First Year at Santa Cruz

In an evergreen-fringed limestone quarry, not far from the 65 trailers that house most of its 652 students, the new Santa Cruz campus of the University of California last week inaugurated its first chancellor. He is Dean E. McHenry, 55, who has been dreaming about the Santa Cruz ideal of "a collegiate university" for 30 years and helped create it as acting chancellor for five. Finally, he decided to "give in and take the job."

The first class is nearing the end of its freshman year at Cowell College, the pattern setter of as many as 20 colleges planned for Santa Cruz to handle an eventual enrollment of 27,500, on what California President Clark Kerr calls a campus that "will seem small as it grows large." Right now, it seems only too small. While dormitories for Cowell near completion, students are jammed eight to each 58-ft. trailer, where, says one, "If you don't like your roommates, it's sheer hell." They file in long lines past a trailer steam kitchen to load cafeteria trays, eat in a field house. But the administration building is finished, classes are being held in the natural sciences building, and a second college, named for Adlai E. Stevenson, will open next fall.

Known by Name. With student cars banned on the campus, some students grumble about their isolation. Most students, however, appreciate the beauty of the rolling, rocky site, which rises from a grassy plain to craggy hills overlooking Monterey Bay. Students ride bikes, wear khakis and Bermuda shorts, enjoy a warm informality with their teachers. "I can walk around here and call half the people by name," says bearded Freshman Harris Freeman, "and that to me is worth more than all the cultural advantages of a big university."

The faculty may be even more enthusiastic about Santa Cruz than the kids. Creating a new campus, says Director of Academic Planning Byron Stookey Jr., is "a little like finding yourself on the beach, alone, with a beautiful girl and a full moon on a warm night--there is great opportunity, but you must make the very most of the opportunity." In an ingenious device to keep the teaching and research duties of the faculty in balance, teachers draw half their pay from their college, half from campus-wide "boards of studies" that supervise their academic fields.

Santa Cruz accents independent study and interdisciplinary courses. The faculty focuses on a two-year course in arts, humanities and social sciences called "World Civilization." A course on "The Nature of Science," which starts with the universe and narrows down to molecules, leads some faculty members, says McHenry, "to learn as much as they teach."

No Spanking Machine. Most faculty debate so far has centered upon a system of awarding only "pass" or "fail" grades to students. Since Santa Cruz draws students only from the top eighth of high school classes, McHenry doubts that "we need to put them through the spanking machine, impose the fear of flunking, or a C or a D, on them." At present, students will need 36 "pass" grades in their four years to graduate. They also get written evaluations from teachers in the smaller classes and "honors," "pass" or "fail" grades on comprehensive examinations and theses. The whole system is up for review by the university's academic senate.

McHenry feels that Santa Cruz is off to a fine start. He regrets that about 10% of his students "aren't mature enough" to handle the lack of grade pressure, tend "to drink beer and horse around." He says they must be culled out next year. The best indication of the optimism about the Santa Cruz experiment is that some 4,000 teachers have applied for jobs there, and more than 2,100 students have applied for the 475 positions in next year's freshman class.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.