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Featured News


Campus + Community banner image
New Campus + Community center will facilitate community-engaged scholarship
After more than 50 years of engagement in the region, UC Santa Cruz is launching a new center to coordinate campus and community connections for action-oriented scholarship that advances social justice. With support from the Institute for Social Transformation, Campus + Community (C + C) builds on previous efforts by the university to build meaningful local partnerships.
UC Santa Cruz students doing research on regional labor and employment issues as part of the new Center for Labor and Community. (Photo credit: Steve McKay)

Center for Labor and Community opens on UC Santa Cruz campus

March 21, 2023

The Center for Labor and Community will build upon previous efforts on campus dedicated to studying low-wage work, the affordable housing crisis, and the challenges of the rapidly-changing economy. 


Symposium participants included (left to right) Jeff King and Stephen Hill from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and UCSC’s Michael Beck and Megan Kelso.

Scientists, policy leaders, and insurance experts meet to address climate risks

March 21, 2023

Coastal scientists, insurance industry experts, and representatives of state and federal agencies came together at the meeting to address challenges and opportunities for building coastal resilience to climate change.


Elise Duffau

Cultivating equitable communications

March 20, 2023

Duffau was awarded the Frederico and Rena Perlino Memorial Scholarship in 2022 for her research centered around artificial agents and human communication. 


fahime fe associate professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES), teaching "CRES 113 Music + Performance," a newly created course in Black Studies. Last July, ife and Sophia Azeb, assistant professor of CRES, started at UCSC. Both are designated faculty members for the Black Studies program. Photos by Carolyn Lagattuta.

Black Studies minor builds momentum 

March 17, 2023

The Black Studies minor at the University of California, Santa Cruz has grown in size and influence at a time when the United States continues to grapple with its long history of racism.


STEM Conference

Local educators shared expertise at the first STEM Education Central Coast Conference

March 14, 2023

The STEM Education Central Coast Conference, which was organized by California State University Monterey Bay in collaboration with UC Santa Cruz, was designed by and for local educators in science, technology, engineering and math. The goal was to share expertise. 


Nicole Britton

Advocating for human rights

March 13, 2023

With the help of the Weiss Family Scholarship, Nicole Britton is entering her third year with the Human Rights Investigation Lab, and is currently working on a thesis looking into human rights abuse cases with a focus on the Americas. 


Squid

Where is your squid coming from? Most likely unregulated waters, according to a new international study

March 10, 2023

Scientists and policymakers have voiced growing concerns about the decline of global squid stocks, but little has been done to date to target squid fishing activities that are expanding into unregulated spaces, according to a new international study.


Lyla June

Indigenous land management focus of this year’s Conversations on Climate Justice

March 7, 2023

Johnston, who is known in the music world as Lyla June, is an Indigenous musician, scholar, and community organizer of Diné (Navajo), Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne), and European lineages. The focus of her upcoming discussion, “Architects of Abundance: Indigenous Regenerative Food Systems and the Excavation of Hidden History,” is centered on the findings from Johnston’s Ph.D. dissertation exploring how Indigenous Americans gardened the land on bio-regional scales to produce abundant food systems.


All In Highly Established Action Plan Seal

UCSC wins prestigious Highly Established Action Plan Seal for voter engagement

March 7, 2023

UC Santa Cruz has become one of only three University of California campuses awarded a Highly Established Action Plan Seal as part of the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge (ALL IN) for its voter engagement efforts. This seal is awarded to campuses that have worked to increase nonpartisan democratic engagement and graduate engaged voters by building a strong nonpartisan action plan as part of the 2022 election cycle.


Guneet Hora

Continuing an Academic Legacy

March 6, 2023

By pursuing an education in Intensive Psychology and Legal Studies, Guneet Hora aims to raise the mental health of marginalized communities in the face of the impact left by the immigration and justice systems.



New leaf wetness sensor will enable better plant disease forecasting and management

March 2, 2023

Commercial leaf wetness sensors exist, but are not able to provide an estimate that is specific to any particular type of plant, and so are often inaccurate. But through a collaborative effort, Professor Marco Rolandi, Professor Gregory Gilbert, and former graduate student Brian Nguyen have found a solution to this problem.


Yana Garcia (Stevenson ’08, politics)

Leading and learning to save the world

February 21, 2023

Yana Garcia’s extensive career in policy and environmentalism began in the classrooms of UCSC. As Garcia leads CalEPA in tackling the climate crisis, she credits her UCSC education in assessing the big-picture priorities of droughts, flooding, and water management, and understanding how these key issues intersect in both their causes and impacts.


Poster for Resettlement: Chicago Story

First In-Person Night at the Museum Since Pandemic Returns With “Resettlement: Chicago Story”

February 16, 2023

The Humanities Institute’s Signature Event, UCSC Night at the Museum, is returning to the MAH for a screening and panel conversation, featuring “Resettlement: Chicago Story,” a short fictional film and accompanying website about people of Japanese ancestry remaking their lives in the Midwest following their wrongful incarceration during World War II.



UCSC professor building collaborations to shape future minds through ethnic studies

February 15, 2023

Many believe we are at a pivotal moment in this country regarding anti-racist reforms, police abolition, and restorative justice. And according to Rekia Jibrin, an assistant professor in critical studies of education within UC Santa Cruz’s Education Department, engaging local communities is vital to bringing about transformative change.


Elena Losada

Pursuing social justice

February 13, 2023

Elena Losada was awarded the Jessica Roy Memorial Award in 2022. The award is intended to provide its winners with stipends to support fieldwork, travel, and research. 



