The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a
public
In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociology, sociological concept of the ''Öf ...
land-grant research university
A research university or a research-intensive university is a university that is committed to research as a central part of its mission. They are "the key sites of Knowledge production modes, knowledge production", along with "intergenerational ...
in
Santa Cruz, California
Santa Cruz (Spanish language, Spanish for "Holy Cross") is the largest city and the county seat of Santa Cruz County, California, Santa Cruz County, in Northern California. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the city population ...
, United States. It is one of the ten campuses in the
University of California
The University of California (UC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university, research university system in the U.S. state of California. Headquartered in Oakland, California, Oakland, the system is co ...
system. Located in
Monterey Bay
Monterey Bay is a bay of the Pacific Ocean located on the coast of the U.S. state of California, south of the San Francisco Bay Area. San Francisco itself is further north along the coast, by about 75 miles (120 km), accessible via California S ...
, on the edge of the coastal community of Santa Cruz, the main campus lies on 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.
Satellite facilities in other Santa Cruz locations include the
Coastal Science Campus and the Westside Research Park and the
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley ...
Center in
Santa Clara, along with administrative control of the
Lick Observatory
The Lick Observatory is an astronomical observatory owned and operated by the University of California. It is on the summit of Mount Hamilton (California), Mount Hamilton, in the Diablo Range just east of San Jose, California, United States. The ...
near
San Jose in the
Diablo Range and the
Keck Observatory near the summit of
Mauna Kea in
Hawaii
Hawaii ( ; ) is an island U.S. state, state of the United States, in the Pacific Ocean about southwest of the U.S. mainland. One of the two Non-contiguous United States, non-contiguous U.S. states (along with Alaska), it is the only sta ...
.
Founded in 1965, UC Santa Cruz uses a
residential college system consisting of ten small colleges that were established as a variation of the
Oxbridge
Oxbridge is a portmanteau of the University of Oxford, Universities of Oxford and University of Cambridge, Cambridge, the two oldest, wealthiest, and most prestigious universities in the United Kingdom. The term is used to refer to them collect ...
collegiate university
A collegiate university is a university where functions are divided between a central administration and a number of constituent colleges. Historically, the first collegiate university was the University of Paris and its first college was the Coll ...
system.
Among the faculty are
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes ( ; ; ) are awards administered by the Nobel Foundation and granted in accordance with the principle of "for the greatest benefit to humankind". The prizes were first awarded in 1901, marking the fifth anniversary of Alfred N ...
laureates, Rhodes Scholars, Fulbright Scholars, Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences recipients,16 members of the
National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...
, 29 members of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...
, and 46 members of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is a United States–based international nonprofit with the stated mission of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsib ...
. UC Santa Cruz alumni include 13
Pulitzer Prizes for 11 recipients, 7
MacArthur 'genius' Award fellows,
Rhodes Scholars,
Fulbright Scholars, and
Marshall Scholars, amongst others. UC Santa Cruz is
classified among "
R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". The university is also a member of the
Association of American Universities
The Association of American Universities (AAU) is an organization of predominantly American research universities devoted to maintaining a strong system of academic research and education. Founded in 1900, it consists of 69 public and private ...
.
History
Prior to campus development
Prior to
Spanish colonization, the Uypi tribe of the Awaswas Nation, who spoke
Mutsun Costanoan of the
Ohlone 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 the
California Gold Rush
The California gold rush (1848–1855) began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The news of gold brought approximately 300,000 people to California from the rest of the U ...
, many mining firms came to the area. The
Cowell Lime Works operated on the entirety of what is now the Santa Cruz campus until 1920.
Site selection and campus planning
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 the
UC Board of Regents in the mid-1950s to build a campus just outside town, in the foothills of the
Santa Cruz Mountains. During the mid-1950s, there was widespread public sentiment in favor of the establishment of a new UC campus somewhere south of the
original campus at
Berkeley. In 1957, the
California State Senate
The California State Senate is the upper house of the California State Legislature (the lower house being the California State Assembly). The state senate convenes, along with the state assembly, at the California State Capitol in Sacramento.
