The Academic Challenge Program is now the ---------- College Scholars Program ---------

Academic Challenge Program is now College Scholars Program (CSP). For more information regarding The College Scholars Program please take a look at the CSP website.

The Challenge program provided high-achieving first-year students at Kresge, Merrill, Porter, and Stevenson with a rigorous program emphasizing dynamic interaction with UCSC faculty and academically-motivated peers in classes, social settings, and collaborative research projects. The program consisted of classes and activities designed to foster close faculty-student interaction over four quarters. Though students could decide to stop participating in the Program at any point, those who completed at least the first two quarters of the program received a “Challenge Program Participation and Completion Certificate.”

Frosh who had a fall quarter GPA of 3.3 and had satisfied the Entry Level Writing Requirement were eligible to apply to the program during winter quarter.

Students selected for the program then:

  • Enrolled in one of four small, participatory, and innovative research seminars offered by the four colleges in the spring.
  • Attended six talks given bi-weekly (weekly during the first 2 weeks) by different UCSC faculty on a problem that lended itself to interdisciplinary cross-examination the following fall. The four participating colleges each invited 2 speakers and hosted 2 dinners at their college.
  • Optional: Worked with a UCSC faculty member (possibly one of the speakers in the colloquium series) to design a research proposal. Guided by the faculty member, the final product of the independent study was a 7-10 page collaborative faculty-student proposal for a project focused either on research or experiential learning. Students were then encouraged to submit their proposals for funding from campus agencies, outside groups, and the Challenge program, which funded up to six proposals for spring. The 6 competitive fellowships were used to fund the most promising UCSC student-faculty collaborations.

Please note: The UC Santa Cruz College Scholars Program will be facilitated by Undergraduate Honors.  Students interested in participating can read about the program on the Undergraduate Honors website

Check out the following testimonial from a previous Challenge Program participant, Michelle Plouse!




Spring 2016: Research Seminar (5 credits)

Students from any of the four colleges chose to enroll in one of the following seminars:

Kresge Challenge Seminar: Kresge 90 Collaborative Approaches to Research

Nicol Hammond • Spring 2016 • TTH 2:00 - 3:45pm

Critical engagement of current research methodology in the humanities and arts. Coursework will consist primarily of a collaborative research project that requires each student to synthesize information and sources in topics both familiar and unfamiliar. Specific methodologies presented will vary (by instructor) across 2-3 disciplines, possibly including literature, history, the arts, and cultural studies. Enrollment is restricted to first-year, Challenge Program participants from Stevenson College, Merrill College, Porter College, and Kresge College. Gain acquaintance with a range of research methods in the humanities and the arts; learn techniques of collaborative research and co-authorship; think critically about the role of research methods in the determination of scholarly questions, knowledge, and argumentation; and practice disciplinary and cross-disciplinary thinking to synthesize research from disparate sources and methodologies. Satisfies the PR-E General Education requirement.

Merrill Challenge Seminar: Merrill 90 Theory and Practice of Field Study

Michael Rotkin • Spring 2016 • TTH 12:00 - 1:45pm

This course provides an opportunity to learn about Santa Cruz, California--its contemporary history, culture, and politics--while simultaneously conducting field study. The course will culminate in a student-directed performance of poetry, videos, and theatrical projects, coinciding with a display of murals or paintings designed by the students. This will be much more than an opportunity to simply volunteer service in the local community. We will study how things have changed in Santa Cruz, which moved in a relatively brief period from being one of the most conservative communities in the United States to one of the most progressive. Students will learn through readings, lectures, discussions, and individual field experience working with local service and political organizations. The course, which is aimed at serious undergraduate scholars at the lower-division level, will be an opportunity to learn about qualitative, interdisciplinary social science research and will be a good way to prepare for on-going, thoughtful and effective activism in Santa Cruz and elsewhere on a wide variety of issues. If you're interested in more information about field study and what it entails, click here or contact Mike Rotkin at openup@ucsc.edu or at (831) 345 - 8469. Satisfies the PR-S General Education requirement.

Porter Challenge Seminar: Porter 90B Art and Politics after Google

David Lau • Spring 2016 • TTH 12:00 - 1:45pm

This challenge seminar will explore the growing global significance of the internet as its cultural influence is ever more seamlessly integrated into everyday life. Moving from the early-90s flowering of “information technology,” to the dotcom bubble, from there to web 2.0 and social media, and up to the present post-crisis period of internet surveillance, our class emphases will fall on contemporary documentary forms of art (Paul Chan, Hito Steyerl, and Ruben Ochoa), including video documentary (Startup.com, Citizen Four, The Square), poetry (US – Anne Boyer, K. Silem Mohammad, Ben Lerner, Juliana Spahr; Egypt – Maged Zaher; China – Xu Lizhi; Russia – Kirill Medvedev; and sampling of poetry from Greece), web-based music, and journalism, from blogs to literary journals. We will also examine Thomas Pynchon’s The Bleeding Edge, a historical novel of 9/11 and the dotcom bubble; we will study Joyelle McSweeney’s drama The Leaks, a surreal take on the plight of Julian Assange and the cultural significance of Wikileaks. The class will culminate with the study of the popular use of art, poetry, digital video, and social media in contemporary social protest movements, from Egypt’s Tahrir Square to Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter. In addition to writing assignments and dramatic study, students will realize also analyze a variety of digital projects (art, video, blog journal, twitter feed, digital poem, website, etc.). Satisfies the IM General Education requirement.

Stevenson Challenge Seminar: Stevenson 90 The Nuclear Pacific

Alice Yang • Spring 2016 • MW 5:00 - 6:45pm

This course will provide students with the opportunity to use multiple disciplines to research the history of the nuclear Pacific. Issues include the testing of nuclear weapons, development of nuclear power, and social, political, and environmental responses from 1945 to the present. We will use archival materials from Special Collections in McHenry Library, the National Security Archives, the National Archives, and a variety of online collections. Possible research topics include bomb testing, anti-nuclear activism, the migration of Pacific peoples, environmental impacts, and international politics. Satisfies the PE-T General Education requirement.


Fall 2016: Speaker Colloquium Course (2 credits)

The Challenge Program Speaker Colloquium Course is meant to welcome students into the fascinations of research. The class showcases six innovative, charismatic scholars, each from a different department, and representing all five of UCSC’s academic divisions, to talk about their research and to share with students what got them interested in research in their fields in the first place: how they went from being students to scholars in their fields. Students have a chance to interact with these scholars both in the lectures and, twice in the quarter, at intimate dinners held in a provost’s house.

This is the official flyer for the 2016 Fall lecture series: Life as a Researcher

Winter Independent Study to Develop a Research Proposal
(2-5 credits)

Individual students, or a team of students, work with a UCSC faculty member (possibly one of the speakers in the colloquium series) to design a research proposal. Guided by the faculty member, the final product of the independent study will be a 7-10 page collaborative faculty-student proposal for a project focused either on research or experiential learning.

Students are then encouraged to submit their proposals for funding from campus agencies, outside groups, and the Challenge program, which will fund up to six such proposals for spring.

Spring Quarter Research Collaborations (2-5 credits)

The 6 competitive fellowships will be used to fund the most promising UCSC student-faculty collaborations.

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