 | |
| Motto | Fiat lux (Latin) |
|---|---|
Motto in English | "Let there be light" |
| Type | Publicland-grantresearch university |
| Established | 1965; 60 years ago (1965)[1] |
Parent institution | University of California |
| Accreditation | WSCUC |
Academic affiliations | |
| Endowment | $153.36 million (2023)[2] |
| Chancellor | Cynthia Larive |
| Provost | Lori Kletzer |
| Students | 19,938 (fall 2024)[3] |
| Undergraduates | 17,940 (fall 2024)[3] |
| Postgraduates | 1,998 (fall 2024)[3] |
| Location | ,, United States 37°00′N122°04′W / 37.00°N 122.06°W /37.00; -122.06 |
| Campus | Small city[5], 6,088 acres (2,464 ha)[4] |
| Other campuses | |
| Newspaper | City on a Hill Press |
| Colors | Blue and gold[6] |
| Nickname | Banana Slugs |
Sporting affiliations | |
| Mascot | Sammy theSlug[7] |
| Website | ucsc |
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TheUniversity of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz orUCSC) is apublicland-grantresearch university inSanta Cruz, California, United States. It is one of the ten campuses in theUniversity of California system. Located inMonterey Bay, on the edge of the coastal community of Santa Cruz, the main campus lies on 2,001 acres (810 ha) of rolling, forested hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean. As of Fall 2024, its ten residential colleges enroll some 17,940 undergraduate and 1,998 graduate students.[8] Satellite facilities in other Santa Cruz locations include theCoastal Science Campus and the Westside Research Park and theSilicon Valley Center inSanta Clara, along with administrative control of theLick Observatory nearSan Jose in theDiablo Range and theKeck Observatory near the summit ofMauna Kea inHawaii.
Founded in 1965, UC Santa Cruz is acollegiate university, using aresidential college system consisting of ten small colleges that were established as a variation of theOxbridgeuniversity system.[9]
Among the faculty areNobel Prize laureates, Rhodes Scholars, Fulbright Scholars, Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences recipients, 16 members of theNational Academy of Sciences, 29 members of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences, and 46 members of theAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science. UC Santa Cruz alumni include 13Pulitzer Prizes for 11 recipients, 7MacArthur 'genius' Award fellows,Rhodes Scholars,Fulbright Scholars, andMarshall Scholars, amongst others.[10][11][12] UC Santa Cruz isclassified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity".[13] The university is also a member of theAssociation of American Universities.
Prior toSpanish colonization, the Uypi tribe of the Awaswas Nation, who spokeMutsun Costanoan of theOhlone peoples, lived in what is now the campus of UCSC. During this time, the missionaries of Mission Santa Cruz removed a part of the forest to build a vineyard on top of what is now the Great Meadow.
After theCalifornia Gold Rush, many mining firms came to the area. TheCowell Lime Works operated on the entirety of what is now the Santa Cruz campus until 1920.[14]
Although some of the original founders had already outlined plans for an institution like UCSC as early as the 1930s, the opportunity to realize their vision did not present itself until the City of Santa Cruz made a bid to theUC Board of Regents in the mid-1950s to build a campus just outside town, in the foothills of theSanta Cruz Mountains.[15] During the mid-1950s, there was widespread public sentiment in favor of the establishment of a new UC campus somewhere south of theoriginal campus atBerkeley. In 1957, theCalifornia State Senate passed a resolution asking the Regents to consider theMonterey Peninsula, and that same year, theCalifornia State Assembly passed its own resolution asking the Regents to consider theSanta Clara Valley.[16] In December 1959, the Regents voted to focus their site selection process on theAlmaden Valley inSan Jose (i.e., within the Santa Clara Valley and the larger region now known asSilicon Valley), but the public announcement of the Regents' decision immediately caused property values throughout that area to increase to the extent that the Regents could no longer afford to buy the necessary land.[16] After another year of study, the Regents finally selected Santa Cruz as the location of the next UC campus.[16]
However, Santa Cruz was selected for the beauty, rather than the practicality, of its location, and its remoteness led to the decision to develop a residential college system that would house most of the students on-campus.[17] The formal design process for the Santa Cruz campus began in the late 1950s, culminating in the Long Range Development Plan of 1963.[18] 1963 was also the year when the Regional History Project, an oral history project and the first major research project of UCSC, was started. Its purpose was originally to interview longtime residents of the Central California Coast area in order to help better understand the history of the region. Originally concentrated in the economic history of the area, it expanded to also cover the social and cultural history of the region before expanding its scope in 1967 to include a series of interviews on the history of UCSC and the Lick Observatory.[19] These series of interviews later expanded in scope and lead to a two volume series,Seeds of Something Different: An Oral History of the University of California, Santa Cruz.[20] UCSC is one of only two UC campuses to have an oral history projected dedicated to covering the history of the area around the university and the university itself.[21]
