We can’t say “Happy New Year” without taking a look back at what might be one of UC Riverside’s most groundbreaking 12 months for students, research, and the university at large.

In 2018:

• We hired the first two Nobel Prize winners to our faculty; chemist Richard Schrock ’67 won the 2005 prize, and physicist Barry Barish, who won the 2017 award.

• We became America’s fastest-rising ranked university (U.S. News 2019 rankings) and Money Magazine named us the 13th best university in the West.

• We enrolled 23,365 students, an 11 percent increase in five years, showing the university’s swift gain in popularity.

• Frank Bidart '62 won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for his book "Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016."

• Executive Chef Burke Reeves won a gold medal in a national culinary competition after winning a regional conference culinary competition, the first such award in UCR’s history.

• 100 percent of our medical students were matched with residency programs.

• We set a record number of donors in one day.

• Our researchers found the oldest evidence of animal life, 100 million years before the Cambrian Explosion.

• We welcomed our first full-time immigration lawyer, Karina Guiterrez.

• Our solar panels powered more than 700 homes.

• Professor John Jennings won an Eisner award after being nominated for his graphic novel adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s “Kindred.”

• We watched former Highlanders pitcher Joe Kelly help the Boston Red Sox win the World Series … and then sign with the Los Angeles Dodgers.

• Our softball team made its first ever postseason appearance.

• Our men’s soccer team won the Big West Championship for the first time in UCR history.

• Alumna Anthea M. Hartig ’01 was named director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, the first woman to hold the position.

And there are many, many more. Here’s to all the milestones we’ve met that have defined the spirit of UCR. It’s been quite a year, Highlanders. Let’s do it again in 2019.