Student Success

  • Frontier Fellows: Peter Nguyen

    Frontier Fellows: Peter Nguyen

    The Earth Futures Institute’s Frontier Fellows program offers undergraduate research opportunities and funding at UC Santa Cruz. UCSC student Peter Nguyen studies a federally listed endangered flowering plant—Lupinus nipomensis.

  • Partnership across UC campuses will prepare the next generation of leaders in organic agriculture

    Partnership across UC campuses will prepare the next generation of leaders in organic agriculture

    A USDA grant of more than $700,000 will support a collaboration led by UC Santa Cruz to improve and expand undergraduate education in organic agriculture, with an emphasis on supporting underrepresented students.

  • Giving basic needs a needed solution

    Giving basic needs a needed solution

    The Redwood Free Market provides free food and basic needs to UC Santa Cruz students to combat food insecurity.

  • Full circle community

    Full circle community

    As an Alumni Association Scholarship recipient now in her fourth year studying computer engineering, Katia Avila Pinedo (Merrill ’24, computer engineering) has not only benefited from UCSC’s strong community—she’s helped build and sustain it.

  • Allied for exponential impact

    The Black Men’s Alliance, established in 1994 as an organization to create community for Black students at UC Santa Cruz, now boasts a population of 60 engaged and active alumni—and wants to expand further.

  • A welcoming place in the redwoods

    A welcoming place in the redwoods

    The Lionel Cantú Queer Resource Center is a place for students to claim and proclaim their voices.

  • CIDER Pilot Training Program helps students reach new heights in drone research and industry

    CIDER Pilot Training Program helps students reach new heights in drone research and industry

    18 students participated in the CIDER’s first-ever Pilot Training Program, which prepared them for success in research and industry opportunities.

  • Tiffany-Ellen Vo

    Tiffany-Ellen Vo

    Tiffany-Ellen Vo encountered some initial difficulties in college, but with support from the Multicultural Engineering Program she regained her footing. She went on to take advantage of every opportunity she was offered at UC Santa Cruz—and she has already secured a job as a software engineer at Cisco.

  • Amanda Quirk

    Amanda Quirk

    Amanda Quirk’s research on galaxy mergers showed evidence that the Andromeda galaxy had some kind of major galactic collision in the past 4 billion years, and survived—which has implications for our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

  • Benny Mosqueira

    Benny Mosqueira

    Benny Mosqueira felt driven to make something of himself, and he arrived on campus intending to become a medical doctor. Instead, the first-generation college student was captivated by the research opportunities he found at UC Santa Cruz and decided to pursue biomedical research as a career.

  • Brittany Caldwell

    Brittany Caldwell

    Brittany Caldwell, a scholar focused on the impact of early-grade math instruction, has pulled off an impressive feat: earning her Ph.D. in math education and teaching hundreds of students in seminars, all while raising three children.

  • Candy Martinez

    Candy Martinez

    The daughter of Oaxacan migrants, Candy Martinez has found a meaningful way to reconnect with her roots, investigating the ways in which Indigenous communities process and heal grief and trauma.

Last modified: Mar 18, 2025