List of University of California, Santa Cruz people

This page lists notable alumni and faculty of the University of California, Santa Cruz; alumni may have attended without graduating.

Notable alumni

Academia

*William D. Adams – President of Colby College, Waterville, Maine
*Alexander Gonzalez, PhD 1979 – President of California State University, Sacramento
*Tod Machover – MIT Media Lab

Arts and letters

*Will Bagley, BA 1971 - historian of 1800 West
*Michael A. Bellesiles, BA 1975 - controversial historian
*Susie Bright - Writer, sex activist and sex therapy focus leader
*Laurie Garrett, BA 1975 - Newsday science reporter and author, Pulitzer Prize winner
*Philip Kan Gotanda - Playwright
*bell hooks, PhD 1983 - Feminist social critic
*Miranda JulyAttended but did not graduate.] - Filmmaker and writer
* Martha Mendoza, BA 1987 – AP reporter; shared the Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism in 2000 for her team's work on the No Gun Ri story [ [http://www.marinij.com/marin/ci_6598276 Tad Whitaker, "Marin Independent Journal," August 10, 2007, "Local crowd hears Marin reporter discuss book on AP coverage"] , accessed August 19, 2007] [ [http://www.ucsc.edu/currents/99-00/04-10/pulitzer.html Jim Burns, "UC Santa Cruz Sentinel Online,"" April 10, 2000, "UCSC graduate wins Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism"] , accessed August 19, 2007]
*Kent Nagano, BA 1974 - Conductor of the Los Angeles Opera and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra
*Larry Polansky, BA 197 - Composer
*Dana Priest, BA 1981 - Washington Post reporter and author. Winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for beat reporting.
*Lore Sjöberg - Writer
* Andrea Smith, PhD 2002 - Cherokee activist and author
*Jeremy Strick - BA - Director, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA)
*Bernt Wahl, BA 1984, BS 1986 - Author and entrepreneur, Fulbright Fellow. November 1985 coined UC Santa Cruz motto "Fiat Slug".
*Lawrence Weschler, 1974 - Author
*Richard White (historian) – Historian of American West, Native American history, and environmental history; MacArthur Foundation fellowship, 1995
*Daniel James Wolf, BA 1983 - Composer
*Laurence Yep – Author

Business

*Hilary Beech, MS, International Economics - CEO at Centre for Economic Policy Research
*Vaughn Stakes, BA, Politics - CEO at The Triathlete Store, President at Metropolis Research
*Susan Wojcicki, MS - Vice President, Product Management at Google
*Stephen Sefcik, BS, Business Management Economics - Notable Alumnus

Entertainment and broadcasting

*Michael Beardsley, BA 1998, Theater Arts - Actor
*John Brown, BA - Entity who appeared on ego trip's The (White) Rapper Show
*Jello Biafra - Singer and songwriter of the Dead Kennedys
*Brannon Braga, television writer
*Bill Carter, BA, Politics, Economics - Documentary film director and author
*Matthew Gray Gubler, BA – Actor (Criminal Minds, and Director
*Richard Harris - National Public Radio science reporter
*Victor Krummenacher - Bassist for Camper Van Beethoven, Monks of Doom, etc.
*David Lowery, BA 1984 - Singer and songwriter for Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker
*Camryn Manheim, BA 1984 - Actress
*Marti Noxon, BA - TV Producer
*Bradley Nowell, Singer and songwriter with Sublime
*Joe Palca, PhD 1982 - National Public Radio science reporter
*Rebecca Romijn - Supermodel, actress
*Maya Rudolph, BA 1995 - SNL cast member
*Jonathan Segel, BA 1985 - Composer/Multi-Instrumentalist for Camper Van Beethoven, etc.
*Andy Samberg, BA -- SNL cast member
*Tim Schafer - Game designer for Lucasarts and founder of Doublefine Productions
*Chris Tashima - Actor, filmmaker
*Ally Walker, BS - Actress
*Jesse Thorn, BS - Host of PRI's The Sound of Young America
*Gillian Welch, BA 1990 - Singer and songwriter
*Jay Franklin, BA 1996 - First announcer of the NFL to publicly use profanity on live TV, later fired.
*John D. Scott, BA 1987 - Singer, songwriter, voice instructor

