In honor of UC Santa Cruz’s upcoming 60th anniversary year, UC Santa Cruz Magazine editors and designers dug through the archives to present some notable campus milestones and achievements during each of the university’s six decades.
During the 1995–2004 decade, we discovered an extraordinary accomplishment in genomics; leadership shifts; significant recognitions for alumni; legacies established with transformative gifts; expansion of academic offerings; the loss of beloved and influential figures; and more.
Put on your best Slug pride gear, close your eyes and think back to the first time you saw a banana slug, and take a tour with us through the years.
Research breakthroughs and prominence
In 2000, two dogged researchers at UC Santa Cruz defied the odds to become the first in the world to assemble the DNA sequence of the human genome and make it publicly available. Today, thousands of biomedical researchers worldwide use the UCSC Genome Browser in their work to uncover the causes of diseases and develop treatments.
In 2001, participants in a historic 1985 meeting about launching a massive project to determine the complete DNA sequence of the human genome gathered again at UCSC along with other eminent scientists to discuss future directions for research on the human genome.
Transformative gifts
Alumni give back
Rowland and Patricia Rebele, a Santa Cruz County couple with a long-standing commitment to local arts and culture, made a gift of $250,000 in 1996 to UCSC to establish an endowed chair in art history. Patricia Rebele graduated from UCSC as a re-entry student (Porter ’88), earning a B.A. in art history. The donation was the largest alumni contribution in UCSC history.
The campus in 2002 established the STEPS Institute for Innovation in Environmental Research, launched with support from alumnus Gordon Ringold (Crown ’72, biology) and his wife, Tanya Zarucki. Their gift of $500,000 became the largest outright gift the campus had ever received from an alumnus.
Baskin’s legacy
In 1997, prominent Santa Cruz community philanthropist Jack Baskin, a retired developer and engineer, announced that he would support UCSC’s new School of Engineering with a gift of $5 million—by far the largest private donation in the 32-year history of the campus. In 1999, at the dedication of the Jack Baskin School of Engineering, the building that housed the engineering school, formerly the Applied Sciences Building, was renamed the Jack Baskin Engineering Building. Baskin’s gifts to the School of Engineering since 1983 totaled nearly $7 million. In 2003, Baskin once again demonstrated his strong support with a gift of $1 million to the Baskin School of Engineering.
Establishing India studies
Also in 1997, a $250,000 gift from Narpat and Chandra Bhandari, longtime entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, established one of the country’s few endowed chairs in India studies.
Very special collections
Students handling archives in Special Collections & Archives at the University Library (photo by Elena Zhukova)
A collection of letters from renowned American short story writer and poet Raymond Carver was donated in 2002 to the University Library. Valued at $23,650, the donation consisted of 26 letters, notes, and cards written to UCSC professor of education and creative writing David Swanger between 1977 and 1984.
In 2002 UC Santa Cruz received a donation of photographs from renowned California photographer Pirkle Jones and his late wife Ruth-Marion Baruch valued at more than $1 million. The collection included their landmark documentary series of photos of members of the Black Panther Party in 1968.
The UC Santa Cruz archive of renowned science fiction writer Robert Heinlein received a gift of materials and cash in 2003 from the estate of Heinlein’s late widow valued at $300,000. The donation was accompanied by a grant to establish the position of a Heinlein Scholar at the campus, who would work to organize, document, and promote the scholarly use of the archive, housed in the University Library’s Special Collections since 1968.
Changing times
By a two-to-one margin, members of UCSC’s Academic Senate in 1997 approved a proposal that would permit students to request letter grades, providing students with more options while retaining the Narrative Evaluation System.
Growing campus
Music and marine additions
The campus expanded during this decade with new buildings and facilities including the $21 million Music Center in 1997; the nation’s first oiled wildlife center, also in 1997; a $19.4 million state-of-the-art research laboratory for the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Center for Ocean Health in 1998.
Seymour Center
In 2000, the Seymour Marine Discovery Center, a new public education center at Long Marine Laboratory, was formally dedicated in a ceremony that honored donors H. Boyd Seymour Jr. and his family in recognition of their $2 million cornerstone gift.
Degrees, departments, and institutes
A view from the back of the stage toward the audience at the 1997 Fall Convocation at the Quarry Amphitheater
New degrees and majors sprang to life as UC Santa Cruz expanded its academic offerings, including the electrical engineering major, the undergraduate degree in business management economics, and the bachelor of music degree in 1997.
In 1999 the campus launched a new doctoral program in politics.
In 2003 came the first master of fine arts degree program in digital arts/new media.
The Department of Biomolecular Engineering was established in 2004 within the Baskin School of Engineering. That year also saw a new master’s program in social documentation. In addition, UCSC became the first UC campus to offer a doctorate of musical arts (D.M.A.) program in music composition.
The Institute for Humanities Research (now The Humanities Institute) was created in 1999 to support humanities faculty and graduate student research and academic programming.
Leadership shifts
M.R.C. Greenwood takes the helm
In a traditional academic ceremony in the Upper Quarry Amphitheater, M.R.C. Greenwood was inaugurated as the seventh chancellor of UC Santa Cruz in 1997, succeeding Chancellor Karl Pister and becoming the first woman to serve as chancellor.
An acting and then a new chancellor
Martin M. Chemers—provost and executive vice chancellor—was appointed acting chancellor of UC Santa Cruz in 2004. The appointment became effective the same day UCSC Chancellor M.R.C. Greenwood assumed her new role as provost and senior vice president of the UC system. Denice Dee Denton, dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Washington, was appointed the ninth chancellor of UC Santa Cruz that same year.
Significant recognitions
Alumna Laurie Garrett received the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism for a series of articles in Newsday about the 1995 outbreak of the ebola virus in Zaire. In 1997, Santa Rosa Press Democrat photographer Annie Wells won the prize for spot news photography. And in 2000, Martha Mendoza (Kresge, ’88, independent major, journalism and education) won her first Pulitzer as part of an Associated Press news team that revealed the slaughter by American soldiers of hundreds of civilians at the No Gun Ri bridge early in the Korean War; she would go on to win the prize again in 2016.
Enduring legacies
UCSC lost two key figures in 1998. Dean E. McHenry, founding chancellor, died at 87. And Kenneth S. Norris, acclaimed marine-mammal researcher, founder of the University of California Natural Reserve System, and beloved teacher of natural history, died at 74.