Click to expand. Illustration by Louise Leong.

UCSC welcomes two new majors, a minor and a program this quarter. Some fields of study already existed, while others are completely fresh to the campus’ academic offerings.

1. Dance Minor

UC Santa Cruz students can now declare a minor in dance. Demonstrated student interest in focused studies and the lasting stronghold of several dance clubs and annual performances at UCSC contributed to its approval. Associate professor of dance Ted Warburton said he has long felt the need for a stronger dance community on campus.

“There are dance pockets everywhere,” Warburton said. “A lot of students would come to me saying, ‘We have a body of knowledge, and we want credit for what we are doing!’”

Currently the minor consists of pre-existing courses and focuses on cross-cultural technique and theory. Warburton said he believes student response could go many different ways and is expecting to adapt the minor to suit their growing interests.

Previously, dance classes had either been taken as part of the theater major, for GE credit or for fun.

Chelsea Moreno, a fourth-year molecular biology major, said she thinks it will benefit the campus community.

“Getting involved with the dance program at UCSC has basically been based on who you know,” Moreno said. “Having a minor in dance, with structure, will make it easier for students to get involved.”

An informational meeting will be held this Friday regarding the minor.

2. Robotics Engineering; Network and Digital Technology

Robotics engineering and networking and digital technology are the newest engineering majors available at UC Santa Cruz.

A robotics and control emphasis already exists in the computer engineering major and some students may transfer to the robotics engineering major, said computer engineering professor Martine Schlag.

“There’s a lot of interest from our little corner of the world … We think we’re going to start attracting a lot more people than expected,” said computer engineering professor Gabriel Elkaim.

The creation of the major did not require any additional funding, and Elkaim said they are “leveraging” everything they have. One course was added to the division and the major has 14 pre-majors.

Second-year robotics engineering major Pavlo Manovi said electrical engineering and computer engineering, which are already majors at UCSC, are necessary to work in this industry.

“You need to have a relationship between the two and robotics engineering does that,” Manovi said.

Network and digital technology was approved on the very last day of spring quarter.

“This degree is intended for students who have an interest in the technology, but don’t aspire to be engineers,” said computer engineering chair J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves in an article on the UCSC webpage. “They won’t be building computer systems, but they will understand systems and networks and will be prepared to work in teams with engineers.”

3. Sikh and Punjabi Studies

Sikh and Punjabi studies pulls on different UC Santa Cruz divisions as economics professor Nirvikar Singh holds the humanities program’s Sarbjit Singh Aurora endowed chair.

The chair, awarded to Singh in March 2011, will sponsor the “Sikh and Punjabi Studies: Achievements and New Directions” conference in November.

Thirty-four students are participating in the new program this quarter by taking its first class, “Introduction to the Sikhs,” which Singh teaches on top of his regular load of economics classes.

“I wanted to get [the class] started for a direct impact on the students,” Singh said.

Singh called on students to help him shape the program, and some are taking their own initiative. Third-year Harbir Mahal is creating a website for the whole Sikh community at UCSC, and is enrolled in the course.

“There’s so many religions within India,” Mahal said. “It’ll be good for people to learn about [Sikhism] and hopefully it’ll clear up misconceptions and stereotypes.”

“It’s so mundane,” he said. “You walk past it and don’t even think about it.”

Professor Richard Hughey explains the new robotics major’s function within the university’s engineering majors. Photo by Nick Paris.

Elkaim is a leading professor in UC Santa Cruz’s new robotics engineering major, which stems from the current computer sciences, computer engineering and electrical engineering programs. Students will be able to declare the robotics engineering major starting in fall 2011.

“Computer engineering has always been about designing things that do things,” said Richard Hughey, a computer engineering professor. “We’ve been expanding to computer networks. It was a very natural fit.”

Working within the robotics and control concentration or its predecessor, autonomous systems, are 43 of 129 computer engineering students, Hughey said. The new robotics engineering major will give these students a chance to earn a degree in this field rather than just a concentration.

“It very rapidly became our most popular concentration,” he said. “We thought, ‘Hey, we should do something for these students.’”

The formation of the robotics engineering major is at least eight years in the making.

“I was hired [in 2003] because they wanted a bigger robot emphasis,” said Elkaim, who teaches Introduction to Mechatronics, a class in which students build a robot in a 10-week quarter.

Hughey was computer engineering chair at the time and helped build the robotics engineering program. He said the biggest investment was hiring three core faculty members: Elkaim and computer engineering instructors William Dunbar and Jacob Rosen.

Elkaim holds “The Slugs Autopilot,” a device that controls unmanned automotive vehicles, or UAVs. Photo by Toby Silverman.

Hughey cited UCSC’s role as a research institution as a source of major strength behind the new major.

“Of course, the reason for going to a research university is because of the way research winds up in the classroom, putting courses on the forefront of — in this case — robotics technology,” Hughey said, “and because of the opportunities that faculty research produces for undergraduate and graduate lab work.”

Computer engineering professor Dunbar is teaching the only class that was added to the department’s course list with the new major: Introduction to Strength of Materials, CE-115. In Dunbar’s class, students learn about the balance of forces in the materials used to build robots. Using courses already offered by the computer engineering department allows the program to keep additional costs down, but Dunbar says that CE-115 was added to the course list because it teaches students crucial information.

“There’s no class like it here because there’s no mechanical engineering major,” Dunbar said.