Law

*Ellen Leonida, defense attorney for Scott Dyleski

Politics and public Life

*Huey P. Newton, PhD 1980 - Co-founding member of the Black Panther Party
*Bettina Aptheker PhD - leader in the Berkeley Free Speech Movement
*John Doolittle, BA 1972 - Member, U.S. House of Representatives, California 4th Congressional District
*Ron Gonzales, BA - Mayor of San Jose, California, 1999–2006
*Victor Davis Hanson, BA 1975 - Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
*Timothy Morgan, BA - Republican National Committee Treasurer
*Aaron Peskin, San Francisco Board of Supervisors member
*Art Torres, BA 1968 - California Democratic Party Chairman, former California State Senator

cience

*Richard Bandler - Co-founder of Neuro Linguistic Programming
*Joseph DeRisi, BA 1992 - Molecular biologist, Professor at UC San Francisco, MacArthur Fellow, known for work on SARS and malaria
*J. Doyne Farmer, PhD 1981 - Physics Researcher at Santa Fe Institute
*Yoav Freund, Phd 1993 - Computer Scientist, Professor at University of California, San Diego, Invented AdaBoost
*Steven Hawley, PhD 1977 - Astronaut
*Geoffrey Marcy, PhD 1982 - Professor of Astronomy at UC Berkeley and planet finder
*Marc Okrand, BA 1972 - Linguist, creator of the Klingon language
*Julie Packard, BA 1974 - Executive Director, Monterey Bay Aquarium
*Cheryl Scott, BS 1974 - Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention operations in Tanzania from 2001 to 2005
*Rob D. Shaw, PhD 1980–1988 Macarthur Award for work on Chaos Theory
*Kathryn D. Sullivan, BS 1973 - Astronaut