Legal Studies Program, Santa Cruz County Public Defender’s Office partner for National Public Defense Summit

February 9, 2023

Interested in learning about the importance of public defense and criminal law? The summit, titled Strengthening the Sixth in Santa Cruz: Building Cases and Community Through Holistic Defense, will feature a variety of nationally-recognized public defenders, including attorneys, social workers, and investigators, who are doing cutting-edge work in public defense, focusing on early representation, vertical representation, holistic representation, and participatory defense. 


Gabriel Ephraim Kaplan Wall (Porter ’23, anthropology and history of art and visual culture)

Pursuing cultural anthropology

February 6, 2023

Gabriel Ephraim Kaplan Wall was awarded the Jeremy Demian Marx Award for Cultural Anthropology in 2022. The endowment provides funding for an annual award for an outstanding undergraduate paper in cultural anthropology.


Innovation Catalyst Grants will support UC Santa Cruz researchers with early-stage technology innovations.

Funding opportunity to develop university innovations

February 3, 2023

The Innovation & Business Engagement Hub is now accepting applications for its new Innovation Catalyst Grant; a proof-of-concept program focused on providing targeted gap funding, training, mentorship, and support to UC Santa Cruz researchers in order to help de-risk and/or validate the implementation and adoption potential of early-stage technology innovations.


Dard Neuman is an Associate Professor of Music and Hasan Endowed Chair in Classical Indian Music.

UCSC receives NEH awards that will further research in anthropology and musicology

February 3, 2023

The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded over $5.6 billion toward humanities projects across the United States since its inception in 1965 — and this year, Santa Cruz-based educators joins this historic group of awardees.


Professor of Psychology Jean Fox Tree

Three UCSC faculty named 2022 AAAS fellows

January 31, 2023

Professor of Psychology Jean Fox Tree, Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Lise Getoor, and Dean of the Baskin School of Engineering (BE) and Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Alexander Wolf received the distinction of 2022 fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).


Panelists discussing community-engaged scholarship at the All-In Conference in October 2022.

University launches new center, Campus + Community, to facilitate engaged scholarship

January 31, 2023

Campus + Community (C + C) builds on previous efforts by the university to build meaningful local partnerships, such as the longstanding work of the Community Studies program, Santa Cruz Commons, and the UCSC Community Engagement Collaborative.


Sanya Cowal

Sanya Cowal: Resilience and Agency

January 30, 2023

Cowal was awarded the Jessica Roy Memorial Award in 2022. Cowal says the scholarship has contributed to a research project investigating the role of gender-based differences in coffee producer adaptive management through the lens of female producer agency.


Created by the Visualizing Wildfire Impact team, this image was generated using artificial intelligence techniques for the purpose of testing their immersive virtual reality visualization.

Five student teams embark on tech for social good projects

January 23, 2023

Teams of at least two undergraduate, graduate, and/or postdoctoral students were tasked with addressing domestic and global poverty, sustainability, government responsiveness and civic engagement, or enhancing education. Five student projects were chosen for funding this year and will show their work at the Tech for Social Good Showcase event this June. 


Erika Zavaleta (Photo by Carolyn Lagattuta)

UCSC leads new multicampus initiatives on climate change and bilingualism

January 23, 2023

UC Santa Cruz faculty are leading two new collaborative programs funded by grants from UC’s Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives (MRPI) program. Ecologist Erika Zavaleta leads an effort focused on biodiversity conservation, and linguist Mark Amengual leads an initiative to study Spanish-English bilingualism in California.


Galdamez worked as the Chief Operating Officer for a nonprofit organization based out of Los Angeles for many years, serving individuals with disabilities.

Alumni Councilor Mario Galdamez

January 19, 2023

Mario Galdamez (Merrill ’06, politics and Latin American & Latino Studies) has joined the UCSC Alumni Council for his second year and has made it his personal goal to increase the number of students that receive the alumni association scholarship each year.


Institute of Art and Science (IAS)

UC Santa Cruz’s Institute of the Arts and Sciences to open new, off campus galleries

January 17, 2023

The state-of-the-art facility will showcase the Institute of the Arts and Sciences’ groundbreaking exhibitions and programs, highlighting the work of major national and international artists working to address the most pressing issues of our day at the intersection of the arts and social justice


Students on a Bench

Leading the Change survey launching today

January 17, 2023

The strategic plan is our opportunity to chart a path for progress on our campus goals of advancing student success, amplifying our research profile, fostering an inclusive campus climate, and becoming more sustainable and resilient. The strategic planning process will include establishing metrics by which success will be measured over the next decade.


Zahirah Suhaimi

Zahirah Suhaimi: Exploring ecological states

January 16, 2023

Working alongside marine scientists and coastal communities, Suhaimi explores how local knowledge and experience of changes to seagrass meadows, microbial ecologies, mangrove forests, and engineered hydrologies can enrich academic understanding of drastic changes in ecological states.


Photo credit: AlloSphere Research Team

Sensorium, a new project of UC Santa Cruz’s Center for the Study of the Force Majeure, to be an unprecedented experience of the world ocean

January 12, 2023

A new project in development by UC Santa Cruz’s Center for the Study of the Force Majeure will give the public a transformative opportunity to interact with the world’s ocean ecosystem in a fully immersive work of environmental art entitled Sensorium. 


Students on a bridge

Alumni Weekend re-envisioned

January 12, 2023

A decades-long tradition, Alumni Weekend was created to welcome alumni back to UC Santa Cruz to reconnect with peers, Santa Cruz, and the campus community. In April, UCSC will host Alumni Reunion Weekend celebrating alumni who graduated 50+ years ago. Then, in August, the University will offer “Return to the Redwoods,” a first-of-its-kind residential campus experience where alumni will be able to stay overnight in the residence halls.


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