Illustration by Molly Keller. Courtesy of Liz Broughton.

The two different fields of art and science come together through a process called science illustration. Science illustration combines both by giving artists a chance to teach others about science through their artwork. This may involve drawing rare specimens, designing maps displaying the distribution of species, developing 3-D models and more. The Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History (SCMNH) allows artists to teach their work as science illustrators through “The Art of Nature.”

The 24th annual series of “The Art of Nature” is coming back to SCMNH on April 6. The program, originally called “Illustrating Nature,” used to display work from the graduating classes of UC Santa Cruz’s science illustration program before it moved to CSU Monterey Bay. Now it displays artwork from the California Guild of Natural Science Illustrators (GNSI), a nonprofit organization of people who are employed or interested in the field of natural science illustration. The guild provides professional and scholarly development and holds events that teach the public about the field.

Liz Broughton, the museum’s visitor services manager, said “The Art of Nature” is one of the most popular exhibits every year.

“Scientific illustration is really a great marriage of both science and the arts,” she said, “It’s really a way of conveying scientific information through images. It’s an important tool to scientists because it can sometimes show details that aren’t readily visible in a photograph per se, or it can bring to life the skeletal anatomy that you can’t see from looking at an animal. It can bring to life things that don’t exist anymore, that are extinct.”

The exhibit will provide information on the tools and techniques used to create the artwork, hands-on stations where visitors themselves can create museum specimens, and stations where visitors can classify the different museum specimens. These activities will be among over 40 pieces of artwork from about 20 different artists until June 9.

One of these artists is Sondra Cohelan, a UCSC alumna and graduate of the science communication program. Cohelan has sent in work to SCNHM’s annual exhibit since 1999, and her interest in science illustration stemmed when she first attended the exhibit.

“I graduated from UCSC with a major in art and I really loved going to exhibits,” she said, “I learned about the exhibit of natural science illustration at SCNHM and went over and saw the amazing work which was produced and just fell in love with it.”

This year Cohelan sent in three pieces of art, one being a recreation of a Towhee nest, called “A Garden Gift.”

“One of the ladies I draw with found a nest in the yard and it was a beautiful nest,” she said, “It had a beautiful feather coming out of it’s side on the top and I thought, ‘Wow, I wonder if I can put that down on paper and make it look real.’ So it was a challenge to produce.”

Cissy Freeman, a Santa Cruz resident and freelance artist, found the nest for Cohelan’s “A Garden Gift” piece. Freeman has been involved with the GNSI since 1995 and has three California native plant pieces in the exhibit.

“I like doing California natives because it fits with my concern about the natural environment and preserving native plants,” Freeman said.

One of the native plants Freeman worked with was coffeeberry. She clipped branches of coffeeberry, drew preliminary drawings from different angles, put together the parts she liked and transferred the drawing to a watercolor painting.

While Freeman said her artwork is more traditional, there will be other pieces at the exhibit that are computer generated. Freeman said visitors will see a whole range of the way artists work in the field.

“What everything will have in common is a concern with detail, combining accuracy with aesthetics, and producing something beautiful,” she said.

“The Art of Nature” will be open April 6 – June 9. Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m to 5 p.m. Admission is $2 for students, $4 for the general public, and free for those under 18.

Illustrations by Christine Hipp

In the original print version of this story, Mary-Claire King’s name was spelled Mary Clair King. This was corrected for this online version.

When UC Santa Cruz researchers and graduate students published on July 7, 2000 the first record of a person’s whole DNA sequence, or genome, the field of genomics was still young. Utilizing a UCSC designed online DNA database, this international effort cost over $100 million and was known as the Human Genome Project (HGP).

That project changed the world.

“[The HGP] is the first time that humanity got its glimpse of the DNA message that had been passed on for so many aeons,” said David Haussler, UCSC professor of biomolecular engineering and director of The Center for Biomolecular Science and Engineering. Haussler introduced “Genomics Gets Personal: Property, Persons, and Privacy,” a recent panel on genomics which took place at UC San Francisco on Sept. 27.

Hosted by UCSC, panelists discussed the use of genetic information and its effects on society today.

Haussler was at the center of UCSC’s research in the HGP and its success in providing free genomic information online. Since then, the speed and cost of sequencing, or decoding, the human genome code of four proteins — A, T, C and G — has improved exponentially.

