The University of California, Santa Cruz is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey 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 2023, its ten residential colleges enroll some 17,812 undergraduate and 1,952 graduate students. Satellite facilities in other Santa Cruz locations include the Coastal Science Campus and the Westside Research Park and the Silicon Valley Center in Santa Clara, along with administrative control of the Lick Observatory near San Jose in the Diablo Range and the Keck Observatory near the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii.
Kresge College is one of the residential colleges that make up the University of California, Santa Cruz. Founded in 1971 and named after Sebastian Kresge, Kresge college is located on the western edge of the UCSC campus. Kresge is the sixth of ten colleges at UCSC, and originally one of the most experimental. The first provost of Kresge, Bob Edgar, had been strongly influenced by his experience in T-groups run by NTL Institute. He asked a T-group facilitator, psychologist Michael Kahn, to help him start the college. When they arrived at UCSC, they taught a course, Creating Kresge College, in which they and the students in it designed the college. Kresge was a participatory democracy, and students had extraordinary power in the early years. The college was run by two committees: Community Affairs and Academic Affairs. Any faculty member, student or staff member who wanted to be on these committees could be on them. Students' votes counted as much as the faculty or staff. These committees determined the budgets and hiring. They were also run by consensus. Distinguished early faculty members included Gregory Bateson, former husband of Margaret Mead and author of Steps to an Ecology of Mind; Phil Slater, author of The Pursuit of Loneliness; John Grinder, co-founder of Neuro-linguistic programming and co-author of The Structure of Magic; and William Everson, one of the Beat poets.
Benjamin F. Porter College, known colloquially as Porter College, is a residential college at the University of California, Santa Cruz. It is located on the lower west side of the university, south of Kresge College and north of Rachel Carson College. The college was founded in 1969 as College Five and formally dedicated on November 21, 1981. On that day the college was given the motto Ars Longa, Vita Brevis, and a series of college symbols, including a faculty mace and a college bell, were inaugurated.
Crown College is one of the residential colleges that makes up the University of California, Santa Cruz, United States.
The first of the ten residential colleges of the University of California, Santa Cruz, established in 1965, Cowell College sits on the edge of a redwood forest with a remarkable view of Monterey Bay. The college is named for Henry Cowell and the Cowell family, who donated the land that UCSC is built upon, previously known as the Cowell Ranch.
Adlai E. Stevenson College, known colloquially as Stevenson College, is a residential college at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Currently, the college is host to the Linguistics Department, as well as many humanities faculty.
Merrill College is a residential college at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The theme of the college, and the name of its freshman core course, is "cultural identities and global consciousness."
Oakes College is a residential college at the University of California, Santa Cruz. It is on the southwestern corner of the campus, south of Rachel Carson College and east of the Family Student Housing complex.
Rachel Carson College is a residential college at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Named in honor of conservationist Rachel Carson, it is on the west side of campus, north of Oakes College and southeast of Porter College. The current provost of the college is Professor Sue Carter, also a faculty member of UCSC's Physics Department. The theme of its freshman core course is Environment and Society.
College Nine is a residential college at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The university's first new college in nearly 30 years, College Nine was founded in 2000 although the dorms were not finished until 2002. It is located on the north side of campus, east of Science Hill and west of Crown College. The college theme is International and Global Perspectives. All freshmen students are required to take a core course on this particular theme.
John R. Lewis College, formerly known as College Ten, is one of the ten residential colleges at the University of California, Santa Cruz. It is on the north side of campus, west of College Nine and north of the Cowell Student Health Center. The theme of its freshman core course is Social Justice and Community.
Fred Wilder Swanton (1862–1940) was an American entrepreneur and real estate developer who served as mayor of Santa Cruz, California from 1927 until 1933. He promoted the expansion of Santa Cruz as a beach resort city. The seaside resort he established in 1904 remains today as the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.
The Baskin School of Engineering, known simply as Baskin Engineering, is the school of engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz. It consists of six departments: Applied Mathematics, Biomolecular Engineering, Computational Media, Computer Science and Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Statistics.
Dean E. McHenry was an American professor of political science, and the founding chancellor of the University of California, Santa Cruz.
The Coastal Science Campus of the University of California, Santa Cruz consists of five main institutions: UC Santa Cruz's Long Marine Laboratory, UC Santa Cruz's Coastal Biology Building, the NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center, the Seymour Marine Discovery Center, and the California Marine Wildlife Veterinary Care and Research Center.
Rutherford + Chekene is a structural and geotechnical engineering firm in California specializing in new design and retrofit of structures for clients in sectors that include healthcare, higher education, corporate, research and development, art and education, and technology.
Jerry Earl Nelson was an American astronomer known for his pioneering work designing segmented mirror telescopes, which led to him sharing the 2010 Kavli Prize for Astrophysics.
The Grateful Dead Archive is an archive of materials related to music from The Grateful Dead. The archive was officially donated in April 2008, by band members Bob Weir and Mickey Hart.
Kaiser Permanente Arena is an indoor arena located in Santa Cruz, in the U.S. state of California. It has a seating capacity of 2,505 spectators. It hosts the Santa Cruz Warriors of the NBA G League. It was also the home of the Santa Cruz Derby Girls of the Women's Flat Track Derby Association in 2013 and 2014. The naming rights were bought by health care consortium Kaiser Permanente (KP) despite the company—a sponsor of the Warriors' owner, the NBA's Golden State Warriors—not having facilities in Santa Cruz at the time. KP has since opened medical facilities in Santa Cruz, Scotts Valley and Watsonville.
The Quarry Amphitheater is a 2,800 capacity outdoor events and concert venue located on the campus of University of California Santa Cruz. First used as a major supplier of limestone in the 1800s, the quarry would be repurposed as an amphitheater during the construction of UC Santa Cruz in the early 1960s. Since then, it has gone through a major reconstruction in 2017 and has become home to a number of campus events as well as hosting major musical acts as the largest outdoor venue in Santa Cruz County. Acts who have performed include Chicano Batman, Carla Morrison, and Orion Sun.
