UC Davis Continuing and Professional Education

Education has the power to transform lives.

For 60 years, this statement has been at the heart of the UC Davis Division of Continuing and Professional Education's mission.

• We believe that professional education plays a vital role in building our economy, improving our community, and enriching the lives of the students we serve.

• We are passionate about sharing the resources, expertise, and knowledge of UC Davis with working professionals and other adult learners around the world.

• And we are committed to providing adult learners with access to the right education in the right format at the right time throughout their careers and lives.

Our History

Since we were established in 1960, UC Davis Continuing and Professional Education (then named University Extension) has been characterized by its ability to successfully adapt and evolve to meet the changing educational needs of its students and the modern workforce. Early courses were often based on the passions of the faculty who taught them and many legendary UC Davis faculty and celebrities, including Robert Arneson, Wayne Thiebaud and Martin Yan, taught for the division.

When then-governor Ronald Reagan cut funding for university-based continuing education in 1968, we became completely self-sufficient and aggressively shifted our focus to creating demand-driven programs for working professionals and their employers. We began offering programs for international students in 1977, started providing contracted training for California’s social services professionals in 1979, and launched UC Davis’ first online course in 1999.

Today, we offer more than 4,800 online and in-person classes that serve students in all 50 states and more than 100 countries. We are the third largest Extension program in the UC system and our classes on the Massive Open Online Course platform Coursera have generated nearly four million enrollments from students around the world.