The Colleges

Please note that sections under this topic that contained no changes from the General Catalog 2006-08 are not included. For the complete section, go to 2006-08 Colleges.

To read an updated copy of this page with strikeouts and additions highlighted, see 2007-08 Colleges, highlighted copy.  

Cowell College

Cowell College inaugurated the Santa Cruz campus when it opened with a pioneer class of 600 students in 1965. The founding faculty shaped an educational program that challenged and enriched students through wide-ranging inquiry and disciplined study. Today, Cowell has nearly 1,500 affiliated students and 100 faculty fellows. Its motto—The Pursuit of Truth in the Company of Friends—expresses a continuing commitment to create a serious academic environment within a humane and broadly inclusive community. The college is named for the S. H. Cowell Foundation, which endowed the college at its founding.

Academic Emphases

The academic theme of the college encourages students to pursue their general and disciplinary study with attention to the values of liberal arts education: understanding one’s individual perspective by exploration of its historical background and world context. Students affiliated with the college pursue majors from all departments on campus.

The faculty fellows affiliated with the college represent all academic divisions (arts, engineering, humanities, physical and biological sciences, and social sciences). The faculty
fellows guide the college academic programs and serve as academic mentors to the students, supplementing the advising provided by the college academic advisers and departmental advising.

In satisfying their general education requirements, first-year Cowell students are required to take the Cowell Core Course in the fall term. The core course (Cowell 80), taught in small seminar sections, seeks to develop critical reading, analytical writing, and seminar discussion skills by reading a selection of classic and contemporary texts.

The college academic buildings house humanities faculty, with notable concentrations in philosophy, classics (study of ancient Greek and Latin language and civilization), and modern foreign languages, especially Chinese, French, Italian, and Japanese. The interdisciplinary faculty group in pre- and early modern studies is centered at Cowell College.

Students who develop ideas for research, creative projects, community service, or internship experiences may apply to the college provost for financial support. The college sponsors prizes for outstanding academic work and acknowledges students who graduate with overall academic excellence in a breadth of study with College Honors.

The college enriches the intellectual and cultural life of the campus by sponsoring events of various kinds: lectures and presentations by local faculty and visiting scholars, theatrical and musical performances, and forums and debates on topics of current interest.

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Stevenson College

Crown College

Crown College faculty and students represent a wide variety of academic disciplines. The majority of the faculty are in the physical and biological sciences
and the social sciences. Although Crown has more science and engineering students than any of the other colleges, the majority of Crown's students major in the social sciences, humanities, and arts. This diversity of interests and thinking enriches our intellectual environment.

An important goal of the college is to foster an appreciation for the contributions of diverse cultural groups and to provide an atmosphere in which issues of both diversity and common social purpose are integrated into a wide range of programs and discussions.

Crown is located on a hilltop surrounded by a redwood forest. The core buildings consist of an administration office, dining commons, lounge spaces, recreation facilities, study spaces, faculty offices, and classrooms built around a large patio and central fountain. The award-winning architecture with its white walls and high-pitched tiled roofs suggests a hillside Mediterranean village. The college’s residential facilities are made up of eight traditional residence hall buildings and eight apartment buildings housing approximately 700 students. The facilities at Crown College were built through a partnership of public funds and a gift from the Crown Zellerbach Foundation.

Academic Emphases

From the time of its founding in 1967, issues pertaining to the role of science and technology in society have been a focus of special interest at Crown College. We approach these issues from an interdisciplinary perspective that recognizes the influence of social and cultural factors on scientific enterprise, as well as the ways in which science and technology influence society.

The Crown College core course, Crown 80, Ethical Issues in Emerging Technologies: Transgenics, Clones, Cyborgs, and Artificial Intelligence is an interdisciplinary seminar concerning the effects of these world-changing technologies and encourages students to develop decision-making strategies to ethically steer these technologies. The course examines the impacts of these technologies on society using a variety of disciplinary approaches that engage the perspectives of both humanists and scientists. The fall quarter core course is required of all nontransfer students during their first quarter at UCSC. As with the core courses from our sister colleges, the development of critical reading and writing skills is a major thrust of Crown 80. (See the Crown College Course Descriptions section for a full description.)

The Crown-Merrill Science and Technology Learning Community is an innovative program to support first-year students who are interested in pursuing a major in the sciences. Students enrolled in this program live together, forming a supportive community that promotes collaborative learning and group problem solving. To facilitate this process, students are placed in a special section of Chemistry 1A and participate in a residentially based study group. The program is designed especially for students who have a strong interest in the sciences but feel slightly underprepared for university-level course work. It often acts as a bridge to the ACE Program in the physical and biological sciences and engineering (see the Academic Excellence Program section). Participation—limited to first-year students at Crown and Merrill Colleges—requires a commitment to succeed, a willingness to work hard, and a positive attitude.

The Crown Undergraduate Seminar in Science, Technology, and Society provides highly motivated students the opportunity to work closely with ladder-rank research faculty in a small seminar environment. Topics have included California Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future; Food Matters: Science, Technology, and Society; and an honors seminar on introductory computer architecture.

Juniors and seniors can participate in the college’s new Undergraduate Research Fellowship Program, which awards $800 fellowships to student-faculty teams and encourages their interaction through undergraduate research.

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Porter College

The Porter College theme, Arts in a Multicultural Society, reflects the consensus among Porter College fellows that the creative process is an inseparable aspect of a broad-minded and rigorous education. The seminars, co-curricular activities, and cultural environment at Porter encourage creativity in all fields—from composition to community studies to computer programming.