“The field of genomics and personalized medicine is moving at an extraordinary rate,” Haussler said. “What cost 12 years ago [an] excess of $100 million next year will cost $1,000. One hundred thousand times improvement in little over a decade … the social implications of that are enormous.”

Since the HGP, which was officially completed in 2003, UCSC has continued its renowned work in genomics, coming out with world famous research and technology including the Cancer Genomics Hub (CGHub), a database developed by Haussler to store genomes of cancerous tumors to better understand what causes different types of cancer and how to treat them.

“Genomics is a huge subject at UCSC,” said Brandon Allgood, UCSC alumnus and director of computational science at Numerate Inc., a drug design and technology company. “It is a world leader in some respects.”

Allgood said one of the reasons for the university’s leading role in the field is its commitment to interdisciplinary studies, especially between the sciences and social sciences. Jenny Reardon is at the forefront of connecting those subjects.

Reardon is a faculty affiliate of the UCSC Center for Biomolecular Science and Engineering (CBSE) and the creator and co-director of the Science and Justice Research Center at UCSC, a community dedicated to bridging the gap between the sciences, social sciences and humanities. She is the author of “Race to the Finish: Identity and Governance in an Age of Genomics,” which covers the history and controversies that encircled one of the most controversial social issues in genomics’ past, the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP).

Separate from the HGP, the HGDP aimed to record the genetic variation within the human species by sampling genetic information from isolated human populations. By researching isolated populations, researchers hoped to track humanity’s early movements and settlements to learn more about the origin of the human species, develop drugs specific to diseases affecting certain populations and to study the enormous amount of diversity that exists among humans.

The project was quickly challenged by indigenous groups who were concerned that their genetic information, separated and categorized, would be misused in a way that would have a negative impact on indigenous communities. Justified by a history of past oppression and inequality, many indigenous peoples were concerned with the HGDP’s overall mission, communication efforts, as well as other concerns.

“In the long history of destruction which has accompanied western colonization we have come to realize that the agenda of the non-indigenous forces has been to appropriate and manipulate the natural order for the purposes of profit, power and control,” wrote members of the Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism, a meeting of indigenous leaders from the United States, several Central and South American countries and Canada, according to the Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism’s website. “We particularly oppose the HGD Project which intends to collect, and make available our genetic materials which may be used for commercial, scientific, and military purposes … We hold that life cannot be bought, owned, sold, discovered or patented, even in its smallest form.”

Reardon said the project came under scrutiny for, among other things, biocolonialism and racism.

“It was called the vampire project, a project interested in sucking the blood of indigenous people more than it was interested in their livelihood,” Reardon said, acknowledging the painful history of colonialism and eugenics, the widely rejected practice of promoting certain people or traits and rejecting, sometimes violently, less desirable people or traits. “The trauma of the past has been strong.”

Reardon said this was not the intention of the scientists involved and that the scientific community has worked hard to address these concerns.

“These well meaning scientists, many of whom, like Mary-Claire King, were committed to issues of human rights. Bob Cook-Deegan was a member of Doctors Without Borders,” Reardon said.

Illustrations by Christine Hipp

Robert Cook-Deegan is a research professor in genome ethics and law and policy at Duke University and author of “The Gene Wars: Science, Politics and the Human Genome.” When the HGDP first began, Cook-Deegan played a major role in the project and in one of its first controversial encounters with society.

“We made one pretty big mistake in the original paper that proposed doing what became known as the HGDP,” Cook-Deegan said. “I think I’m the person who put the term ‘vanishing opportunity’ into the title of that paper, and in retrospect that was a pretty stupid turn of phrase.”

Cook-Deegan said it was unintentional that the term implied that collecting data from dying populations was more important than actually helping them survive.

“The foreseeable consequence of that terminology ‘vanishing opportunity,’ was that [people thought we believed] it was more important to study human origins than to right the wrongs and to focus on human rights. And of course we don’t believe that, but we didn’t explicitly say that, and we should have,” Cook-Deegan said. “I did view that as a mistake.”

Even as the field of genomics still reels from its controversial past, it continues to pervade society and bring to light new concerns.

With the completion of the Human Genome Project, the cost of sequencing genomes dramatically decreased as technology became cheaper, faster and better. This has allowed more and more data to pour in, but one of the biggest questions posed at the panel and that genomics faces today is: who gets to look at all that information? Should it be exclusive to the experts or be open to everyone?

