. We will re-examine opportunities for the utilization of campus space, with the aim of using it more effectively. We will lean hard on our 2021 Long Range Development Plan, supported unanimously by Regents this past fall, to develop a timeline for constructing student and employee housing, as well as new academic buildings.
The new housing and facilities piece of this equation is crucial as we plan for the future. New faculty members and the students they’ll be teaching will need places to live, work and study. That is why our long-range development plan, which was informed by regular and extensive community engagement, forecasts building significantly more housing. We plan to build housing for 100 percent of new full-time student enrollment above 19,500 and housing for up to 25 percent of new employees, based on demand.
This is a milestone moment for our campus. We are already a leader at the intersection of innovation and social justice, committed to our mission of education, research, and public service. This initiative propels us forward to an even more exciting and impactful future.