...
passed a resolution asking the Regents to consider the
Monterey Peninsula, and that same year, the
California State Assembly
The California State Assembly is the lower house of the California State Legislature (the upper house being the California State Senate). The Assembly convenes, along with the State Senate, at the California State Capitol in Sacramento, Califor ...
passed its own resolution asking the Regents to consider the
Santa Clara Valley.
In December 1959, the Regents voted to focus their site selection process on the
Almaden Valley in
San Jose (i.e., within the Santa Clara Valley and the larger region now known as
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara 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.
After another year of study, the Regents finally selected Santa Cruz as the location of the next UC campus.
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. The formal design process for the Santa Cruz campus began in the late 1950s, culminating in the Long Range Development Plan of 1963.
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. 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.'' 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.
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.
The second plan, conceived by
Thomas Church, put the colleges into the
redwood
Sequoioideae, commonly referred to as redwoods, is a subfamily of Pinophyta, coniferous trees within the family (biology), family Cupressaceae, that range in the Northern Hemisphere, northern hemisphere. It includes the List of superlative tree ...
forest at the top of the hill above the Great Meadow.
This was clearly the better idea, but presented the problem of how to place the colleges inside the forest.
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 of
Lake Tahoe
Lake Tahoe (; Washo language, Washo: ''dáʔaw'') is a Fresh water, freshwater lake in the Sierra Nevada of the Western United States, straddling the border between California and Nevada. Lying at above sea level, Lake Tahoe is the largest a ...
."
Having recently visited
Aigues-Mortes, UC President
Clark 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.
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.
According to founding chancellor
Dean McHenry Dean E. McHenry (18 October 1910 – 17 March 1998) was an American professor of political science, and the founding chancellor of the University of California, Santa Cruz.
McHenry was born in Lompoc, California north of Santa Barbara, California, ...
, the purpose of the distributed college system was to combine the benefits of a major
research university
A research university or a research-intensive university is a university that is committed to research as a central part of its mission. They are "the key sites of Knowledge production modes, knowledge production", along with "intergenerational ...
with the intimacy of a smaller college.
Kerr shared a passion with former
Stanford roommate McHenry to build a university modeled as "several
Swarthmores" (i.e., small
liberal arts college
A liberal arts college or liberal arts institution of higher education is a college with an emphasis on Undergraduate education, undergraduate study in the Liberal arts education, liberal arts of humanities and science. Such colleges aim to impart ...
s) in close proximity to each other.
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."
Therefore, they hoped to shape a "distinctive personality" for the Santa Cruz campus and let it "flourish as first rate within its own type."
The "Santa Cruz dream"
In his memoirs, Kerr ruefully recounted the myriad errors made by himself and McHenry in launching the new campus.
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 the
counterculture of the 1960s
The counterculture of the 1960s was an anti-establishment cultural phenomenon and political movement that developed in the Western world during the mid-20th century. It began in the early 1960s, and continued through the early 1970s. It is ofte ...
.
Santa Cruz quickly became the "counterculture campus" where students and faculty either "
mellowed out" among the redwood trees or turned into "
activist-radical ">.
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 the
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (1 November 1955 – 30 April 1975) was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and South Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam) and their allies. North Vietnam w ...
."
The students then tried to award an honorary degree to
Huey 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).
Kerr later recalled this episode of "
guerrilla theatre" as "one of the worst afternoons of my life."
According to Kerr's account, during the 1970s, the quality of UC Santa Cruz's incoming freshman classes deteriorated as
Me generation 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).
Another major factor behind the decrease in quality was a series of "grisly murders" around Santa Cruz,
which at the time was labeled the "murder capital of the world".
The average SAT scores of UC Santa Cruz's incoming students dropped from 1250 in the early 1970s to 1050 by the early 1980s.
Sinsheimer Reforms
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.
[ Available through ]ProQuest
ProQuest LLC is an Ann Arbor, Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan-based global information-content and technology company, founded in 1938 as University Microfilms by Eugene Power.
ProQuest is known for its applications and information services for l ...
Historical Newspapers. In 1981, after a two-year battle, the faculty narrowly voted to give students the option of receiving
grades for the first time, in lieu of Santa Cruz's traditional
narrative evaluations.
By the fall of 1984, 45% of Santa Cruz students were already majoring in the sciences, and that year, the campus offered
computer engineering
Computer engineering (CE, CoE, or CpE) is a branch of engineering specialized in developing computer hardware and software.
