UC ANR Orientation Guide

Read the  ANR New Academic Orientation Guide November 2019

If you are a new academic employee... Welcome to the University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources! You have joined a unique and important part of the University of California system.

The Division’s roots are deeply embedded in the historic land-grant mission to conduct research relevant to the lives of the people of California and help apply the research to everyday problems through an intricate and far-reaching outreach system. This public service component of the University of California is more important than ever as the people of our great state confront more complex and difficult challenges resulting from the ever increasing intersections of agriculture, the environment, nutrition, and health sciences. The challenges are daunting, but also create exciting new opportunities. 

This orientation guide is intended to introduce you to this complex, diverse, and unique organization and its distinctive land-grant mission within the greater UC system. We are an organization actively changing to meet California’s needs, while reducing administrative structures to maximize program development and delivery. This guide will be updated periodically to reflect these ongoing changes.

There is a lot of information in this manual. Don’t tackle everything at once, or you may feel overwhelmed! Instead, we recommend that you begin with our Start-up Guide for New UC ANR Academics, beginning on page 6. This section, written by your colleagues, will give you the nuts and bolts of how to begin a successful career as a UC ANR academic, whether you are an advisor, an academic coordinator, or an academic administrator. Although this orientation guide is written specifically for academics hired and reviewed within UC ANR, we hope it will be a helpful reference for others as well, including CE Specialists, AES faculty and others who are hired through a campus.