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The University of California, Santa Cruz ('''UCSC''' or '''UC Santa Cruz'''), a part of the University Of California system, was intended by its founders to combine the intimacy and emphasis on teaching of small, residential colleges with the extensive academic offerings of a major research university. Located on the coast seventy-five miles south of San Francisco, the university campus comprises 2,000 acres of redwood forested hills and oak-studded meadows overlooking the Pacific Ocean and Monterey Bay. A UNIVERSITY MADE UP OF COLLEGES UC Santa Cruz as it exists today was originally conceived by University of California president Clark Kerr and founding UCSC chancellor Dean E. McHenry. The first faculty members came from England and the East coast of the United States. Kenneth Thimann gave up his professorship at Harvard to become a pioneer at the new campus that was being developed in California. Albert Hofstadter came from Columbia, while other professors came from Princeton, Dartmouth, and Cambridge to establish and guide the new campus. Lord Murray of Newhaven was present for the inaugural ceremonies that took place when the ground was broken for Cowell College. The first residential college, Cowell, was opened in 1965. Stevenson, Crown and Merrill Colleges quickly followed. By 1975, College V (now "Porter College) and Kresge College were completed. The colleges were designed to blend unobtrusively into the redwood-forested landscape, and a number of distinguished architects and landscape designers (William Wurster, Thomas Church and Joseph Esherick among them) took full advantage of the unique natural setting. Each college had its own dining commons, dormitories, library, coffee house, recreational and art studio facilities, classrooms and academic theme. Cowell emphasized the humanities, Stevenson the social sciences. Crown emphasized the natural sciences, Merrill international affairs. College V emphasized fine arts, while Kresge emphasized environmental studies. Additional colleges have been added: Oakes, and Colleges Eight, Nine and Ten. Each college offers a required core course based on its academic emphasis, giving students an opportunity to have a shared academic experience. Santa Cruz has also been notable for its interdisciplinary and topical course offerings, and opportunities for independent study and undergraduate research. In its early years, Santa Cruz required its students to complete a senior thesis or comprehensive examination, and no grades were given. Professors instead gave narrative evaluations of student work. The idea was to emphasize learning for its own sake rather than learning as a process of jumping through hoops. Classes were small, and the vision of the founders was successfully realized as shown by the popularity of the Santa Cruz campus among prospective students and by the ready acceptance of Santa Cruz undergraduates into prestigious graduate programs nationwide. The unconventional approach to learning was reflected in student recreational activities. Surfing, hiking and waterpolo were more likely to interest students than traditional intercollegiate athletics, and there were no cheerleaders, fraternities or sororities on campus. There was a student farm and garden, numerous hiking and bike trails through redwood forested canyons, and the older buildings of the original Cowell Ranch were preserved at the entrance to the campus and used for administrative offices. Times have changed, and Santa Cruz's approach to education has become more mainstream. The colleges have less independence than they did originally, there are more traditional competitive sports on campus, and grades are given in addition to narrative evaluations. At the same time, the expansion of the campus and the addition of research facilities have raised the university's academic profile. As a campus of the prestigious University of California, UCSC's academic reputation was always assured. But now it is beginning to attract notice as a distinctive academic institution in its own right, especially in the sciences. UCSC's ten colleges are: , one of UCSC's Residential College s]]
THE CAMPUS CORE AND UNIVERSITY RESEARCH Dean E. McHenry Library houses UCSC's arts and letters collection. Books about science, mathematics and engineering are found at the newer Science and Engineering Library. The McHenry Special Collections Library include the archives of Robert A. Heinlein , the Mycology book collection of composer John Cage , the Hayden White collection of 16th century Italian printing, and a collection of photography with nearly half a million items. {Link without Title} As of 2005, a renovation and expansion program is underway at McHenry, scheduled for completion in 2009. In addition to the two university libraries, each college has its own library. As of 2004, UCSC's faculty includes two members of the Institute Of Medicine , twenty members of the Academy Of Arts And Sciences , eleven members of the National Academy Of Sciences , and one MacArthur Fellow . The young Baskin