It integrates several fields of electrical engineering, electronics engineering and computer science.
Computer engi ...
as a major for the first time (in order to take advantage of its proximity to Silicon Valley), followed by
business economics
Business economics is a field in applied economics which uses economic theory and quantitative methods to analyze business enterprises and the factors contributing to the diversity of organizational structures and the relationships of firms wit ...
a year later.
In May 1985, Sinsheimer, a molecular biologist, welcomed several scientists to Santa Cruz for one of the first meetings at which the idea of a
Human Genome Project was discussed.
Sinsheimer got Santa Cruz involved in
intercollegiate athletics for the first time as part of
NCAA Division III
NCAA Division III (D-III) is the lowest division of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States. D-III consists of athletic programs at colleges and universities that do not offer athletic scholarships to student- ...
. In 1981, he supported student athletes' preference for the
sea lion as the campus
mascot, but was forced to back down in 1986 when the student body voted to support the
banana slug instead.
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.
In 1997, an engineering school was finally launched.
In 2019, the University of California, Santa Cruz was elected to the
Association of American Universities
The Association of American Universities (AAU) is an organization of predominantly American research universities devoted to maintaining a strong system of academic research and education. Founded in 1900, it consists of 69 public and private ...
(AAU), the most prestigious alliance of American research universities. Along with
UCI, UC Santa Cruz was the youngest university to gain admittance to the AAU.
2020 strike action
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. On February 10, 2020, graduate student-workers responded to disciplinary threats from UCSC administrators with a full teaching strike, including withholding grades. 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. On February 27, 2020, UC Davis and UC Santa Barbara joined the strike. On February 28, 2020, 54 graduate student-workers were terminated and continued strikes shut down the campus for at least one day the following week. The arrival of the
COVID-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...
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. 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.
Impact on Santa Cruz
Although the city of
Santa Cruz already exhibited a strong
conservation ethic
Nature conservation is the ethic/moral philosophy and conservation movement focused on protecting species from extinction, maintaining and restoring habitats, enhancing ecosystem services, and protecting biological diversity. A range of valu ...
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. The lowering of the voting age to 18 in 1971 led to the emergence of a powerful student-voting bloc.
A large and growing population of politically
liberal UCSC
alumni
Alumni (: alumnus () or alumna ()) are former students or graduates of a school, college, or university. The feminine plural alumnae is sometimes used for groups of women, and alums (: alum) or alumns (: alumn) as gender-neutral alternatives. Th ...
changed the electorate of the town from predominantly
Republican to markedly
left-leaning, consistently voting against expansion measures on the part of both
town and gown.
Expansion plans
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. 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.
George Blumenthal, UCSC's 10th Chancellor, intended to mitigate growth constraints in Santa Cruz by developing off-campus sites in
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley ...
. The
NASA 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.
In April 2010, UC Santa Cruz opened its new $35 million Digital Arts Research Center; a project in planning since 2004.
The $72 million Coastal Biology Building officially opened on 21 October 2017 on the Coastal Science Campus. 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.
Main Campus
The UCSC main campus is located south of San Francisco, in the Ben Lomond Mountain ridge of the
Santa Cruz Mountains. Elevation varies from at the campus entrance to at the northern boundary, a difference of about . The southern portion of the campus primarily consists of a large, open
meadow
A meadow ( ) is an open habitat or field, vegetated by grasses, herbs, and other non- woody plants. Trees or shrubs may sparsely populate meadows, as long as they maintain an open character. Meadows can occur naturally under favourable con ...
, locally known as the Great Meadow. To the north of the meadow lie most of the campus' buildings, many of them among
redwood
Sequoioideae, commonly referred to as redwoods, is a subfamily of Pinophyta, coniferous trees within the family (biology), family Cupressaceae, that range in the Northern Hemisphere, northern hemisphere. It includes the List of superlative tree ...
groves. The campus is bounded on the south by the city's upper-west-side neighborhoods, on the east by Harvey West Park and the
Pogonip open space preserve, on the north by
Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park near the town of
Felton, and on the west by
Gray Whale Ranch, a portion of
Wilder Ranch State Park.
The campus is built on a portion of the
Cowell Family ranch, which was purchased by the University of California in 1961. 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 a
recreational vehicle park as a form of student housing since 1984. 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. 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. In the same year, renovations to the campus'
Quarry Amphitheater were completed.

