The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California, United States. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey Bay, on the edge of the coastal community of Santa Cruz, the main campus lies on 2,001 acres (810 ha) of rolling, forested hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean. As of Fall 2023, its ten residential colleges enroll some 17,812 undergraduate and 1,952 graduate students. Satellite facilities in other Santa Cruz locations include the Coastal Science Campus and the Westside Research Park and the Silicon Valley Center in Santa Clara, along with administrative control of the Lick Observatory near San Jose in the Diablo Range and the Keck Observatory near the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Founded in 1965, UC Santa Cruz began with the intention to showcase progressive, cross-disciplinary undergraduate education, innovative teaching methods and contemporary architecture. The residential college system consists of ten small colleges that were established as a variation of the Oxbridge collegiate university system. Among the faculty are Nobel Prize laureates, Rhodes Scholars, Fulbright Scholars, Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences recipients, 16 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 29 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and 46 members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. UC Santa Cruz alumni includes ten Pulitzer Prize winners, with a total of 12 Pulitzers awarded, seven MacArthur 'genius' Awards fellows, Rhodes Scholars, Fulbright Scholars, and Marshall Scholars, amongst others. UC Santa Cruz is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". The university is also a member of the Association of American Universities. Source: Wikipedia (en)