Planning the new UC campus was just as hard as picking the site. The first plan was to build the campus on what is now the Great Meadow, so it would be close to the existing city of Santa Cruz.[22] The second plan, conceived byThomas Church, put the colleges into theredwood forest at the top of the hill above the Great Meadow.[22] This was clearly the better idea, but presented the problem of how to place the colleges inside the forest.[22] The original design for College One (Cowell College) scattered its buildings among the trees, which was sarcastically compared by one regent to "a series of motels on the shores ofLake Tahoe."[22] Having recently visitedAigues-Mortes, UC PresidentClark Kerr was inspired by the layout of that French medieval town to suggest concentrating each college's buildings into distinct clusters in the forest, and that is how UC Santa Cruz was actually built.[23]
Construction started by 1964, and the university was able to accommodate its first students (albeit living in trailers on what is now the East Field athletic area) in 1965. The campus was intended to be a showcase for contemporary architecture, progressive teaching methods, and undergraduate research.[24][25][26] According to founding chancellorDean McHenry, the purpose of the distributed college system was to combine the benefits of a majorresearch university with the intimacy of a smaller college.[27][28] Kerr shared a passion with formerStanford roommate McHenry to build a university modeled as "severalSwarthmores" (i.e., smallliberal arts colleges) in close proximity to each other.[27][29] Both men were well aware that Santa Cruz "was located in the shadow not only of Berkeley but also of Stanford, and was bound to remain in their shadows for a very long time to come and perhaps forever."[30] Therefore, they hoped to shape a "distinctive personality" for the Santa Cruz campus and let it "flourish as first rate within its own type."[30]
In his memoirs, Kerr ruefully recounted the myriad errors made by himself and McHenry in launching the new campus.[30] They had created Santa Cruz as the "most experimental" of the UC campuses, but opened it just in time for their cherished "Santa Cruz dream" to die amidst thecounterculture of the 1960s.[30] Santa Cruz quickly became the "counterculture campus" where students and faculty either "mellowed out" among the redwood trees or turned into "activist-radical[s]".[31] For example, when Kerr came to deliver an address at UC Santa Cruz's first commencement exercises in 1969, the ceremony was hijacked by students who denounced Kerr and McHenry for having "planned and created Santa Cruz as a capitalist-imperialist-fascist plot to divert the students from their revolution against the evils of American society and, in particular, against the horrors of theVietnam War."[32] The students then tried to award an honorary degree toHuey P. Newton (who was in jail at the time, although he went on to earn his bachelor's, master's, and doctorate degrees at Santa Cruz).[32] Kerr later recalled this episode of "guerrilla theatre" as "one of the worst afternoons of my life."[33]
According to Kerr's account, during the 1970s, the quality of UC Santa Cruz's incoming freshman classes deteriorated asBaby Boom students increasingly chose to matriculate at less experimental UC campuses in order to major in subjects such as engineering and business administration (both absent from Santa Cruz).[34] Another major factor behind the decrease in quality was a series of "grisly murders" around Santa Cruz,[34] which at the time was labeled the "murder capital of the world".[35] The average SAT scores of UC Santa Cruz's incoming students dropped from 1250 in the early 1970s to 1050 by the early 1980s.[34]
A series of major reforms were implemented by Chancellor Robert Sinsheimer (1977–1987) at the cost of making Santa Cruz less experimental and more conventional.[36][37][38] In 1981, after a two-year battle, the faculty narrowly voted to give students the option of receivinggrades for the first time, in lieu of Santa Cruz's traditionalnarrative evaluations.[37] By the fall of 1984, 45% of Santa Cruz students were already majoring in the sciences, and that year, the campus offeredcomputer engineering as a major for the first time (in order to take advantage of its proximity to Silicon Valley), followed bybusiness economics a year later.[37] In May 1985, Sinsheimer, a molecular biologist, welcomed several scientists to Santa Cruz for one of the first meetings at which the idea of aHuman Genome Project was discussed.[39]