A number of
shrines, 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.
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. At night, orange lights illuminate the occasionally fogged-in paths.
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 the
Porter 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 large
Douglas fir spanning approximately tall, Tree Nine is located in the upper campus of UCSC behind
College 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. 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.
The UCSC campus is also one of the few homes to
Mima Mounds in the United States. They are rare in the United States and in the world in general.
Academics

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.
Popular undergraduate majors include Art,
Business Management Economics,
Chemistry
Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a physical science within the natural sciences that studies the chemical elements that make up matter and chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules a ...
,
Molecular and Cell Biology,
Physics
Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...
, and
Psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...
.
Interdisciplinary programs, such as Computational Media, Feminist Studies,
Environmental Studies, Visual Studies, Digital Arts and New Media, Critical Race & Ethnic Studies, and the
History of Consciousness Department are also hosted alongside UCSC's more traditional academic departments.
A joint program with
UC Hastings enables UC Santa Cruz students to earn a bachelor's degree and
Juris Doctor
A Juris Doctor, Doctor of Jurisprudence, or Doctor of Law (JD) is a graduate-entry professional degree that primarily prepares individuals to practice law. In the United States and the Philippines, it is the only qualifying law degree. Other j ...
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. 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.
Research
According to the
National Science Foundation
The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...
, UC Santa Cruz spent $203.883 million on research and development in 2023, ranking it 138th in the nation.
Although designed as a liberal arts-oriented university, UCSC quickly acquired a graduate-level
natural science
Natural science or empirical science is one of the branches of science concerned with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer ...
research component with the appointment of plant physiologist
Kenneth V. Thimann as the first provost of
Crown College. Thimann developed UCSC's early Division of Natural Sciences and recruited other well-known science faculty and graduate students to the fledgling campus. Immediately upon its founding, UCSC was also granted administrative responsibility for the
Lick Observatory
The Lick Observatory is an astronomical observatory owned and operated by the University of California. It is on the summit of Mount Hamilton (California), Mount Hamilton, in the Diablo Range just east of San Jose, California, United States. The ...
, which established the campus as a major center for
astronomy
Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and the phenomena that occur in the cosmos. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and their overall evolution. Objects of interest includ ...
research.
Founding members of the Social Science and Humanities faculty created the unique
History of Consciousness graduate program in UCSC's first year of operation.
UCSC's
organic farm and garden program is the oldest in the country, and pioneered
organic horticulture techniques internationally.
As of 2025, UCSC's faculty include 16 members of the
National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...
, 29 fellows of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...
, 17 recipients of the 2025
Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, and 49 fellows of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is a United States–based international nonprofit with the stated mission of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsib ...
. The
Baskin School of Engineering, founded in 1997 is UCSC's first and only professional school. Baskin Engineering is home to several research centers, including the Center for Biomolecular Science and Engineering and Cyberphysical Systems Research Center, which are gaining recognition, as has the work that UCSC researchers
David Haussler and
Jim Kent have done on the
Human Genome Project, including the widely used
UCSC Genome Browser. Also associated with the Baskin School is the off-campus Westside Research Park. UCSC administers the
National Science Foundation
The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...
's Center for Adaptive Optics.
Off-campus research facilities maintained by UCSC include the
Lick and
Keck Observatories, the
Long Marine Laboratory, and the Westside Research Park. From September 2003 to July 2016, UCSC managed a University Affiliated Research System (
UARC) for the
NASA Ames Research Center under a task order contract valued at more than $330 million.
Rankings
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 by ''
U.S. News & World Report''s 2024 rankings. 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.
UC Santa Cruz was ranked top 10 in excellence in undergraduate teaching in 2022 and third in research influence in 2018.
In 2017 ''
Kiplinger'' ranked UC Santa Cruz 50th out of the top 100 best-value public colleges and universities in the nation, and 3rd in California. ''Money Magazine'' ranked UC Santa Cruz 41st in the country out of the nearly 1500 schools it evaluated for its 2016 Best Colleges ranking. In 2016–2017, UC Santa Cruz was rated 146th in the world by ''
Times Higher Education World University Rankings
The ''Times Higher Education World University Rankings'', often referred to as the THE Rankings, is the annual publication of university rankings by the ''Times Higher Education'' magazine. The publisher had collaborated with Quacquarelli Symon ...
