September 24, 1998
Contact: Jim Burns (831) 459-2495

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Back to school activities begin Sept. 25 at UCSC

First day of instruction is Thursday, October 1

Editor's Advisory

SANTA CRUZ, CA--The first day of classes in the 1998-99 school year at UC Santa Cruz is Thursday, October 1. Students, however, will be moving into on-campus housing at UCSC on Friday, September 25, and Saturday, September 26. To assist you in your coverage of the new school year, the following information is provided:

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.

Contact:

* UCSC administrators are available for phone or in-person interviews to discuss the campus's first-day enrollment projections, the entering class, and other "back-to-school" subjects. To schedule an interview, please call UCSC's Public Information Office at 459-2495 (weekdays, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.). Reporters or photographers wishing to cover move-in activities on Saturday, September 26, may leave a message for Elizabeth Irwin at 459-5226 before 11 a.m. that day.

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