School Of Engineering , UCSC's first professional school, and the Center For Biomolecular Science And Engineering are gaining recognition, as has the work UCSC researchers have done on the Human Genome Project . UCSC administers astronomical observatories for the University of California. Lick Observatory is located on nearby Mt. Hamilton. The Keck Observatory is in Hawaii. The university has a marine laboratory and does research at the Ano Nuevo reserve north of Santa Cruz. According to a 2003 Thomson Institute For Scientific Information (ISI) report, UCSC ranked first in the nation for "academic research impact" in the field of space sciences. UCSC also ranked first in the nation for research in physics and second in the world as the most influential research institution in the physical sciences in general, according to two 2001 ISI reports. In its survey of more than 300 research universities, econphd.net, an online resource for graduate students, ranked the UCSC Economics Department ninth in the world in the field of international finance. In 2005, '' The Times Higher Education Supplement '' ranked UCSC as one the world's top 200 universities. UC Santa Cruz has had the highest percentage of upper-division students participating in the University of California's Education Abroad Program for the last five years. UCSC is second only to UC Berkeley in the number of graduates who complete Ph.D's. In September 2003, NASA contracted with the University of California to establish and operate a University Affiliated Research System (UARC) {Link without Title} . UCSC manages the UARC for the University of California. UCSC was rated the "most adrenaline-friendly campus" by '' Outside Magazine '' in 2003. SETTING ]] The 2,000 acre (8 km²) UCSC campus is located 75 miles (120 km) south of San Francisco and rises about 900 feet (275 m) from the base of campus (285 feet (87 m) above sealevel) to an altitude of 1,195 feet (364 m). The lower portion of the campus comprises the Great Meadow; most of the upper campus is forested with redwoods rising up to 200 feet in height. 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 [http://www.santacruzparksandrec.com/parks/pogo.html on the north by , and on the west by Gray Whale Ranch , a portion of Wilder Ranch State Park [http://www.parks.ca.gov/default.asp?page_id=549 [http://www2.ucsc.edu/ppc/lrdp/graphical/context/setting.html]. The northern half of the campus, while originally intended to house ten colleges in addition to the ten that currently exist, has remained in an undeveloped, forested state apart from some hiking and bicycle trails. Some students have been known to live in tent communities and treehouses in denser parts of the woods, in spite of restrictions on camping on campus and in the surrounding state parks. The heavily-forested area has allowed UC Santa Cruz to operate a Recreational Vehicle Park as a form of student housing (see link below). History Although the original founders outlined their plans for the University in the 1930s , the opportunity to build did not present itself until the City of Santa Cruz made a bid to the University of California Regents in the mid- 1950s to host a campus in the mountains outside town. The formal design of the Santa Cruz campus begun in the late 1950s and construction started in the early 1960s . The campus was intended to be a showcase for contemporary architecture as well as a place for learning. The first university structure on campus to be completed was Hahn Student Services Building. Not long after its opening, a fire gutted the building, which was rebuilt over the undamaged concrete substructure. with the Monterey Bay in the background]] Roads on campus are named after the UC Regents who voted in favor of building the campus. Clark Kerr Hall is named after the then-President of the University of California, who imagined building the UCSC campus as several Swarthmores (small liberal arts colleges), with each college being educationally self-sustaining. UCSC opened at a time when student protests were starting to take place at UC Berkeley (the Free Speech Movement) and across the United States . According to popular myth, the UCSC campus was separated into colleges with no central quadrangle or central administrative buildings to serve as rallying points for protests. However, the architectural plans and layout for the campus were already completed by the early 1960's, and the campus did have centralized administrative and other buildings. So the claim that UCSC was meant to counter the effects of student activism is untrue. The purpose of the colleges-within-a-university was rather to combine the benefits of a major research university with the intimacy of a smaller college. {Link without Title} UCSC has a history of student activism. Demonstrations in the 1970s and 1980s, some of which culminated in the occupation of the Chancellor's Office, were organized in opposition to the United States Invasion of Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam War , the United States Supreme Court 's Bakke Decision , and Apartheid