''. In 2016 it was ranked 83rd in the world by the ''
Academic Ranking of World Universities
The ''Academic Ranking of World Universities'' (''ARWU''), also known as the Shanghai Ranking, is one of the annual publications of world university rankings. The league table was originally compiled and issued by Shanghai Jiao Tong Universi ...
'' and 296th worldwide in 2016 by the ''
QS World University Rankings
The ''QS World University Rankings'' is a portfolio of comparative college and university rankings compiled by Quacquarelli Symonds, a higher education analytics firm. Its first and earliest edition was published in collaboration with '' Times ...
''.
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. In 2007, ''High Times'' magazine placed UCSC as first among US universities as a "counterculture college". In 2009, ''
The Princeton Review'' (with ''
GamePro
''GamePro'' was an American multiplatform video game magazine media company that published online and print content covering the video game industry, video game hardware and video game software. The magazine featured content on various video ...
'' magazine) ranked UC Santa Cruz's Game Design major among the top 50 in the country. In 2011, ''The Princeton Review'' and ''GamePro Media'' ranked UC Santa Cruz's graduate programs in Game Design as seventh in the nation. In 2012, UCSC was ranked No. 3 in the Most Beautiful Campus list of ''Princeton Review''.
Residential colleges
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 (see
History
History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the Human history, human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some t ...
, 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.
[
]
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.
The individual colleges provide housing and dining services, while the university as a whole offers courses and majors to the general student community.
Other universities with similar college systems include
Rice University
William Marsh Rice University, commonly referred to as Rice University, is a Private university, private research university in Houston, Houston, Texas, United States. Established in 1912, the university spans 300 acres.
Rice University comp ...
and the
University of California, San Diego
The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego in communications material, formerly and colloquially UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California, United States. Es ...
.
Each of the colleges has its own, distinctive architectural style and a resident faculty
provost, who is the nominal head of his or her college.
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.
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.
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:
File:Cowell College UCSC.jpg,
File:Stevenson College Residences.jpg,
File:Crown College Residences.jpg,
File:Merrill College Courtyard.jpg,
File:Porter College Courtyard.jpg,
File:Kresge College 2016-05-25.jpg,
File:Oakes College 1.jpg,
File:Rachel Carson College Administration Building.jpg,
File:College 9 Residences.jpg,
File:College 10 Student Apartments.jpg,
Admissions
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 school
GPA of 4.01, with the middle 50% range 3.87 to 4.22.
Grading
For most of its history, UCSC employed a unique
student evaluation system. With the exception of the choice of letter grades in science courses the only
grades assigned were "pass" and "no record", supplemented with
narrative 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. , 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. 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.
Library
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 by
John Carl Warnecke.
In addition, the colleges host smaller libraries, which serve as quiet places to study. The McHenry Special Collections Library includes the archives of
Robert A. Heinlein, the papers of
Anaïs Nin, the papers and drawings of
Beat poet Kenneth Patchen, the largest collection of
Edward Weston photographs in the United States, the
mycology
Mycology is the branch of biology concerned with the study of fungus, fungi, including their Taxonomy (biology), taxonomy, genetics, biochemistry, biochemical properties, and ethnomycology, use by humans. Fungi can be a source of tinder, Edible ...
book collection of composer
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and Extended technique, non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one ...
, a large collection of works by
Satyajit Ray
Satyajit Ray (; 2 May 1921 – 23 April 1992) was an Indian film director, screenwriter, author, lyricist, magazine editor, illustrator, calligraphy, calligrapher, and composer. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest and most influ ...
, the
Hayden 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 to
Lick Observatory
The Lick Observatory is an astronomical observatory owned and operated by the University of California. It is on the summit of Mount Hamilton (California), Mount Hamilton, in the Diablo Range just east of San Jose, California, United States. The ...
dating back to 1870.
A new addition to the library opened on March 31, 2008, including a "cyber study" room and a Global Village café. The original library reopened on June 22, 2011 after seismic upgrades and other renovations. In total, the University Libraries contain over 2.4 million volumes.
