The School of Social Ecology (SSE) is a school at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) that focuses on social ecology. Students in SSE at UCI undergo a multidisciplinary program that examines real-world social and environmental issues and that involves the students in off-campus internships as well as on-campus courses. SSE offers undergraduate and graduate degrees, including bachelor's, professional master's, and Ph.D.s. The school has three departments: Criminology, Law and Society; Psychological Science (prior to Fall 2019 known as Psychology and Social Behavior); and Urban Planning and Public Policy. It is also home to approximately 70 faculty, 2,500 undergraduate students, 300 graduate students, and over 20,000 alumni; it offers five undergraduate degrees and eight graduate degrees, including two professional degrees. It is the third-largest school at UCI by population. History In 1970, SSE was founded as the first US academic unit in social ecology. Founded by Arnold Binder, the program intended to address social problems of the day by promoting research and training that crossed disciplinary boundaries and held direct relevance to public policy and social issues. The program also encouraged students to apply theory and research to the study of community issues by emphasizing hands-on, cross-disciplinary research, education, and training. Since the beginning of the program in 1970, all undergraduate students in the program have been required to take field study internships with a community organization in order to graduate. In 1988, UCI began the process to accord School status to the program. In 1992, the University of California Regents formally approved SSE. In the following decades, SSE continued to expand its offerings and infrastructure. In 1993, the school established the Department of Urban Planning and Public Policy and began awarding master's degrees in Urban and Regional Planning. A second social ecology building on campus opened in 1996, the same year that new Ph.D. programs in Urban and Regional Planning and Environmental Health Science and Policy were approved by the Academic Senate. In 2003, the Urban and Regional planning department and Ph.D. program were renamed "Planning, Policy and Design" (PPD). In 2009, PPD inaugurated an undergraduate major, a B.A. in Urban Studies. In 2011, PPD helped launch a Master's of Public Policy degree. SSE faculty were also involved in launching UCI's public health program and law school. The American Psychological Society Observer lauded the Department of Psychological Science as "one of the most successful interdisciplinary arenas in the field