2015

Alice Waters—who has an international reputation as a chef, cookbook author, and spokesperson for sustainable food—shares common cause with UC Santa Cruz’s pioneering role in sustainable food systems.

From saving falcons to peering into the universe, sequencing the human genome, and putting organic food on American tables, UC Santa Cruz has become known as the small university where big things happen.

Kris Perry doesn’t think about the way historians will tell her story. Instead, the 1986 Merrill College graduate with degrees in sociology and psychology thinks how life will be different for children nationwide because of what she did.

Little did Akiva Schaffer know, but those nights with his high school buddies—Andy Samberg and Jorma Taccone—were actually prep work for a career that would lead them to a stint on Saturday Night Live, a series of iconic music video parodies, movie credits, and even a role as cultural touchstones for the Internet era.

It’s almost impossible to breathe for the full minute-and-a-half video that shows Cody Townsend hurtle himself on skis through a narrow crevice on an insanely steep, rugged Alaska mountain.

A couple years out of UC Santa Cruz, Stephanie Foo decided she wanted to work for the radio show This American Life. So she hitchhiked to the world’s biggest porn convention with a load of borrowed radio equipment, talked her way inside with a fake press pass, and began a podcast she called “Get Me…

Tiffany Dena Loftin met President Barack Obama, she was overwhelmed and nervous, but she managed to pull herself together. After all, she wanted to talk with him about a pressing civil rights issue that had been on her mind for many years.

Dale “Eddie” Kinnamon had to stop to try to capture the most spectacular sunset he havd ever witnessed.

The names of UC Santa Cruz’s unique colleges, buildings, and centers may seem natural and inevitable, as much a part of the campus’s landscape as its famous towering redwood trees and rambling meadows. But each name evokes a surprising story.