Sinsheimer got Santa Cruz involved inintercollegiate athletics for the first time as part ofNCAA Division III. In 1981, he supported student athletes' preference for thesea lion as the campusmascot, but was forced to back down in 1986 when the student body voted to support thebanana slug instead.[38]
By the early 1990s, the campus was still inefficient in that average teaching loads were still light compared to other UC campuses, but SAT scores had stopped falling, the faculty was performing good research, and the campus was beginning to rise in university rankings.[36] In 1997, an engineering school was finally launched.[36]
In 2019, the University of California, Santa Cruz was elected to theAssociation of American Universities (AAU), the most prestigious alliance of American research universities.[40] Along withUCI, UC Santa Cruz was the youngest university to gain admittance to the AAU.[41]
On December 9, 2019, over 200 graduate student-workers initiated a wildcat strike by withholding Fall quarter grades with the following demands: (1) a COLA (cost of living adjustment) of $1,412/month to address the housing crisis in Santa Cruz, (2) a promise of non-retaliation against those participating in the strike, and (3) a cap on tuition for undergraduate students, to ensure that the increase in graduate student-worker pay would not increase the rent-burden and precarity of their students.[42] On February 10, 2020, graduate student-workers responded to disciplinary threats from UCSC administrators with a full teaching strike, including withholding grades.[43] UCSC administrators' called in police from various counties. 17 students were arrested, and several were injured, but UCSC denied the claims of police brutality and excessive force.[44] On February 27, 2020, UC Davis and UC Santa Barbara joined the strike.[45][46] On February 28, 2020, 54 graduate student-workers were terminated[47] and continued strikes shut down the campus for at least one day the following week.[48] The arrival of theCOVID-19 pandemic led to the end of the strike. On August 7, 2020, UCSC agreed to reinstate 41 graduate student-workers, allowing them to be rehired by their respective departments, while also agreeing to seal their disciplinary records and reinstate their funding guarantees.[49] In return, UAW, who represents UC graduate student-workers but did not authorize the strike at any point, agreed to drop complaints filed on behalf of the graduate student-workers. UCSC also granted graduate student-workers a $2,500 annual housing stipend, but did not grant the COLA adjustment or cap on tuition for undergraduate students.[50]
Although the city ofSanta Cruz already exhibited a strongconservation ethic before the founding of the university, the coincidental rise of the counterculture of the 1960s together with the university's establishment fundamentally altered its subsequent development. Early student and faculty activism at UCSC pioneered an approach to environmentalism that greatly impacted the industrial development of the surrounding area.[51] The lowering of the voting age to 18 in 1971 led to the emergence of a powerful student-voting bloc.[52] A large and growing population of politicallyliberal UCSCalumni changed the electorate of the town from predominantlyRepublican[53] to markedlyleft-leaning, consistently voting against expansion measures on the part of bothtown and gown.
| UCSC | Chancellors |
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Plans for increasing enrollment to 19,500 students and adding 1,500 faculty and staff by 2020, and the anticipated environmental impacts of such action, encountered opposition from the city, the local community, and the student body.[54][55] City voters in 2006 passed two measures calling on UCSC to pay for the impacts of campus growth. A Santa Cruz Superior Court judge invalidated the measures, ruling they were improperly put on the ballot. In 2008, the university, city, county and neighborhood organizations reached an agreement to set aside numerous lawsuits and allow the expansion to occur. UCSC agreed to local government scrutiny of its north campus expansion plans, to provide housing for 67 percent of the additional students on campus, and to pay municipal development and water fees.[56]
George Blumenthal, UCSC's 10th Chancellor, intended to mitigate growth constraints in Santa Cruz by developing off-campus sites inSilicon Valley. TheNASA Ames Research Center campus is planned to ultimately hold 2,000 UCSC students – about 10% of the entire university's future student body as envisioned for 2020.[57][58]
In April 2010, UC Santa Cruz opened its new $35 million Digital Arts Research Center; a project in planning since 2004.[59]
The $72 million Coastal Biology Building officially opened on 21 October 2017 on the Coastal Science Campus.[60] The new campus houses the Ecology & Evolutionary Biology Department and faculty interested in the study of ecology and evolution in ocean, terrestrial and freshwater environments.
