Annual report 2023-2024

Letter from the Chancellor

UC Santa Cruz continues on its remarkable trajectory. Over our nearly 60-year history, we have established a track record of groundbreaking multidisciplinary research, high-level teaching, distinguished scholarship, and creativity. We have also built a well-deserved reputation as an institution that works to advance innovation and social justice in all that we do. 

As a preeminent public research university and minority-serving institution centered on student success, we are serving California and the nation through our teaching, discovery, innovation, and entrepreneurship, and by educating the next generation of leaders and changemakers.

The past year has given us countless reasons to take pride in UC Santa Cruz, and this report highlights some of the work that demonstrates how we are creating lasting change. Individually, they are examples of talent, collaboration, and dedication to our campus values; taken together, they reflect a university with tremendous forward momentum.

After finalizing Leading the Change: The UC Santa Cruz Strategic Plan, we charged campus leaders with implementing projects and initiatives that would advance the campus across the plan’s five themes. I am thrilled to see our early progress in working toward this 10-year plan. Together, we will realize this collective vision for UC Santa Cruz. 

Our Center for Coastal Climate Resilience cemented itself as an important voice in global efforts to combat the effects of climate change, while our faculty, staff, and students workingwith the James Webb Space Telescope made amazing discoveries that advanced our collective understanding of the distant universe. The talents, energy, and determination of our Banana Slug community continue to amaze me.

Closer to home, we made great strides in our efforts to provide more student housing, opening new residential halls at Kresge College; working with local community college Cabrillo College to secure state funding for a joint housing project in Aptos; and breaking ground on a new housing community for students with families, complete with an expanded, modern child-care center. These projects and others have us on track to meet our ambitious goal to provide more than 40 percent additional student housing by 2030.

I am deeply proud of all that UC Santa Cruz achieved over the past year and energized by what we will do next in support of our goals to advance student success; increase our research impact; foster an inclusive campus climate; and increase our efficiency, effectiveness, resilience, and sustainability. Go Slugs!

Sincerely, 

Cynthia Larive
Chancellor