“There are two philosophies,” said Cook-Deegan, who was one of the four panelists. “One is, share only the stuff that we kind of know how to interpret now, and that is under the framework of ‘this is a great big genetic test’ … People who are used to the way of the web, and the way that we think about information now don’t like that because there is an intermediary there who is deciding what information is shared with the individual.”

Ryan Phelan, another panelist and the creator of DNA Direct and founder of Direct Medical Knowledge, what became the backbone to the online medical site, WebMD, said people have never had open access to information in such a way.

“What has happened is the internet. What took 30 years to get WebMD to be ubiquitous, it is now going to take us 5–10 years to get genomic information ubiquitous,” Phelan said. “There’s a whole continuum here of information to the patient, to the doctor, for decision making or for research.”

Panelist Gail Jarvik, the head of the department of medical genetics at the University of Washington School of Medicine, said in her experience, access to uncertain or unknown genetic information can be harmful to patients.

“I have had very unhappy experiences with just giving people variants of uncertain significance back for breast cancer and having their doctor decide to take off their breast,” Jarvik said. “Even though I very specifically said, this is likely to be benign, I don’t think this is a breast cancer causing mutation, the doctors say well you have breast cancer, you have a mutation in your breast cancer gene, off with your breast.”

However, John Wilbanks, a panelist who runs the Consent to Research Project, which gives people an easy way to donate their health data to a database for researchers to use and analyze, said although there will be mistakes as genomics moves forward, the data will be public with or without the consent of experts.

“As people who are sick or have family members who are sick can access these technologies outside of the institution, they’re going to,” Wilbanks said. “A lot of bad decisions are going to be made as a result of that but if you are not part of the existing clinical research system anyway, this is a ray of hope.”

More progress can be made by making genomic data easy to donate and available to the public on free databases, Wilbanks said, than by allowing only a select few scientists to access it.

However the information is accessed, there is money to be made in the future of genomics. Drug companies are already scrambling to get ready to provide customers with sequencing technology and drugs developed to be effective for genomes.

Phelan spoke about the Chinese genome sequencing company BGI–Shenzhen’s acquisition of Complete Genomics, another genome sequencing company based in Silicon Valley. He said corporations are already bracing for the future of genomics.

“These are companies, large companies making big plays in the translation of these technologies into the consumer market,” Phelan said.

As far as the future of personalized genomics goes, Cook-Deegan said he is cautious about making predictions. People will get their genomes sequenced, but why? And what will happen to that information? That, he said, remains to be seen.

“We’ve got all these reasons [for getting our genes sequenced]. We’ve got pharmacogenetics as a reason, we’ve got ancestry as a reason, we’ve got genetic risk of a foreseeable condition as a reason to get your genome done, and you’ve also got the fact that it’s a cool thing to talk about at cocktail parties,” Cook-Deegan said. “That’s what’s driving it right now, but we’re going to move beyond that.”

As for the social issues, Haussler said there will continue to be important debates about how genomics can best be integrated into society.

“I can only do my research in the context of society,” Haussler said. “It is absolutely necessary that we have a social contract — that society understands the value of the research so that it is maintained, funded and enabled. A lot of this, from a society’s point of view depends on what the benefits of genetic research are. As those grow, I think that a compromise will become more obviously necessary. When personal genomes are really saving lives and really helping people live fuller, longer, better lives, healthier lives, compromises will be made on some of these social issues.”

Illustration by Leigh Douglas

Back in 1980, environmental advocate and childrens’ entertainer Raffi released the song “Baby Beluga.”

If it weren’t for Kavna — the beluga whale that was on display at the Vancouver Aquarium at the time — he might have never written the blissful ballad often associated with childhood memories today.

That was the ‘80s. Now, the impact of wildlife captivity for the sake of scientific research needs to be questioned.

In a recent proposal, the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta applied for a federal permit to import 18 beluga whales to be divided among a group of marine parks in the U.S.

The Georgia Aquarium’s proposal stated that marine parks needed the endangered whales for “captive breeding efforts, research and education.”

The marine parks involved with the proposed plan — and coincidentally the prices each park plans to pay for the whales — have not been released.

While the public display of marine life may be seen to have strict educational intentions, there is a conflict between captive research and the public display of wildlife for the purpose of entertainment.

The proposal may be beneficial for building a captive breeding population for the threatened species, but it fails to recognize the scientific importance of the belugas’ natural habitat.