The 2,000-acre (810 ha) UCSC main campus is located 75 miles (121 km) south of San Francisco, in the Ben Lomond Mountain ridge of theSanta Cruz Mountains. Elevation varies from 285 feet (87 m) at the campus entrance to 1,195 feet (364 m) at the northern boundary, a difference of about 900 feet (270 m). The southern portion of the campus primarily consists of a large, openmeadow, locally known as the Great Meadow. To the north of the meadow lie most of the campus' buildings, many of them amongredwood groves. The campus is bounded on the south by the city's upper-west-side neighborhoods, on the east by Harvey West Park[61] and thePogonip open space preserve,[62] on the north byHenry Cowell Redwoods State Park[63] near the town ofFelton, and on the west byGray Whale Ranch, a portion ofWilder Ranch State Park.[64] The campus is built on a portion of theCowell Family ranch, which was purchased by the University of California in 1961.[65] The northern half of the campus property has remained in its undeveloped, forested state apart from fire roads and hiking and bicycle trails. The heavily forested area has allowed UC Santa Cruz to operate arecreational vehicle park as a form of student housing since 1984.[66] However in 2024 UCSC announced the closure of this park, known as the camper park, due to rising concerns about fire safety, along with mold issues and rising maintenance requests that had created an unsafe situation in the park.[67] In 2017 the University finished building the Coastal Science Facility for the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department. The facility, equipped with teaching classrooms, labs and greenhouses, is located on McAllister Way.[68] In the same year, renovations to the campus'Quarry Amphitheater were completed.[69]
A number ofshrines, dens and other student-built curiosities are scattered around the northern campus. These structures, mostly assembled from branches and other forest detritus, were formerly concentrated in the area known as Elfland, a glen the university razed in 1992 to build colleges Nine and Ten. Students were able to relocate and save some of the structures, however.[70][71]
Creeks traverse the UCSC campus within several ravines. Footbridges span those ravines on pedestrian paths linking various areas of campus. The footbridges make it possible to walk to any part of campus within 20 minutes in spite of the campus being built on a mountainside with varying elevations.[72] At night, orange lights illuminate the occasionally fogged-in paths.[73]
There are a number of natural points of interest throughout the UCSC grounds. The "Porter Caves" are a popular site among students on the west side of campus. The entrance is located in the forest between thePorter College meadow and Empire Grade Road. The caves wind through a set of caverns, some of which are challenging, narrow passages. Tree Nine is another popular destination for students. A largeDouglas fir spanning approximately 103 feet (31 m) tall, Tree Nine is located in the upper campus of UCSC behindCollege Nine. The tree had been a popular climbing spot for many years but due to environmental corrosion and fear of student injuries, UC ground services sawed off the limbs to make it nearly impossible to climb.[74] Less experienced tree-climbers also used to frequent Sunset Tree located on the east side of the meadow behind the UCSC Music Center, but the lower branches of this tree were also cut off to make climbing the tree difficult.[75][76]
The UCSC campus is also one of the few homes toMima Mounds in the United States. They are rare in the United States and in the world in general.
The university has 5 academic divisions and 1 School (In parentheses their founding): Arts (2017), Social Sciences (2017), Humanities (2017), Graduate Studies (2017) Physical & Biological Sciences (2017), and Baskin School of Engineering (1997). Together, they offer 66 graduate programs, 74 undergraduate majors, and 43 minors.[77]
Popular undergraduate majors include Art,Business Management Economics,Chemistry,Molecular and Cell Biology,Physics, andPsychology.[78]Interdisciplinary programs, such as Computational Media, Feminist Studies,Environmental Studies, Visual Studies, Digital Arts and New Media, Critical Race & Ethnic Studies, and theHistory of Consciousness Department are also hosted alongside UCSC's more traditional academic departments.
A joint program withUC Hastings enables UC Santa Cruz students to earn a bachelor's degree andJuris Doctor degree in six years instead of the usual seven. The "3+3 BA/JD" Program between UC Santa Cruz and UC Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco accepted its first applicants in fall 2014.[79] UCSC students who declare their intent in their freshman or early sophomore year will complete three years at UCSC and then move on to UC Hastings to begin the three-year law curriculum. Credits from the first year of law school will count toward a student's bachelor's degree. Students who successfully complete the first-year law course work will receive their bachelor's degree and be able to graduate with their UCSC class, then continue at UC Hastings afterwards for two years.
