September 28, 1998
UC Santa Cruz's 1998-99 academic year commences with 'move in' weekend
First day of instruction is Thursday, October 1
By Jim Burns
The first day of classes in the 1998-99 school
year at UC Santa Cruz is Thursday, October 1. Students, however,
began moving into on-campus housing at UCSC on Friday,
September 25.
Here are some facts and figures about this year's student body, what
the campus is doing to house students, and the new academic programs
the campus is offering:
Enrollment:
-
UCSC is expecting an opening-day enrollment of
approximately 10,850 students, 212 more students than were
officially enrolled last fall (10,638). (Enrollment totals become
official following the third week of instruction.) Of the 10,850
students, approximately 9,800 are expected to be undergraduates;
1,050, enrolled in graduate studies.
-
Of the undergraduates expected to enroll, approximately
3,250 will be new students (freshmen and transfer students).
These 3,250 new undergraduates were admitted from among
17,400 applicants for undergraduate admission.
Profile of New Freshmen:
-
Approximately 2,400 of the 3,250 new undergraduates
expected will be freshmen.
-
Of those 2,400, approximately 500--a 24 percent increase
over last year's freshman class--will be from ethnic groups
underrepresented in the University of California: African
American, Chicano, Filipino, American Indian, and Latino. In
addition, approximately 400 of this year's expected freshmen
identified themselves as Asian/Asian American or
Filipino/Filipino American, compared to 350 last fall; although not
underrepresented in the UC system, these ethnicities are
underrepresented at UCSC.
-
The two most popular majors among freshmen who have
already declared are psychology (183) and biology (171). The Jack
Baskin School of Engineering, beginning its second fall, attracted
262 freshmen who declared in the following majors: computer
science (158), computer engineering (72), and electrical
engineering (32).
-
Nearly one-half (43 percent) of the expected freshmen come
from the San Francisco Bay Area (28.5 percent) and the Monterey
Bay-Silicon Valley (14.5 percent).
-
The freshman class will include 34 Regents Scholars,
students whose academic achievements in high school qualified
them for the University of California's most prestigious
scholarship. (Ten other new students, transferring to UCSC this
fall, qualified for the same scholarship; among new and continuing
students, UCSC's student body now includes 145 Regents Scholars.)
Housing UCSC Students:
-
To help offset a shortage of rental housing in the
surrounding community, UCSC has added 323 new "bed spaces" to
its on-campus housing total this year, exceeding the expected
increase of 212 in the student body. The additional spaces have
come from reconfiguring existing housing.
-
This fall, UCSC will be providing on-campus housing space
for 5,112 of its students, or about 47 percent, by far the highest
percentage in the UC system.
-
In addition, UCSC is breaking ground this fall on a new
apartment complex north of the College Nine and Ten Academic
Buildings that will house 280 undergraduates beginning in fall
1999.
New Programs for UCSC Students:
-
The School of Engineering has teamed with the Social
Sciences Division to create a new major in information systems
management (ISM). The ISM major will begin admitting students
this fall. Developed jointly by the Computer Science and Economics
Departments, the new major is designed to provide students with
a combination of business, technical, and communications skills.
-
This will be the first fall that UCSC has offered an
undergraduate degree in business management economics. The
program combines the strong analytic approach of economics with
the technical aspects of management. It emphasizes the use of
computing skills in the analysis of economic, statistical, and
financial data, as well as the development of important
communication skills.
-
UCSC's film and video program recently attained
department status. Film and video, one of the campus's fastest
growing majors, had been affiliated with the Theater Arts
Department.
-
Beginning this fall, UCSC students will be able to earn a
degree in German studies. Administered by the History
Department, the major emphasizes an interdisciplinary approach--encompassing existing academic offerings in literature, politics,
history of consciousness, philosophy, art history, women's studies,
and language studies.
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