According to National Geographic’s website, beluga whales are known to be extremely social mammals with complex migrational patterns. As acoustic communicators, beluga whales primarily travel in pods where social interaction is critical to the survival of the species.

Inability to provide an environment that will meet the needs of the animals may hinder any research aimed toward preventing the species from becoming endangered.

Only a natural habitat can facilitate this environment — and any effort toward replicating one in captivity is poised to fail.

The reasoning behind the Georgia Aquarium’s request does highlight a necessary effort to preserve the beluga whale species. But with so many factors working against the ability to replicate a suitable environment for the whales, the only effective aspect of the animals’ import would be for the sake of public display.

The New York Times reported that at least four of the nation’s largest marine parks currently invite visitors to “don wetsuits and pet or be nuzzled by the animals for $140 to $250.” The publication added that the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago also offers couples a “romantic wading experience that can culminate in a marriage proposal with Champagne, strawberries and the beluga as a de facto chaperon.”

Whether or not this sounds appealing, the species should not be imported solely for the purpose of public entertainment and inevitably flawed methods of research.

Educating the public about issues in the scientific community is just as important as solving them.

The displacement of animals from their natural habitats for the sake of flawed research not only detracts from the proposal’s intent of scientific research, but the education of animal behavior is critical to understanding wildlife as a whole.

Illustration by Louise Leong.

It doesn’t add up.

UC Santa Cruz, which is so focused on the sciences, ranking third in research influence according to the Times Higher Education World University Rankings in 2011, is taking little action to support the vastly outnumbered 15 percent of women earning bachelor’s degrees in the physics and engineering majors.

UCSC does have the group Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE), which reaches out to female and underrepresented students before and during college through networking, mentoring and outreach.

WiSE is a great resource, but it has had to weather budget cuts which have robbed it of its director of diversity recruitment and retention in the graduate division, Margaret Ortega, forcing the program to be mostly student-run.

Having robust resource groups like WiSE at UCSC is increasingly important, as the quality of K-12 science education declines. According to a study by the University of California, Berkeley, in 2011, 40 percent of elementary teachers said they spend only 60 minutes or less a week teaching science.

Without having positive learning experiences in the sciences, how are young girls, who tend to be pushed toward the humanities, supposed to become interested in science?

And it doesn’t get better after college. Not only is the professional world of science dominated by men, just as it is in college, but disturbing trends such as “brogrammers” in Silicon Valley make certain fields less inviting.

According to the Mother Jones’ article, “‘Gangbang Interviews’ and ‘Bikini Shots’: Silicon Valley’s Brogrammer Problem,” brogramming is a trend in the technology field that seeks to turn the generally nerdy image of a startup tech company to that of a rowdy fraternity. Such chauvinistic boys-club antics as using ads with young women in company T-shirts and underwear, and event perks like “friendly female waitstaff,” are used to recruit new (male) employees. Needless to say, these tactics are alienating women even more in a field whose culture can already be hard to identify with.

As Maria Klawe, president of Harvey Mudd College, said in the Mother Jones article, the sciences are putting out products intended for the general public, and if a whole gender is missing during creation, the product itself will suffer blind spots. Harvey Mudd College has made large changes to their program in the past few years to try to attract more women to the sciences, with success. Their female student enrollment has increased from 35.6 percent in 2008 to 41.9 percent in 2010, with a record high of 85 of the 201 incoming students (42.3 percent) being female.

Many of these “brogrammers” likely studied computer science, a major that only has a female population of 11% at UCSC. Had they been used to interacting with more women in scientific and engineering atmospheres before entering the workplace, they would surely be more aware of how they are treating their fellow female scientists. Better yet, perhaps more women would be starting their own tech companies.

It all goes back to encouraging women in academic settings. UCSC has the opportunity to supply its female scientists and engineers with a support system, resources during college, and a network of peers and mentors that will help them in the professional world.

College is a time of learning, forming connections, and shaping our own future and that of the field we work in. UCSC should put a vote in for women and make funding programs like WiSE a priority.

Professor Gliessman. Illustration by Leigh Douglas

For the past 30 years, UC Santa Cruz has offered resources for students interested in contributing to campus sustainability through programs like the Community Agroecology Network (CAN) and the Program in Community and Agroecology (PICA).

Within the UC system, these programs, which offer educational opportunities to students interested in everything from organic farming to social justice, are unique to UCSC — but that doesn’t mean they can’t fall victim to financial woes.