Despite the creation of the new major, the engineering department is not unaffected by the budget cuts. Over the past three years, engineering faced $1.5 million in budget cuts and is looking at an additional $800,000 in cuts this year.

“The primary effect of this so far on the curriculum, and the robotics major specifically, has been the canceling of planned hires in robotics (starting about three years ago),” Hughey said in an email.

With few faculty members, students have few opportunities to participate in research and labs.

Computer engineering is making changes to afford the creation of a new major.

“We have been reducing the number of graduate seminars we can offer, as well as dropping the two-unit ‘Intro to CE’ course we used to do,” Hughey said in an email.

The department is also hiring for fewer, if any, positions in the next few years to adjust to the diminishing budget.

After giving it some thought, Elkaim is “unconcerned” for the students when he considers the intensity of the curriculum.

“We were a little worried at first,” he said. “We only have four years to teach this. It’s become one of the harder majors, and we were afraid that’d scare students away. But it had the opposite effect.”

Illustration by Rachel Edelstein.

Alumni Awarded for Journalism

UC Santa Cruz alumni Dana Priest and Richard Harris were recently given awards for their work in investigative journalism. Long Island University awarded Priest, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, with her second George Polk Award for National Reporting. In Washington, D.C., the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) presented Harris, a Crown College alumnus, with a 2010 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award.

Harris, a National Public Radio science correspondent and UCSC graduate in biology, accepted his award on Feb. 19. His investigation of the BP oil spill prompted the formation of a federal panel to examine the Gulf of Mexico.

Senior editor Janet Raloff of Science News said Harris’ reporting on the Gulf oil spill is “important and ground-breaking.”

Kavli Science Journalism Award winners receive $3,000 and a plaque at the AAAS Annual Meeting.

Priest, a former Merrill student and City on a Hill Press alumna, received the award with fellow Washington Post reporter William M. Arkin for their story “Top Secret America.” The report uncovered the vast and growing network of national security and intelligence systems after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

2010 George Polk winners will receive their awards at a luncheon at The Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan on April 7.

Priest and Arkin found counter-terrorism and homeland security involvement in over 10,000 locations across the United States, where some 854,000 people have top-secret security clearances to work on issues for 1,271 government organizations and almost 2,000 private companies.

Both Priest and Harris previously received UC Santa Cruz Alumni Achievement Awards. Priest received her UCSC AA award in 2008, Harris in 2010.

Priest said that formal experience is not essential to success as a professional journalism and offered advice to aspiring journalists.

“I still have never taken a class in journalism,” Priest said. “My advice would be to get out of the office or behind your desk or behind your computer and go immerse yourself in somebody’s world where you would ordinarily never be.”

$1 Million Donation to Baskin School of Engineering

Philanthropists Jack and Peggy Downes Baskin have donated $1 million to the School of Engineering at UC Santa Cruz to create a graduate student support fund, Chancellor George Blumenthal announced at the UCSC’s annual fundraising gala on Saturday.

“This new gift establishes the Jack Baskin and Peggy Downes Baskin Fellowships — the largest fund for graduate-student support in the history of the campus,” Blumenthal said at the benefit dinner.

The nearly 350 attendees raised an additional $160,000 plus to directly aid undergraduate student scholarships.

Jack Baskin has a long history of contributions to UCSC. He gave his first donation of $1 million to open a computer engineering program in 1983. Baskin’s support for the School of Engineering now amounts to more than $9 million.

Student Regent Responds to Sexual Battery Charge

UC student regent Jesse Cheng was arrested on Nov. 4 based on the accusation that he committed sexual battery. Charges were not filed, but his case was forwarded to the Orange County District Attorney for investigation. Cheng issued a statement on Feb. 21, detailing his point of view.

As reported by the Daily Cal, the Orange County D.A. rejected this case due to lack of “corroborating evidence.”

The UC Irvine student was accused by his ex-girlfriend, who claimed the act took place in October of last year. So far, her claims have not been substantiated by evidence, Cheng said.

“I think overall, about the case, it’s important — I’m innocent,” Cheng said. “The D.A. never filed any charges. I’m innocent.”

Cheng’s ex-girlfriend, whom Cheng dated for about a year, offered evidence to the police. However, none of that evidence proved him guilty, so he remains innocent, Cheng said.

The case does not affect Cheng’s standing as a UC student regent. And although UC Irvine lists dismissal from the university among the possible repercussions for committing sexual battery, Cheng will continue his studies there unless he is convicted.

Despite the ensuing threat toward Cheng’s good standing, he maintains his everyday duties as a student regent.

“Right now, I’m just continuing with my student regent work,” he said.

He said that the case is coming to an end, maintaining that he is not at fault.

“The case is over,” Cheng said. “The case is closed.”

The 2010 Global Game Jam, an annual indie game competition that challenges teams from across the nation to develop an innovative game in just 48 hours, is going on right now. Yes, like right now.

Even better, UC Santa Cruz has a delegation representing the good ol’ Banana Slugs. Yay! You can head over to http://www.ustream.tv/channel/global-game-jam-santa-cruz to watch them live. UCSC is just one of 138 locations across the globe participating in the event.

With so much competition, they need our support! So head on over and cheer ‘em on. The jam ends at 4 p.m. Sunday.

If you’re curious to learn more about the GGJ and to watch teams across the world live, check out the links below.

Global Game Jam at UCSC [UCSC SoE]
Global Site for the GGJ [IGDA]