The mission of the College of Creative Studies (CCS) is to recruit the most talented and imaginative undergraduates, and provide them with the intellectual environment and advice that allows them to undergo the transition quickly from consumers of knowledge to colleagues in the act of human creativity in the arts and sciences.

• To pursue with vigor the identification and recruitment of students possessing productive and original minds from California and beyond;

• To enter each student into an intensive program of course work within an established major, tailored to his or her strengths, goals and creative interest;

• To provide these students with consistent, individual assistance from committed staff and faculty as they develop their own sense of purpose and direction;

• To offer small innovative classes where students from different disciplines can interact and develop a sense of the breadth of creative endeavor;

• To provide access to the full instructional, intellectual and material resources of a "Research I" university;

• To facilitate original work by students from the start of their freshman year under the direction of CCS faculty and faculty from various departments in the Colleges of Letters & Science and Engineering;

• To assure that all graduating CCS seniors will have completed a body of original work, be it in the form of paintings, musical compositions, original poetry or prose, or the reports of completed scientific or literary research.