“The fact [these programs] exist on our campus shows you how much effort the students and the campus put into creating a better sustainable agroecological network for ourselves and our future communities,” said Kirsten Williams, fourth-year sociology major and development and events coordinator at the campus sustainability office.

The agroecology program at UCSC is a holistic and interdisciplinary program, drawing students from programs like environmental studies, community studies and the biological sciences for a common goal of contributing to campus sustainability.

The program was founded in 1982 by current agroecology professor Steve Gliessman, who also serves as the Alfred E. Heller Endow chair, a position that appropriates funds for university-affiliated programs like PICA.

However, the UC-wide budget crisis, in addition to Gliessman’s impending retirement from the university at the year’s end, has put the future funding of
undergraduate resource programs like CAN and PICA at risk.

“We aren’t free from larger budget problems,” said Andrew Holstedt, fourth-year environmental studies major and PICA intern. “A big issue is staff. For PICA, we’ve had to substantially decrease hours.”
As Gliessman plans to retire, future funding decisions for programs like CAN and PICA will be left to the incoming chair. Program funds collected from private donors are appropriated as the chair sees fit.

“I’ve used those funds for [agroecology programs] … I could have used [the funds] for research,” Gliessman said.

Both CAN and PICA offer classes that may be taken for credit, like “Environmental Education and Sustainability.” Additionally, the programs offer student-led seminars teaching sustainable living skills, and also host community meals, serving student-cultivated food organically grown on campus. Gliessman said programs like CAN and PICA have introduced students to a new approach called “action education.”
“You’re learning something in order to do something — to bring about change that is needed in society,” Gliessman said. “You’re not just learning facts. You’re learning skills that you can take out in the community and create change where it needs to happen.”

Alongside environmental concerns, social justice remains a significant issue within both programs. In addition to incorporating organic gardening practices on campus, the programs advocate the development of direct farmer-to-consumer relationships with food producers, such as coffee growers in Central America.
“We try to create as many opportunities as we can for undergraduates to get their hands on these things and engage in food systems issues directly, especially the social justice side of that,” Gliessman said.
Many students have found the resources offered by these programs as important to the future of not only the UCSC community but for communities on a larger local, regional and global scale.

“Programs like CAN and PICA offer students and our community members the ability to learn about the organic food systems and sustainable living to help promote a healthier society as a whole,” Williams said.
Until the future funding of such programs is decided, Bee Vadakan, director of education at the Sustainable Living Center, said she “encourages students to voice their support.”

“The [university’s] cutting of innovative programs that focus on student-led teaching lower the quality of education that is available to students,” Vadakan said. “I think [the university] needs to hear what’s meaningful and important to students.”

Free weekly dinners hosted by Friends of CAN (FOCAN) are also held on Tuesday nights from 6 to 8 p.m. in Building A of the Sustainable Living Center, located next to the Farm.
For additional information on campus sustainability efforts, visit www.canunite.org and ucscpica.org in addition to casfs.ucsc.edu/, http://sustainability.ucsc.edu/. and http://sec.enviroslug.org

Kyle Lakatos sells sweets at the “Periodic Table of Cookies” event at Kresge Pride. Photo by Pierce Crosby.

Max Aung and Kyle Lakatos are distinctly different: one suave and with a quick tongue, and the other reserved and methodological. But both have experienced similar challenges in finding a sense of belonging at a school that tends to separate identity from profession.

Lakatos was raised in the Bay Area for most of his life, whereas Aung emigrated with his family from Burma at the age of five. They are both first-generation college students who have excelled in professional degrees within the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) departments, but with very different focuses: Aung is a fourth-year in molecular cell and developmental biology and Lakatos is a fourth-year in biochemistry.

Interest in the sciences has brought them and many fellow peers together for healthy discussion, but they have found they are often more commonly united by a different identity: Lakatos and Aung are queer students.

“With STEM … when you come to the front door, you leave other things at the front door, and then you come inside with that identity,” Aung said. “When I go to resources for STEM, I kind of have to put my being gay behind, so its nice to have such an open, safe place to identify with both — that’s what The Element Lounge offers.”

The association of the dual identities may seem insignificant to some, but for those who have them in common, the particular combination can be rather challenging. Because of this divide between the sciences and their queer identity, Aung and Lakatos, along with Chris Britton and Mark Corre, collaborated to engineer The Element Lounge (TEL).