Grateful Dead archive
In 2008, UCSC agreed to house the
Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock music, rock band formed in Palo Alto, California, in 1965. Known for their eclectic style that fused elements of rock, blues, jazz, Folk music, folk, country music, country, bluegrass music, bluegrass, roc ...
archives at the
McHenry Library. 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. 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. UCSC beat out petitions from Stanford and UC Berkeley to house the archives. Grateful Dead guitarist
Bob 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." The archive became open to the public July 29, 2012.
Student life
Most undergraduates are from California. The following tables show the ethnic and regional breakdown of the student body:

UCSC students are known for political activism. In 2005, a
Pentagon
In geometry, a pentagon () is any five-sided polygon or 5-gon. The sum of the internal angles in a simple polygon, simple pentagon is 540°.
A pentagon may be simple or list of self-intersecting polygons, self-intersecting. A self-intersecting ...
surveillance program deemed student opposition to
military recruiters on campus a "credible threat", the only campus
antiwar
An anti-war movement is a social movement in opposition to one or more nations' decision to start or carry on an armed conflict. The term ''anti-war'' can also refer to pacifism, which is the opposition to all use of military force during co ...
action to receive the designation. In February 2006, Chancellor
Denice Denton got the designation removed. 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 of
guerrilla theatre, rather than vandalism or physical violence. 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. The
Cesar Chavez Convocation is another example of student activism.
UC Santa Cruz is also well known for its
cannabis
''Cannabis'' () is a genus of flowering plants in the family Cannabaceae that is widely accepted as being indigenous to and originating from the continent of Asia. However, the number of species is disputed, with as many as three species be ...
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. The once student-only event has grown since the city of Santa Cruz passed
Measure 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.
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.
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.
Student government
The Student Union Assembly was founded in 1985 to better coordinate bargaining positions between students and administration on campus-wide issues. All the residential colleges and six ethnic and gender-based organizations send delegates to SUA.
Student organizations
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.
Student media
All student media organizations are funded by a student council referendum of $3.20 per student per quarter.
* ''
City on a Hill Press
''City on a Hill Press'', originally launched in 1966 as ''The Fulcrum'', is the Weekly newspaper, weekly student newspaper of the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). Designed as a magazine, the weekly Tabloid (newspaper format), tabloi ...
'', a weekly publication that serves as the traditional campus newspaper
* ''
Fish Rap Live!'', the alternative, comedic paper
* ''TWANAS'', the Third World and Native American Student Press Collective publishes issues about every quarter for various communities of color at UCSC. Its peak years were the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
* ''Student Cable Television (SCTV)'' disbanded at the beginning of the 2010 academic school year. ''On The Spot'' (OTS) replaced the defunct ''SCTV'' organization, continuing the student-run television opportunities. ''On The Spot'' airs on channel 28, only on campus.
* ''The Moxie Production Group''
* ''The Project'', a quarterly paper, for UCSC's radical community
* ''The Disorientation Guide'', published on sporadic years, introduces new students to UCSC's radical history and various political issues that face the campus and community.
* ''Rapt Magazine'', a quarterly literary and arts magazine
* ''Leviathan Jewish Journal'', a Jewish student life publication
* On the Spot, a student-run broadcast media organization, produces a variety of shows including ''Press Center Live'' (sketch comedy), ''ART'' (music videos), and game shows.
* ''Banana Slug News'', a television broadcast news program
* ''Chinquapin'', a journal sponsored by the creative writing department
* ''Gaia Magazine'', a magazine about environmental and sustainability subjects that is published once a year
* ''Red Wheelbarrow'', a "literary arts" journal
* ''Matchbox Magazine'', an annual humanities publication, started at UCSC, that operates across many UC campuses
* ''EyeCandy'', an annual student-run film journal associated with the Film and Digital Media department
*
KZSC, the student-run campus radio station
* Santa Cruz
Indymedia, a local activist resource with a lot of UCSC content
* The Film Production Coalition, which produces films on a quarterly basis
Housing
9% of students in 2021 reported that they lack stable housing. 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.
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.
Greek life
Greek life at UCSC includes, among other fraternities and sororities,
Delta Lambda Psi, the nation's first gender-neutral queer Greek organization.
Sustainability
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.