According to theNational Science Foundation, UC Santa Cruz spent $203.883 million on research and development in 2023, ranking it 138th in the nation.[80]
Although designed as a liberal arts-oriented university, UCSC quickly acquired a graduate-levelnatural science research component with the appointment of plant physiologistKenneth V. Thimann as the first provost ofCrown College. Thimann developed UCSC's early Division of Natural Sciences and recruited other well-known science faculty and graduate students to the fledgling campus.[81] Immediately upon its founding, UCSC was also granted administrative responsibility for theLick Observatory, which established the campus as a major center forastronomy research.[82] Founding members of the Social Science and Humanities faculty created the uniqueHistory of Consciousness graduate program in UCSC's first year of operation.[83]
UCSC'sorganic farm and garden program is the oldest in the country, and pioneeredorganic horticulture techniques internationally.[84][85]
As of 2025, UCSC's faculty include 16 members of theNational Academy of Sciences, 29 fellows of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences, 17 recipients of the 2025Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, and 49 fellows of theAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science.[86] TheBaskin School of Engineering, founded in 1997[87] is UCSC's first and only professional school[citation needed]. Baskin Engineering is home to several research centers, including the Center for Biomolecular Science and Engineering[88] and Cyberphysical Systems Research Center, which are gaining recognition, as has the work that UCSC researchersDavid Haussler andJim Kent have done on theHuman Genome Project,[89][90] including the widely usedUCSC Genome Browser.[91] Also associated with the Baskin School is the off-campus Westside Research Park. UCSC administers theNational Science Foundation's Center for Adaptive Optics.[92]
Off-campus research facilities maintained by UCSC include theLick andKeck Observatories, theLong Marine Laboratory, and the Westside Research Park. From September 2003 to July 2016, UCSC managed a University Affiliated Research System (UARC) for theNASA Ames Research Center under a task order contract valued at more than $330 million.[93]
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UC Santa Cruz was ranked 129th in the list of Best Global Universities and tied for 82nd in the list of Best National Universities in the United States byU.S. News & World Report's 2024 rankings.[104] In 2021, UC Santa Cruz was ranked the No. 3 public university in the nation for "making an impact" and No. 4 for promoting social mobility. In 2023, the university was ranked No. 5 in game/simulation development and No. 2 among the best public game design colleges in the U.S.[105]
UC Santa Cruz was ranked top 10 in excellence in undergraduate teaching in 2022 and third in research influence in 2018.[105]
In 2017Kiplinger ranked UC Santa Cruz 50th out of the top 100 best-value public colleges and universities in the nation, and 3rd in California.[106]Money Magazine ranked UC Santa Cruz 41st in the country out of the nearly 1500 schools it evaluated for its 2016 Best Colleges ranking.[107] In 2016–2017, UC Santa Cruz was rated 146th in the world byTimes Higher Education World University Rankings. In 2016 it was ranked 83rd in the world by theAcademic Ranking of World Universities and 296th worldwide in 2016 by theQS World University Rankings.
In 2009, RePEc, an online database of research economics articles, ranked the UCSC Economics Department sixth in the world in the field of international finance.[108] In 2007,High Times magazine placed UCSC as first among US universities as a "counterculture college".[109] In 2009,The Princeton Review (withGamePro magazine) ranked UC Santa Cruz's Game Design major among the top 50 in the country.[110] In 2011,The Princeton Review andGamePro Media ranked UC Santa Cruz's graduate programs in Game Design as seventh in the nation.[111] In 2012, UCSC was ranked No. 3 in the Most Beautiful Campus list ofPrinceton Review.[112]
The undergraduate program, with only the partial exception of those majors run through the university's Baskin School of Engineering, is still based on the version of the "residential college system" outlined by Clark Kerr and Dean McHenry at the inception of their original plans for the campus (seeHistory, above). Upon admission, all undergraduate students have the opportunity to choose one of ten colleges, with which they usually stay affiliated for their entire undergraduate careers.[113]There are cases where some students switch college affiliations as each college holds a different graduation ceremony. Almost all faculty members are affiliated with a college as well.[113] The individual colleges provide housing and dining services, while the university as a whole offers courses and majors to the general student community.[113] Other universities with similar college systems includeRice University and theUniversity of California, San Diego.