Notable faculty

*Ralph Abraham - Professor Emeritus of Mathematics; notable for founding the Visual Mathematics Institute and for his pioneering work on Chaos Theory
*Luca de Alfaro - designer of reliability rating software that closed Wikipedia from the notion that "anyone can edit" it.
*Bettina Aptheker - Professor of Feminist Studies and History
*Elliot Aronson - Professor Emeritus of Psychology, author of The Social Animal and "", creator of the Jigsaw Classroom model, and one of the few psychologists to win the American Psychological Association's highest honor in all three fields.
*Reyner Banham - late Professor of Art History and a pre-eminent architectural historian, in particular of the modern era.
*Tom Banks - Professor of Physics. Known for work on string theory, elementary particle physics, and cosmology.
*Harry Berger, Jr. – member of the AAAS (elected 2006) [http://www.amacad.org/members/class_section.pdf "Bulletin of the American Academy," Fall 2006, pp 66 - 104, "List of Active Members by Classes"] , accessed July 17, 2007]
*Norman O. Brown - late Professor Emeritus of Humanities
*Joseph Frederick Bunnett – member of the AAAS (elected 1959); see Radical-nucleophilic aromatic substitution
*Raymond Carver-Author
*James Clifford - Professor of History of Consciousness. Renowned for groundbreaking publications of postmodernist and postcolonial interpretations of anthropology and ethnography: Writing Culture and The Predicament of Culture and Routes.
*David Cope - Professor of Music; notable for his experiments in A.I. and computer-created musical compositions
*Angela Davis - Professor of History of Consciousness; writer and activist
*John Dizikes - Professor Emeritus of American Studies, author, won the 1993 National Book Critics Circle Award.
*Frank Drake - Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and Astrophysics. Proposed the Drake Equation; member of the AAAS (elected 1974).
*Sandra M. Faber - Professor of Astronomy & Astrophysics. Instrumental in inventing Cold dark matter theory and fundamental work in the field of Galaxy formation and evolution. Member of the NAS (elected 1985), the AAAS (elected 1989), and the American Philosophical Society (elected 2001).
*Donna Haraway - Professor of History of Consciousness. Doctorate in biology. Often cited author of feminist history of science and culture studies of cyborg. Books: and .
*David Haussler Professor of Biomolecular Engineering. He and his team assembled the public draft human genome and developed the [http://genome.ucsc.edu UCSC Genome Browser] as part of the Human Genome Project; member of the AAAS (elected 2006).
*David A. Huffman - Deceased. Founding faculty of the Information and Computer Science Board. Developed the famous Huffman coding
*Frederic Jameson -- Professor of History of Consciousness; cultural critic and theorist of the post-modern. Published the essay, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, a significant investigation into contemporary culture and the political economy.
*Jim Kent -- Associate Research Scientist in the Department of Biomolecular Engineering. Directs the genome browser development and quality assurance staff of the UCSC Genome Bioinformatics Group; created the computer program that assembled the first working draft of the human genome sequence; participates in the public consortium efforts to produce, assemble, and annotate genomes.
*Robert Paul Kraft – member of the AAAS (elected 1974).
*Tom Lehrer - lecturer in American Studies and Mathematics. Also well known for his satire and songwriting.
*Douglas N. C. Lin – member of the AAAS (elected 2002).
*Nathaniel Mackey - poet and editor.
*Dominic W. Massaro - Professor of Psychology and Computer Engineering. Originator of the fuzzy logical model of perception, one of the leading theories of speech perception.
*Claire Ellen Max – member of the AAAS (elected 2002).
*Gordon Mumma - Professor Emeritus of Music, composer
*Richard Abel Musgrave – member of the AAAS (elected 1961).
*Jerry Nelson - Professor of Astronomy & Astrophysics. The scientist who pioneered the use of mirror segments, making the Keck telescopes possible, member of the NAS.
*Harry Noller - Professor of Biology. RNA research; member of the AAAS (elected 1969) and the National Academy of Sciences (elected 1992).
*Donald E. Osterbrock – member of the AAAS (elected 1968) and the National Academy of Sciences (elected 1966).
*Ira Pohl - Professor of Computer Science, Fellow of the ACM; well known for the theory of heuristic search. Author of many CS books, including A Book on C.
*Joel Primack - Professor of Physics, noted cosmologist; renowned for Cold Dark Matter Theory proposed along with Sandra Faber (see above) and Sir Martin Rees.
*Geoffrey Pullum - Professor of Linguistics and Distinguished Professor of Humanities. Co-author of the "Cambridge Grammar of the English Language" ISBN 0-521-43146-8; member of the AAAS (elected 2003).
*Nirvikar Singh - Professor of Economics. Notable for research on federalism, governance, and economic reform in India.
*Robert L. Sinsheimer - Professor Emeritus of Biology and former Chancellor.
*Michael Ellman Soule – member of the AAAS (elected 2005).
*Ben Stein - Economist, actor and former White House speechwriter
*Elizabeth Stephens - Performance artist and longtime partner of artist/sex expert Annie Sprinkle [http://arts.ucsc.edu/faculty/Stephens/]
*Roland G. Tharp - Professor Emeritus of Education. Considered to be the most influential expert in modern social constructivist theories in education.
*Stephen Thorsett - Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics and Dean of Physical and Biological Science. Known for work on properties of compact stars.
*Hayden White – member of the AAAS (elected 1991).
*Harold Widom – member of the AAAS (elected 2006).
*Stanford E. Woosley - Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics. Noted for his work on supernova gamma ray bursts. Member of the NAS (elected 2006) and AAAS (elected 2001).

Notes and References