Alumni

  • Teaching luminaries share classroom secrets at Academic Forum

    Teaching luminaries share classroom secrets at Academic Forum

    The large crowd that attended the Academic Forum at the Humanities Lecture Hall —one of the cornerstones of the UCSC Alumni Reunion Weekend—had a rare opportunity to hear these and other teaching secrets of renowned educators, ranging from social psychologist Elliot Aronson to noted feminist studies professor Bettina Aptheker.

  • Walking and talking: Learning outside the classroom door

    Walking and talking: Learning outside the classroom door

    In her essay, UCSC lecturer Candace Calsoyas discusses the Aristotelian method of conversation and learning while on foot, a practice she introduced in Albania and brings to the College Eight core course.

  • Alumna Fernanda Coppel is taking New York theater world by storm

    Alumna Fernanda Coppel is taking New York theater world by storm

    When Fernanda Coppel came to the hilly UC Santa Cruz campus, her plan was to become a lawyer. Born in Mazatlan, she grew up in an all-female household in San Diego, working since she was 16 to support herself. The law, she believed, would provide a stable life. A campus play put on by Don Williams’s Rainbow…

  • Forensic anthropologist Lauren Zephro is a voice for victims of crime

    Forensic anthropologist Lauren Zephro is a voice for victims of crime

    The girl’s decomposed body was found in 1994 in the shadowed woods of Pogonip, not far from downtown Santa Cruz. She was petite, with short-cropped dark hair and a small heart tattooed on her hand. She had been brutally beaten. At the time, police estimated the girl to be in her 20s but had little…

  • From the Editor

    There’s an “ivory tower” stereotype about higher education that I’d like to challenge. Critics chide academia over the sometimes esoteric nature of college studies, saying such topics have no bearing on real life—much less getting a job. Okay, sure—my own days as an English major sometimes included stalking a fictional character, Leopold Bloom. Slouched in…

  • Celebrate the Great 88

    Celebrate the Great 88

    In 1967, the year of the Summer of Love, a group of UCSC students started an FCC-unauthorized campus radio station that broadcast from a clammy basement and tried to use an upside-down garbage can as an antenna. The broadcasters initially put egg cartons instead of acoustic tiles on the walls, and the disc jockeys played the…

  • Haney joins commission to study high rates of incarceration

    UC Santa Cruz professor of psychology Craig Haney has been named to a National Academy of Science panel of leading scholars and experts on corrections to study the causes and consequences of high rates of incarceration in the United States.

  • Watsonville High names UCSC’s Bill Doyle to alumni hall of fame

    Watsonville High names UCSC’s Bill Doyle to alumni hall of fame

    UC Santa Cruz Professor Emeritus of Biology Bill Doyle knows what it’s like to grow up hard. But the founder and long-term director of UCSC’s Institute of Marine Sciences, says even though times were tough, those years—especially the ones at Watsonville High—became “the basic, grounding platform” of his life.

  • UCSC cycling standouts: See how they ride

    UCSC cycling standouts: See how they ride

    UC Santa Cruz is both bike-conscientious and eco-friendly—despite a killer climb from town to class. It’s no coincidence, then, that the university boasts strong participation in annual Bike to Work Week festivities and that a number of Slugs have gone on to make careers out of their biking obsessions.

  • Environmental studies researchers take studies to new heights

    Environmental studies researchers take studies to new heights

    UC Santa Cruz environmental studies associate professor Jeff Bury and Adam French, an environmental studies Ph.D. candidate, were among 31 high-altitude scientists and researchers from around the world who traveled to Nepal last September to study and find solutions for destructive glacial floods.

  • Physicist Peter Young elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

    Physicist Peter Young elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

    Peter Young, distinguished professor of physics, has been elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies.

  • Physics undergrad makes the most of research opportunities

    Physics undergrad makes the most of research opportunities

    Senior physics major Melinda Soares has won honors for her research presentations at two conferences in the past year.

Last modified: Mar 18, 2025