Each of the colleges has its own, distinctive architectural style and a resident facultyprovost, who is the nominal head of his or her college.[113] An incoming first-year student will take a mandatory "core course" within his or her respective college, with a curriculum and central theme unique to that college.[113] College resident populations vary from about 750 to 1,550 students, with roughly half of undergraduates living on campus within their college community or in smaller, intramural campus communities such as the International Living Center, Redwood Grove, Porter transfer community, and the Village.[113] Coursework, academic majors and general areas of study are not limited by college membership, although colleges host the offices of many other academic departments. Graduate students are not affiliated with a residential college, though a large portion of their offices have historically tended to be based in the colleges. The ten colleges are, in order of establishment:
| 2024[115] | 2023[116] | 2022[117] | 2021[118] | 2020[119] | 2019[120] | 2018[121] | 2017[122] | 2016[123] | 2015[124] | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Applicants | 71,696 | 68,750 | 66,033 | 61,822 | 55,073 | 55,866 | 56,634 | 52,975 | 49,185 | 44,871 |
| Admitted | 47,012 | 42,130 | 31,096 | 36,411 | 35,935 | 28,808 | 27,014 | 27,235 | 28,884 | 23,022 |
| Admit rate | 65.6% | 61.3% | 47.1% | 58.9% | 65.2% | 40% | 47.7% | 40.4% | 40.7% | 40.3% |
| Enrolled | 4,381 | 4,379 | 3,869 | 4,203 | 4,205 | 3,722 | 3,701 | 4,045 | 4,221 | 3,570 |
| Average GPA | 3.92 | 3.89 | 3.98 | 3.63 | 3.51 | 3.57 | 3.55 | 3.50 | 3.46 | 3.76 |
| SAT* range | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | 1200–1360 | 1170–1400 | 1160–1370 | 1060–1300 | 1070–1310 |
| ACT range | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | 24–30 | 24–31 | 24–30 | 23–29 | 23–29 |
| * SAT out of 1600 |
For the fall 2024 term, UCSC offered admission to 46,582 freshmen out of 71,700 applicants, an acceptance rate of 65.0%. The entering freshman class had an average high schoolGPA of 4.01, with the middle 50% range 3.87 to 4.22.[125][126]
For most of its history, UCSC employed a uniquestudent evaluation system. With the exception of the choice of letter grades in science courses the onlygrades assigned were "pass" and "no record", supplemented withnarrative evaluations. Beginning in 1997, UCSC allowed students the option of selecting letter grade evaluations, but course grades were still optional until 2000, when faculty voted to require students receive letter grades. Students were still given narrative evaluations to complement the letter grades. As of 2010[update], the narrative evaluations were deemed an unnecessary expenditure. Still, some professors write evaluations for all students while some would write evaluations for specific students upon request.[127] Students can still elect to receive a "pass/no pass" grade, but many academic programs limit or even forbid pass/no pass grading. A grade of C and above would receive a grade of "pass". Overall, students may now earn no more than 25% of their UCSC credits on a "pass/no pass" basis. Although the default grading option for almost all courses offered is now "graded", most course grades are still accompanied by written evaluations.[128]
The McHenry Library houses UCSC's arts and letters collection, with most of the scientific reading at the newer Science and Engineering Library. The McHenry Library was designed byJohn Carl Warnecke.[82] In addition, the colleges host smaller libraries, which serve as quiet places to study. The McHenry Special Collections Library includes the archives ofRobert A. Heinlein, the papers ofAnaïs Nin, the papers and drawings ofBeat poetKenneth Patchen, the largest collection ofEdward Weston photographs in the United States, themycology book collection of composerJohn Cage, a large collection of works bySatyajit Ray, theHayden White collection of 16th-century Italian printing, a photography collection with nearly half a million items, and the Mary Lea Shane Archives. The Shane Archives contains an extensive collection of photographs, letters, and other documents related toLick Observatory dating back to 1870.[129]
A 82,000-square-foot (7,600 m2) new addition to the library opened on March 31, 2008, including a "cyber study" room and a Global Village café. The original 144,000-square-foot (13,400 m2) library reopened on June 22, 2011 after seismic upgrades and other renovations.[130][131] In total, the University Libraries contain over 2.4 million volumes.