Athletics

UCSC competes in
Division III of the
NCAA
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates College athletics in the United States, student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, and Simon Fraser University, 1 in Canada. ...
, mainly as a member of the
Coast to Coast Athletic Conference (C2C). There are fifteen
varsity sports – men's and women's basketball, tennis, soccer, volleyball, swimming, cross country and
diving, 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.
Administrators
List of chancellors
Table notes:
Notable alumni and faculty
Notable alumni of the University of California, Santa Cruz include co-founder of the Black Panther Party
Huey P. Newton (BA 1974, PhD 1980), actress and comedian
Maya Rudolph (BA 1995), founder of
Huffington Post
''HuffPost'' (''The Huffington Post'' until 2017, itself often abbreviated as ''HPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and covers ...
and
BuzzFeed Jonah Peretti (BA 1996), filmmaker
Cary Fukunaga (BA 1999), marine biologist and MacArthur Fellowship winner
Stacy Jupiter (PhD 2006), acclaimed author and cultural theorist
bell hooks
Gloria Jean Watkins (September 25, 1952 – December 15, 2021), better known by her pen name bell hooks (stylized in lowercase), was an American author, theorist, educator, and social critic who was a Distinguished Professor in Residence at Be ...
(PhD 1983), author
Geoffrey Dunn;
musician
Still Woozy (BA 2015), and several
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prizes () are 23 annual awards given by Columbia University in New York City for achievements in the United States in "journalism, arts and letters". They were established in 1917 by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fo ...
-winning journalists. Notable attendees include actor and comedian
Andy Samberg and filmmaker
Miranda July
Miranda July (born Miranda Jennifer Grossinger; February 15, 1974) is an American film director, screenwriter, actress and author. Her body of work includes film, fiction, monologue, digital presentations and live performance art.
She wrote, di ...
.
File:Andy Samberg by David Shankbone.jpg, Andy Samberg, actor, comedian, and musician
File:Bell hooks, October 2014.jpg, bell hooks
Gloria Jean Watkins (September 25, 1952 – December 15, 2021), better known by her pen name bell hooks (stylized in lowercase), was an American author, theorist, educator, and social critic who was a Distinguished Professor in Residence at Be ...
, critically acclaimed author and cultural theorist, leading public intellectual
File:Cary Joji Fukunaga "Beast Of No Nation" at Opening Ceremony of the 28th Tokyo International Film Festival (21806112494) (cropped).jpg, Cary Fukunaga, film director, writer, and cinematographer
File:Ethan Klein (cropped).jpg, Ethan Klein, YouTuber, comedian, podcaster, and Internet personality
File:Gillian welch.jpg, Gillian Welch, singer and songwriter
File:Huey Newton HS Yearbook.jpeg, Huey P. Newton, political activist, revolutionary, and co-founder of the Black Panther Party
The Black Panther Party (originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense) was a Marxism–Leninism, Marxist–Leninist and Black Power movement, black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newto ...
File:Jonah-peretti.jpg, Jonah Peretti, founder of Huffington Post
''HuffPost'' (''The Huffington Post'' until 2017, itself often abbreviated as ''HPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and covers ...
and BuzzFeed
File:John Doolittle.jpg, John Doolittle, former member of the United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is a chamber of the Bicameralism, bicameral United States Congress; it is the lower house, with the U.S. Senate being the upper house. Together, the House and Senate have the authority under Artic ...
File:John Laird Sd17 headshot (1).jpg, John Laird, former mayor of Santa Cruz and Secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency, and current California state senator
File:Kathryn D. Sullivan NOAA Leadership.jpg, Kathryn D. Sullivan, astronaut and former NOAA Administrator
File:Marc Okrand Saarbruecken 2019.JPG, Marc Okrand, linguist and creator of the Klingon language
The Klingon language (, ''Klingon scripts, '': , ) is the constructed language spoken by a fictional alien race called the Klingons in the ''Star Trek'' universe.
Described in the 1985 book ''The Klingon Dictionary'' by Marc Okrand and delibe ...
from ''Star Trek
''Star Trek'' is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the Star Trek: The Original Series, series of the same name and became a worldwide Popular culture, pop-culture Cultural influence of ...
