About UC Santa Cruz

The University of California, Santa Cruz, which is renowned for the outstanding educational experience it provides to students, has earned national distinction as a major research university with an uncommon commitment to teaching and public service.

UC Santa Cruz opened just 42 years ago, in fall 1965, with a class of about 600; today, UCSC serves approximately 15,000 students.

Undergraduates now pursue course work in 63 majors in the arts, engineering, humanities, physical and biological sciences, and social sciences. Graduate students work toward master's degrees, doctoral degrees, and graduate certificates in 33 academic fields.

On a campus with world-class facilities and one of the most visually spectacular settings in higher education, faculty and students continue to augment UCSC's impressive record of achievement. In fact, UCSC people, including 70,000 alumni, are leaders in virtually every field; the campus is increasingly acknowledged for the positive impact it has on all aspects of society.

A National Reputation for Excellence: UC Santa Cruz has earned national recognition for the quality of its research and teaching. Some recent examples of major national rankings follow.

. In a survey of more than 60 elite Association of American Universities member schools, UCSC ranks 15th nationally for the percentage of bachelor's degree recipients who went on to earn doctorates (second only to UC Berkeley among UC campuses).

. UCSC is included in the top one-fifth of national public universities according to U.S. News & World Report's 2008 rankings.

. UCSC doctoral programs in music and in environmental health engineering rank 3rd in the nation, according to a faculty productivity index produced by Academic Analytics.

. UCSC ranks 1st nationally for its per-paper research impact in physics and 5th for its research impact in the space sciences, according to Science Watch.

. In a survey of U.S. engineering schools, UCSC ranked 3rd in the nation in the percentage of master's degrees awarded to women.

. UCSC's program in international finance in 2005 was ranked 9th in the world.

Innovative people and programs: UC Santa Cruz faculty, students, and alumni continue to contribute to the body of scholarship that has earned the University of California the ranking as the foremost public research institution in the world.

. UCSC alumni include five winners of the Pulitzer Prize.

. In 2006, literature professor Nathaniel Mackey won the National Book Award in poetry.

. Alumnus Joseph DeRisi in 2004 became the seventh person affiliated with UCSC to receive a MacArthur Fellowship "genius award."

. UCSC researchers assembled the first working draft of the human genome and created the UCSC Genome Browser, a web-based tool for genomic research used by scientists worldwide.

. Alumna Kathryn Sullivan was the first American woman to walk in space.

. The Dickens Project, headquartered at UCSC, is internationally recognized as the premier center for Dickens studies in the world and is one of the leading sites for research on 19th-century British culture.

. UCSC's interdisciplinary Center for Justice, Tolerance and Community combines academic rigor with social relevance. Its work influences policy makers to foster positive changes in areas such as environmental justice and bridging the digital divide.

. UCSC is renowned for its strengths in marine sciences across multiple academic disciplines. The Institute of Marine Sciences provides superb facilities for faculty and students and also offers public access to marine science through the Seymour Marine Discovery Center.

. The recently established Institute for Advanced Feminist Research continues UCSC's groundbreaking work that nearly 30 years ago helped launch women's studies as a respected academic discipline throughout the U.S. and beyond.

. UCSC is home to Shakespeare Santa Cruz, heralded as one of the nation's most innovative theater festivals, and the Film and Digital Media program, which combines art and engineering to prepare students for success in the burgeoning film and video industries.

. UCSC's Jack Baskin School of Engineering is the newest engineering school in the UC system. Its faculty's research is focused on the 21st-century disciplines of biotechnology, information technology and nanotechnology.

World-class facilities: UC Santa Cruz extends well beyond the campus, situated on a spectacular 2,000-acre site overlooking the Monterey Bay.

. UCSC's Long Marine Laboratory is an oceanside research facility located on a coastal site overlooking the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.

. UCSC is headquarters to UC Observatories/Lick Observatory, which operates Lick Observatory above San Jose, and is a managing partner of the world's largest ground-based telescopes at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii.

. UCSC is managing the University Affiliated Research Center at the NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, under a 10-year agreement between UC and NASA.

. UCSC manages the Monterey Bay Education, Science and Technology Center, located in Marina.

. UCSC manages five natural-reserve sites-from 25 acres at Año Nuevo along the San Mateo County Coast to 4,200 acres on the Big Sur Coast.