In 2008, UCSC agreed to house theGrateful Dead archives at the McHenry Library.[132][133] Exhibits of Grateful Dead Archive materials are on display in the Brittingham Family Foundation's Dead Central Gallery on the 2nd Floor of McHenry Library. The Dead Central exhibit space is open during all library business hours. UCSC plans to devote an entire room at the library, to be called "Dead Central", to display the collection and encourage research.[134] The Grateful Dead Archive represents one of the most significant popular culture collections of the 20th Century and documents the band's activity and influence in contemporary music from 1965 to 1995.[135] UCSC beat out petitions from Stanford and UC Berkeley to house the archives.[136] Grateful Dead guitaristBob Weir said that UCSC is "a seat of neo-Bohemian culture that we're a facet of. There could not have been a cozier place for this collection to land."[137] The archive became open to the public July 29, 2012.
Most undergraduates are from California. The following tables show the ethnic and regional breakdown of the student body:
| Regional Origin of 2024 Freshmen[8] | Percent |
| San Francisco Bay Area | 29.7% |
| Los Angeles/Orange County/South Coast | 23.7% |
| Monterey Bay/Santa Clara Valley/Silicon Valley | 12.7% |
| Central Valley Area | 12.9% |
| San Diego/Inland Empire | 11.1% |
| Other States in the U.S | 5.1% |
| International | 3.0% |
| Other Northern California | 1.8% |
| Race and ethnicity | Total | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| White | 31% | ||
| Hispanic | 28% | ||
| Asian | 25% | ||
| Two or more races | 9% | ||
| Foreign national | 3% | ||
| Unknown | 2% | ||
| Black | 2% | ||
| Economic diversity | |||
| Low-income[a] | 32% | ||
| Non low-income[b] | 68% | ||
UCSC students are known for political activism. In 2005, aPentagon surveillance program deemed student opposition tomilitary recruiters on campus a "credible threat", the only campusantiwar action to receive the designation.[139] In February 2006, ChancellorDenice Denton got the designation removed.[140] Military recruiters declined to return to UCSC the following year, but returned in 2008 to a more low-keyed student reception and protests using elements ofguerrilla theatre, rather than vandalism or physical violence.[141][142] Thanks to students passing a $3 quarterly tuition increase to support buying renewable energy in 2006, UCSC is the sixth-largest buyer of renewable energy among college campuses nationwide.[143] TheCesar Chavez Convocation is another example of student activism.
UC Santa Cruz is also well known for itscannabis culture. On April 20, 2007, approximately 2,000 UCSC students gathered at Porter Meadow to celebrate the annual "420". Students and others openly smoked marijuana while campus police stood by.[144] The once student-only event has grown since the city of Santa Cruz passedMeasure K in 2006, an ordinance making marijuana use a low-priority crime for police. The 2007 event attracted a total of 5,000 participants. The university does not condone the gathering, but has taken steps to regulate the event and ensure security for all participants. On April 20, 2010, the school administration shut down the west entrance to campus and limited the number of buses that could drive through campus.[145][146]On April 20, 2013, a student by the name of Gennady Tsarinsky was arrested for the possession of more than one ounce. Although a UCSC spokesperson could not confirm the exact weight of the joint possessed by Tsarinsky, it was estimated to be nearly three pounds.[147]
Another well known tradition is what is known as "First Rain". Students run around campus naked or nearly naked to celebrate the school year's first night of heavy rain. The run begins at Porter and proceeds through all the other colleges, collecting more students in its parade.[148]
The Student Union Assembly was founded in 1985 to better coordinate bargaining positions between students and administration on campus-wide issues.[149] All the residential colleges and six ethnic and gender-based organizations send delegates to SUA.[150]
UCSC has around 200 recognized student organizations. These cover a wide variety of subjects and are registered to one of 12 focus areas, including religious, service, cultural, general interest, and academic.[151]
All student media organizations are funded by a student council referendum of $3.20 per student per quarter.[152]
9% of students in 2021 reported that they lack stable housing.[165] UCSC continues to increase enrollment each year despite a lack of campus housing, leading to more students living off-campus and driving up rental prices in Santa Cruz.[166] On February 22, 2022, the city filed a lawsuit against UCSC claiming that the university's Long Range Development Plan and Environmental Impact Report do not account for a situation in which the university increases its student population without fulfilling its promise to double its campus housing capacity.[166]