“There isn’t really an inclusion of all disciplinary discussions,” Aung said. “[In the sciences] its not that being LGBT is less accepted, it’s just that sciences have a certain stoic-ness to it, where you don’t really bring in those outside ideas — and you enjoy the beauty of that stoic-ness, but it’s lacking in that you don’t really bring culture to science that often. That’s why we need diversity programs … to have these conversations.”

Herbert Lee, mathematics department faculty member, vice provost of student affairs and TEL’s faculty sponsor, said TEL offers a valuable support system.

“There is a need for an organization like TEL, which helps form this community for students who might otherwise have difficulty in connecting with each other,” Lee said. “Communities like this generally increase the success rate of students in them.”

The group was founded in late spring, quickly attracting members from diverse areas of STEM.

“There was never open communication about it,” Lakatos said. “There was never really a bridge between grouping the queer identity with the scientific identity, it was always two separate things, so we really wanted to bring those together.”

The Element Lounge (TEL) has become part of a “trifecta” of three identity-oriented groups associated with making the bridge between science and community. Together with the Academic Excellence Program’s Pre-Health Community (PHC) and Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS), TEL generates awareness of student diversity within the science community.

While it’s not the only organization that provides support and awareness for queer students — or for science students — TEL is the only organization that provides this community simultaneously.

More than providing academic support, TEL aims to create a community of trust.

“I think the most hard-hitting thing that has happened, for me, is the idea that there are other people who are going through the same or similar struggle,” Lakatos said. “That is what was most rewarding about this group.”

“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.”

The full Disclosure exhibit includes a variety of interactive pieces that bridge the arts and sciences and rouse questions in viewers. Photo by Nita Evans.

New exhibit at Mary Porter Sesnon Gallery explores themes of failure and experimentation

Melissa Gwyn was an art professor creating molecular structures using fruits.

Scott Lokey was a chemistry professor.

When the two met, a labor of love commenced between the arts and sciences that would ultimately give way to the most recent exhibit at Porter College’s Sesnon Gallery.

“Full Disclosure,” which opened at the Sesnon Oct. 7, features a collaboration between UC Santa Cruz art professors and science professors. It explores the common themes of failure and experimentation in both disciplines.

“This exhibit shows interesting parallels between the process of an artist and a scientist,” said Lokey, an Assistant Professor of chemistry at UCSC and one of the organizers and curators of the show.

The idea first came about in 2002, when Gwyn — an Assistant Professor of art at UCSC and the co-curator of the exhibit — met Lokey at a new faculty dinner.

“We started to think, ‘wouldn’t it be interesting to combine science and the arts?’ and the idea started to percolate,” Lokey said of the initial concept.

Lokey and Gwyn’s primary motivation was to bring together people from different disciplines and observe what they would create. They contacted artists, chemists, mathematicians, biologists and more.

The artists wrote in-depth proposals for their project ideas. Lokey then reviewed and assessed the proposals. He suggested particular scientists that would be relevant and helpful to each artist’s proposal.

One of the artists participating in the exhibit, art professor Elliot Anderson, proposed a project that looked at landscapes and industrial sights. Lokey put Anderson in contact with Rus Flegal, a professor of environmental toxicology.

“We saw that [Anderson and Flegal] seemed to speak different dialects of the same language,” Lokey said.

After their first meeting, Anderson and Flegal were both eager to see what would eventually come out of the collaboration.

As various other faculty collaborations fell into place, both Lokey and Gwyn began to see a theme emerge: the ideas of failure and experimentation that are ever-present in both disciplines.

“Failure in science — and art—is an unfortunate component necessary for progress, [and] it is unavoidable when experimenting,” Lokey said.

Both Gwyn and Lokey noted that artists and scientists alike must continue in spite of failure, which often leads to an end result that is greater than anyone could have originally anticipated.

“Failure is a starting point, a place of entry, not a final summation,” Gwyn said.

Shelby Graham, the director of the Sesnon Gallery, said that she hopes the exhibit will allow people to see the not-so-subtle connections between the two disciplines and create a conversation surrounding them.

“Artists use the word intention, but sometimes when you don’t get to the first intention, you must be open to what it’s leading to,” Graham said of the pieces in the exhibit. “We want to raise more questions than answers, to spark curiosity and critical thought in the viewer. And we hope the dialogue continues outside of the gallery.”