''
File:Maya Rudolph.jpg, Maya Rudolph, actress and comedian
File:Reyna grande 2012.jpg, Reyna Grande, Mexican author
File:Stefano Bloch Faculty University of Arizona Geography, Tucson, USA 2021.jpg, Stefano Bloch, academic, graffiti artist, and author
File:Hawley-sa.jpg, Steven Hawley, astronaut and professor at the University of Kansas
File:Susan Wojcicki at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2013 (cropped).jpg, Susan Wojcicki, former CEO of YouTube
YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...
File:Tod Machover JI1.jpg, Tod Machover
Tod Machover (born November 24, 1953, in Mount Vernon, New York), is a composer and an innovator in the application of technology in music. He is the son of Wilma Machover, a piano, pianist and Carl Machover, a computer scientist.
He was named ...
, composer and professor at MIT Media Lab
The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fi ...
File:DanaPriest.jpg, Dana Priest, Washington Post
''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...
reporter, author, and winner of two Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prizes () are 23 annual awards given by Columbia University in New York City for achievements in the United States in "journalism, arts and letters". They were established in 1917 by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fo ...
s
File:Nbs2009 02.jpg, Nicholas B. Suntzeff, cosmologist, professor of astronomy, and co-founder of the High-Z Supernova Search Team, which discovered dark energy
In physical cosmology and astronomy, dark energy is a proposed form of energy that affects the universe on the largest scales. Its primary effect is to drive the accelerating expansion of the universe. It also slows the rate of structure format ...
File:David Haussler 1.jpg, David Haussler, professor of biomolecular engineering and director of the Genomics Institute at UC Santa Cruz
File:Angela Davis at Oregon State University.jpg, Angela Davis, distinguished professor emerita of History of Consciousness, Communist Party vice presidential candidate twice
File:Kenneth V. Thimann.jpg, alt=Kenneth V. Thimann, Kenneth V. Thimann, plant physiologist and microbiologist, first provost of Crown College
File:Portrait of Tom Lehrer in c. 1957.jpg, Tom Lehrer, retired musician and satirist; lectured in American studies, Mathematics, and Musical Theater
File:Carol Greider by Chris Michel 1s946948-11-29.jpg, Carol W. Greider, distinguished professor of Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology; Nobel Prize winner
File:Elliot Aronson 1972.jpg, Elliot Aronson, professor emeritus of psychology, author, creator of the Jigsaw Classroom model, and the only psychologist to win the American Psychological Association
The American Psychological Association (APA) is the main professional organization of psychologists in the United States, and the largest psychological association in the world. It has over 170,000 members, including scientists, educators, clin ...
's highest honor in all three fields
File:Ralph Abraham.jpg, Ralph Abraham, professor emeritus of mathematics, founder of the Visual Mathematics Institute, and pioneer on chaos theory
Chaos theory is an interdisciplinary area of Scientific method, scientific study and branch of mathematics. It focuses on underlying patterns and Deterministic system, deterministic Scientific law, laws of dynamical systems that are highly sens ...
File:Sandra-faber-barack-obama (cropped).png, Sandra M. Faber, professor of astronomy and astrophysics, helped develop the cold dark matter theory, member of the NAS, the AAAS, and the American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society (APS) is an American scholarly organization and learned society founded in 1743 in Philadelphia that promotes knowledge in the humanities and natural sciences through research, professional meetings, publicat ...
File:Beth Shapiro - PopTech 2010 - Camden, Maine (5103086839) (cropped).jpg, Beth Shapiro, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, author, associate director for conservation genomics at the UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute, Rhodes Scholar and MacArthur Grant fellow
File:Anna Tsing Aarhus Universitet.jpg, Anna Tsing, professor of anthropology, Guggenheim Fellow, and winner of the Niels Bohr professorship
See also
*
Shakespeare Santa Cruz
*
University of California, Santa Cruz, Arboretum
*
Notable Alumni and Faculty of the University of California, Santa Cruz
Notes
References
External links
*
UC Santa Cruz Athletics website
{{DEFAULTSORT:University Of California, Santa Cruz
1965 establishments in California
Educational institutions established in 1965
Geography of Santa Cruz County, California
Oceanographic organizations
University of California, Santa Cruz
The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California, United States. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of C ...
Santa Cruz, California
Schools accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges
Universities and colleges in Santa Cruz County, California
Santa Cruz