Greek life at UCSC includes, among other fraternities and sororities,Delta Lambda Psi, the nation's first gender-neutral queer Greek organization.[167]
Students established the Student Environmental Center (SEC) in 2001, have held annual Earth Summits, and established a sustainability funding body, the Campus Sustainability Council. In 2004, the UC Policy on Sustainable Practices was released, stating that the University of California Office of the President was committed to minimizing its impact on the environment and reducing its dependence on non-renewable energy. In 2006, a Committee on Sustainability and Stewardship (CSS) was established and a campus-wide Sustainability Assessment was completed. The following year, the pilot Sustainability Office was created to help institutionalize sustainability, coordinate communication and collaboration between the many entities already engaged in campus sustainability activities at UCSC, support policy implementation, and serve as a resource for the campus.[168]
UCSC competes inDivision III of theNCAA, mainly as a member of theCoast to Coast Athletic Conference (C2C). There are fifteenvarsity sports – men's and women's basketball, tennis, soccer, volleyball, swimming, cross country anddiving, and women's golf. UCSC teams have been Division I nationally ranked in tennis, cross country, soccer, men's volleyball, and swimming. The men's water polo team was ranked 18th in the nation in 2006 and won the D3 national Championship, but in 2009 the team was discontinued due to budget cuts. UCSC maintains a number of club teams. It has won several club national championships in men's tennis, three in men's water polo and also a women's Division I championship in club rugby.
Due to mounting debt resulting from UCSC's athletic program, UCSC polled its students in 2016 on whether they would consider approving a quarterly fee that would support athletic operations. After polling showed support for a potential fee, a measure to introduce a quarterly fee passed in 2017 with 79% of voting students in favor.[169]
| No. | Image | Chancellor | Term start | Term end | Refs. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dean McHenry | July 1, 1961 | June 30,1974 | ||
| 2 | Mark N. Christensen | July 1, 1974 | January 23, 1976 | [170][171] | |
| acting |  | Angus Ellis Taylor | February 1976 | September 1976 | [172][173] |
| 3 | September 1976 | June 1977 | |||
| 4 | Robert L. Sinsheimer | September 1, 1977 | June 30, 1987 | [174][175][176] | |
| 5 | Robert B. Stevens | July 1, 1987 | July 31, 1991 | [177][178][179][180] | |
| interim |  | Karl S. Pister | August 1, 1991 | March 1992 | [181] |
| 6 | March 1992 | June 30, 1996 | [182][183][184] | ||
| 7 |  | M. R. C. Greenwood | July 1, 1996 | March 31, 2004 | [185][186] |
| 8 | Martin M. Chemers[a] | April 1, 2004 | February 13, 2005 | [187][188] | |
| 9 | Denice Denton | February 14, 2005 | June 24, 2006[b] | [189][190] | |
| acting | George R. Blumenthal | July 14, 2006 | September 19, 2007 | [191] | |
| 10 | September 19, 2007 | June 30, 2019 | [192][193] | ||
| 11 | Cynthia Larive | July 1, 2019 | present | [194] |
Table notes:
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Notable alumni of the University of California, Santa Cruz include co-founder of the Black Panther PartyHuey P. Newton (BA 1974, PhD 1980), actress and comedianMaya Rudolph (BA 1995), founder ofHuffington Post andBuzzFeedJonah Peretti (BA 1996), filmmakerCary Fukunaga (BA 1999), marine biologist and MacArthur Fellowship winnerStacy Jupiter (PhD 2006), acclaimed author and cultural theoristbell hooks (PhD 1983), authorGeoffrey Dunn;[195][196] musicianStill Woozy (BA 2015), and severalPulitzer Prize-winning journalists. Notable attendees include actor and comedianAndy Samberg and filmmakerMiranda July.
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{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link){{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)Robert Dynes, a physics professor at UC San Diego, was chosen to take the helm at San Diego as the campus' sixth chancellor and M.R.C. Greenwood, dean of graduate studies at UC Davis, was named as Santa Cruz's seventh chancellor.
Denice Denton was appointed by the UC Regents as the ninth chancellor of the University of California, Santa Cruz. She assumed office on February 14, 2005.
That particular issue—student retention and graduation rates—was one of the priorities Larive mentioned in public remarks made following the UC Regents' approval today (May 16, 2019) of her selection as the 11th chancellor of UC Santa Cruz.
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