in South Africa . The large number of UCSC alumni in Santa Cruz has helped to change the electorate of the town from predominantly . In January 2006 , UCSC was the subject of an article in The New York Times discussing the school's opposition to military recruiters and subsequent spying on one of the campus' anti war groups. Geology The geology and history of the campus are closely tied together. The campus is built on a portion of the Cowell Ranch, which was given as a gift to the University of California. The living quarters for ranch employees are still standing at the base of campus, as is the stonehouse that served as the paymaster's house. The stonehouse was home to the campus newspaper, ''City on a Hill Press'' , from the 1970s to the mid-1990s. Many ranch buildings have been renovated into comfortable offices while maintaining their antiquated appearance. The Cowell Ranch was a part of the Henry Cowell Lime And Cement Company . The Limestone that runs under most of campus was extracted from one of several quarries, the most notable being the Upper Quarry. There is an amphitheater in this quarry that is used for most of the large gatherings on campus. It also was used for an outdoor introductory Psychology course. The original campus plan contemplated a stadium in the Lower Quarry. Instead of a stadium, the Lower Quarry is now home to The Village, a student housing community. Once the limestone was quarried, Lime was extracted by burning it in Limekiln s adjacent to the quarries. Kiln fires were fueled by redwood trees logged from adjacent land. Although most of the kilns are fenced off, they are still visible in several locations on and around campus and in Pogonip . Creeks traverse the campus through several deep ravines. Footbridges span the ravines, linking pedestrian paths that connect different parts of the campus. The footbridges make it possible to walk to anywhere on the central part of the campus within twenty minutes in spite of the varying elevations. At night, fog shrouds the ends of the bridges, so that one can be halfway across a bridge without being able to see either the ends of the bridge or the bottom of the ravine below. There are a number of caves on the UCSC grounds, some of which have challenging passages. One unfortunate result of a combination of porous limestone bedrock with torrential coastal winter rains is sinkholes, and there are two large "bottomless pits" across from the Science Hill complex. The Jack Baskin Engineering Building, formerly known as the Applied Sciences Building, began sinking shortly after being built, and in the late 1970's hundreds of tons of concrete were poured in order to secure its foundation. ATHLETICS AND STUDENT TRADITIONS UCSC competes in Division III of the NCAA as an Independent member. There are fourteen varsity sports: men's and women's basketball, soccer, water polo, volleyball, water polo, swimming and diving, women's golf, and women's cross country. UCSC athletes are nationally ranked in tennis, soccer, water polo and swimming. They have won five men's tennis team championships (most recently in 2004) and were runner-ups in men's soccer in 2004. UCSC is one of the largest NCAA Division III members. UCSC's mascot is the Banana Slug . In 1981, when the university began participating in NCAA intercollegiate sports, the chancellor and some student athletes declared the mascot to be the "sea lions," which they considered dignified and suitable for intercollegiate play. Some students disliked the new mascot and offered an alternative mascot, the Banana Slug. In 1986, students voted to declare the Banana Slug the official mascot of UCSC, a vote the chancellor refused to honor on the grounds that it was the athletes who should choose the mascot. When a poll of athletes showed that they, too, wanted to be "slugs", the chancellor relented. However, a painting of a sea lion remains on the gymnasium floor to this day. And a popular prank by students involves painting a statue of sea lions outside of Thimann Lecture Hall yellow in order to represent the Banana Slug, even though the statue is in honor of a former Marine Biology professor and not the old mascot). {Link without Title} In the 1970s there was a large wooden Labyrinth -- an abandoned Senior thesis project -- in the area where College Nine is now, north of the Campus Health Center. A popular tradition was to take new students to this maze in the dead of night when the moon was new and have them find the center of the maze in the dark. The maze was torn down by the administration because it was becoming a hazard after a student hurt himself. A noteworthy annual tradition on campus is "First Rain". During the first autumn rain, students strip down and run the span of the campus nude (nearly one mile), gathering more participants as they pass through each residential college. The run usually begins and ends at Porter College. Another campus tradition is the full moon drum circle, which takes place on the eve of every full moon in the Upper Meadow. NOTABLE ALUMNI
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