Six decades of leading and learning
From its roots in 1965 as a cutting-edge educational experiment to its present as a research powerhouse and engine of social mobility, UC Santa Cruz has had so many significant moments and achievements. Take a tour of some highlights from our 60-year journey.
After a year-long campuswide conversation to craft a shared vision for the future, UC Santa Cruz releases a new strategic plan, “Leading the Change: The UC Santa Cruz Strategic Plan.” With goals and metrics to measure success in five thematic areas, the plan will guide the campus’s work for the coming decade.
UC Santa Cruz earns the Agricultural Experiment Station designation, marking more than 50 years of industry-leading research in organic agriculture and sustainable farming practices and opening doors to expanding community impact.
UC Santa Cruz earns the prestigious Seal of Excelencia certification for its work as a Hispanic-Serving Institution, following a thorough data-driven review by Excelencia in Education.
UC Santa Cruz announces that the campus’s Research Center for the Americas, celebrating its 30-year anniversary, will be named in honor of social justice icon Dolores Huerta, whose legacy has influenced the center’s work and values.
Joining with 19 leading universities, UC Santa Cruz announces the formation of the Alliance of Hispanic Serving Research Universities, which aims to achieve two key goals at alliance universities by 2030: double the number of Hispanic doctoral students enrolled, and increase the Hispanic professoriate by 20 percent.
Chancellor Cynthia Larive presented a bold vision for the campus’s future to the UC Regents, focusing on the campus’s four major goals: advancing student success; elevating UC Santa Cruz’s research profile; fostering an inclusive campus climate; and improving the sustainability of operations.
With a gift from anonymous donors, College Ten—a UC Santa Cruz college opened in 2002 with the theme of social justice and community—is named for John R. Lewis, the late American civil rights leader and politician.
Eminent biologist and Nobel laureate Carol Greider, known for her pioneering work on telomeres and for her powerful advocacy for increasing women and minorities in the sciences, joins the UC Santa Cruz faculty.
CZU August Lightning Complex fires sweep through the Santa Cruz Mountains, forcing an evacuation of campus—a first in its 55-year history. The crisis—combined with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic—tests the campus community’s resilience.
UC Santa Cruz is elected to the prestigious Association of American Universities, an achievement that underscores the impact and quality of the campus’s research and graduate and undergraduate education.
The UC Board of Regents approve Cynthia K. Larive—a professor of chemistry and the executive vice chancellor at UC Riverside—as the 11th chancellor of UC Santa Cruz.
Chancellor George Blumenthal, who served 12 years as chancellor, announces he will step down at the end of the next academic year. Blumenthal, a theoretical astrophysicist, previously served as a UCSC faculty member since 1972.
After spending more than a decade silent, the Quarry Amphitheater—which had seen legends such as César Chávez, Angela Davis, Buckminster Fuller, Joan Baez, and more—is restored and reopened.
UC Santa Cruz’s first campuswide campaign wraps up, with record giving by alumni and friends in support of the student experience, high-impact research, and social justice and environmental responsibility. The campaign raised $335 million, surpassing the original goal of $300 million.
With a gift from the Helen and Will Webster Foundation, College Eight—opened in 1972 with the theme of environment and society—becomes Rachel Carson College, named for one of the great environmental prophets of the 20th century. It is the first UCSC college named after a woman.
UC Santa Cruz receives a gift of the photography collection of Pirkle Jones and Ruth-Marion Baruch, plus works by Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, and Edward Weston—an extraordinary archive of photographs documenting the people, landscape, and politics of California in the mid-20th century—valued at $32 million.
UC Santa Cruz opens its Silicon Valley Campus, recognizing the shared DNA between the campus the global tech hub: Asking big questions, not accepting conventional wisdom, and seeking to make the world a better place through innovation.
UC Santa Cruz marks its 50th anniversary with a year-long celebration of its trailblazing history and groundbreaking impact on the world.
Celebrated writer Jonathan Franzen, author of The Corrections, wrote much of his new best-selling novel, Freedom, at Cowell College. Franzen, recently on the cover of Time magazine, and his partner live part time in Santa Cruz. Both are longtime friends of UCSC.
The Grateful Dead donates its historic archives to McHenry Library’s Special Collections.
Two UCSC alumni inducted into NASA’s Astronaut Hall of Fame: Kathryn Sullivan (Cowell ’73, B.S. Earth sciences), the first American woman to walk in space inducted in May 2004; and Steven Hawley (Ph.D., astronomy and astrophysics ’77), whose five space shuttle flights included the 1990 mission to deploy the Hubble Space Telescope, inducted in May 2007.
While doing research at the University Archives, Anthony Misch, a support astronomer at Lick Observatory, discovers a 400-year-old manuscript penned by Johannes Kepler, one of history’s greatest astronomers.
Alumna Laurie Garrett, who graduated with honors in biology (Merrill ’75), pens a groundbreaking series of articles for Newsday, chronicling the Ebola virus outbreak in Zaire. The series wins 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism.
UC Santa Cruz makes plans to dedicate a new Science Library, with room for 200,000 volumes. The library would later be renamed the Science and Engineering Library.
Plans move ahead for construction on campus of a music facility with 400-seat hall.