Academic Emphases

Porter’s faculty includes most of the campus’s practicing artists and art scholars, though some of the college’s faculty (and half of its students) specialize in the humanities or in the physical and biological or social sciences. The college is the administrative home of the Division of the Arts and the History of Art and Visual Culture Department. The Digital Arts and New Media Program also has offices here.

Porter 80, the core course (see the Porter College Course Descriptions section) focuses on writing across the arts, with concentration on literature and arts of California and the Pacific Rim. Students admitted as transfer applicants are exempt from the college graduation requirement if they have completed with a grade of C or better two UC-transferable college courses in English composition. Students meet with their faculty member in a seminar, attend regular lecture/performances, and participate in writing groups, advising, and other sessions that introduce some of the academic issues they will confront at the university. The course emphasizes critical reading, writing, and close intellectual contact with faculty and other students.

The college also offers 2-credit courses in a variety of areas connected to the arts. These are small classes in the practice or theory of the arts; they may include investigation of a particular style of music or dance, visits to Bay Area theaters and museums, working in the arts, or creation of a show in one of the college galleries. These diverse offerings allow Porter students to understand the significance of creativity in a university education.

The college provides fellowship funds each year to talented students pursuing original research and creative projects.

College Community and Facilities

The traditional residence halls and apartments play an important role in bringing the college community together. Students are encouraged to spend their beginning years in residence in the college, where housing is available for 845 students. The residence halls are divided into smaller units, with from 20 to 35 students sharing common lounges and other facilities. Theme halls include Performing Arts, Film and Digital Media, Gender Studies, Visual Arts, and Outdoors Experiences. Students also have a choice of quiet/intensive study, same gender, or substance-free halls. The six-person apartments are reserved for upper-division students.

In addition to traditional classrooms, Porter has many specialized facilities such as a fireside lounge, student galleries, and a dining hall that converts to a theater space. The Arts Instructional Computing Laboratories, located at Porter College, consist of two high-end labs oriented toward the arts (see page 57). Porter also has a study center with an adjoining computer lab for Porter students only. This lab has eight workstations for word processing, graphics production, Internet capabilities, and printing.

Adjacent to the college are the campus’s Theater Arts Center (see the Theater Arts program description section), the Elena Baskin Visual Arts Center (see the Art program description section), and the Music Center (see the Music program description section).

Porter provides constructive opportunities for relaxation and recreation to balance the intellectual demands of a university education. The Porter Activities Office, in conjunction with the Porter Student Senate, organizes formal and informal events, including dances and recreational activities, which augment campuswide activities in these areas. For relaxing, Porter students and faculty gather at the college’s coffeehouse—the Hungry Slug.

Many students and faculty perform or exhibit their work at Porter, and cultural events are a constant feature of life at the college. The dining commons has been the site of performances by artists such as El Teatro Campesino, lectures and readings by contemporary authors such as Amiri Baraka, and performances by artists such as Komar & Melamid and Nina Wise.

Porter College facilities were constructed through a partnership of public funds and a gift from the Porter-Sesnon family of Santa Cruz. Part of the gift was used to establish an endowment for the college.

For more information, call (831) 459-2273 or visit the web site: www2.ucsc.edu/porter.

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Oakes College

Oakes was founded in 1972 to provide high-quality education to students from diverse cultural and social backgrounds. Students, staff, and faculty associated with the college believe that learning takes place not only in the classroom but also in residential settings. For that reason, they work hard to create a multicultural community whose members strive together toward certain universal goals—including equal access to educational opportunity and freedom from oppression—while simultaneously affirming and celebrating some of the distinctive aspects of the different backgrounds from which they come.

Academic Emphases

Oakes faculty members represent a variety of disciplines in the humanities, social sciences, and physical and biological sciences. Since its founding, Oakes has made a special effort to provide academic programs and experiences for underrepresented groups, including women. These programs and experiences are enriched by the presence of core faculty from disciplines housed in the college: American studies, American literature, writing, world literature, and history of consciousness. Oakes graduates have gone on to successful careers in fields such as medicine, law, education, medical research, and community service.

The Oakes core course 80, Values and Change in a Diverse Society , is required of all first-year students. The course is writing intensive and examines individual and collective responses to issues of culture, gender, sexuality, race, and class. (See the Oakes College Course Descriptions section for a description of the course.) Students admitted as lower-division transfer students who prior to enrolling have completed at least one UC-transferable college English composition course with a minimum grade of C (2.0) or better are exempt from the core course requirement.

Students at Oakes are challenged in many ways. Not only do they have the opportunity to live and work with people from different backgrounds, but they are also expected to demonstrate academic excellence in their chosen fields of study. To enable all students to to succeed academically in a variety of services are available:

• The Learning Center at Oakes College serves as a location for study groups as well as tutoring and advising programs . Special assistance in writing and tutoring in a variety of subjects is offered to Oakes students and EOP students.
• The Oakes Computer Lab provides access to 20 PC computers for Oakes students.
• Oakes 77, Exploring Opportunities for Social Justice Fieldwork provides students with the opportunity to work with a variety of community service organizations. All Oakes students are encouraged to contribute service to public agencies, schools, and community organizations in the city of Santa Cruz and in economically deprived areas of Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties. Oakes students serve as tutors, teachers, mentors, and community builders. Academic credit is available through the Oakes community service course.
• Student services at Oakes include academic advising and psychological counseling.