Quick Take
UC Santa Cruz’s famed residential college system is not disappearing — it remains central to the university’s identity and mission, writes Paul Koch, interim campus provost and executive vice chancellor. But as the campus grows and changes, the colleges must evolve to better serve today’s students, he writes. He argues that new staffing models will strengthen, not weaken, the system and explains how a broad community conversation on the colleges will continue into the next academic year. The challenge, he insists, is preserving what makes the colleges special while creating a roadmap for their future.
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The residential college system at UC Santa Cruz has always been and is still central to our campus identity. Assertions that the colleges are being diminished are false.
But the colleges are changing, as is our student body. Our student body is now larger, more diverse, and – in many cases – navigating different, perhaps even greater, challenges than at any point in our history.
UC Santa Cruz opened in 1965 with a bold vision — that academic and residential life could be integrated through living and learning communities. The post-World War II baby boom and rapid expansion of federally and state-supported research created large universities where students could struggle to find their way. To combat that alienation and create a sense of belonging, UC Santa Cruz launched as a campus where small cohorts of students began their academic journey by living in their college and having dedicated instructors who both delivered academic programs and supported student life experiences.
From the four original colleges that opened between 1965 and 1968 — Cowell, Stevenson, Crown and Merrill — to our present 10, that vision continues, even as UC Santa Cruz has emerged as a world-class public research university.
To ensure the future of the college system, we have begun a broad conversation about how the campus, especially our students and faculty, sees the system evolving over the next decade and beyond. The college system has shifted and morphed over decades in response to decisions big and small. But nearly three decades have passed since we have deeply engaged the full campus faculty in exploring hard questions about how our colleges can best serve students. The landscape of higher education, and our own campus, has changed enormously since then.
This winter and spring, we have been reaching out to and meeting with faculty in departments across campus, seeking to reintroduce them to our own college system and to provide information about the different possible roles residential colleges can play in the successful educational journey of students. This fall, that outreach to department faculty will continue, but we’ll also be talking with students, lecturers and staff members in the colleges, and alumni.
As those big-picture, campuswide discussions are happening, there are some decisions we need to make sooner to align with the academic calendar and prepare for fall quarter. Let me share what we’re doing and why.
Starting this summer, for the first time, a provost will lead two colleges and take on a full-time faculty administrator role. Previously, provosts served on a part-time basis — a significant commitment, but one that necessarily divided attention between the teaching and research they did as members of their departments, administering the college, and serving the campus. By elevating the position of provost to a full-time appointment with dedicated focus, we are asking more of our provosts in the best possible way; more presence, more engagement with students and affiliated faculty in our many departments, and more capacity to shape the student experience.
This model reflects our belief that the provost role is important and worthy of full investment. It is an elevation of the college provost role.
At the same time, we have been working to strengthen the staff structures that support student life across our colleges. The goal of this work is to clarify roles, reduce duplication and make sure every person working in college-based student support is having the greatest possible impact.
We continue to invest in and value the college elective curriculum, which offers courses that support experiential learning, student success and interdisciplinary innovation. These courses are accessible to students from all colleges and majors, enriching and complementing each student’s disciplinary coursework.
As a whole, this effort is about ensuring that what students receive from their college experience is consistent, intentional and effective in supporting their academic goals and achievements.
The campuswide conversation will define the shape of the UC Santa Cruz college system for the decade to come.
But the campus and wider community should know how much we treasure our college system. We will honor what it has been and, for the first time in decades, provide a commonly understood roadmap for its future.
Paul Koch is interim campus provost and executive vice chancellor at UC Santa Cruz. A distinguished professor of Earth and planetary sciences, he joined the campus in 1996, serving as dean of the Division of Physical and Biological Sciences from 2011 to 2023.
