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 Drea Adams – President of Colby College, Waterville, Maine
• Chester Dunning, B.A. 1971 - historian at Texas A&M University, specializes in Russian studies
• Kristen R. Ghodsee, B.A. 1993 - Professor of Gender and Women's Studies at Bowdoin College; winner of 2012 Guggenheim Fellowship
• Alexander Gonzalez, Ph.D 1979 – President of California State University, Sacramento
• Thyrza Nichols Goodeve, artist and writer, School of Visual Arts
• Caren Kaplan, Ph.D. - Professor of American Studies at UC Davis
• Steven G. Krantz, B.A - Professor of Mathematics at Washington University in St. Louis; winner of the Chauvenet Prize
• Annette Lareau, B.A. 1974 - Professor of Sociology at University of Pennsylvania
• Lisa Lowe, Ph.D. - Professor of Literature at Tufts
• Patricia Nelson Limerick - Professor of History at University of Colorado and a leading historian of the American West
• Tod Machover – MIT Media Lab
• Austin E. Quigley, Ph.D - Dean of Columbia College of Columbia University
• John R. Rickford, B.A. 1971 - Professor of Linguistics at Stanford University and African American Vernacular English or Ebonics expert
• Sally Sedgwick, B.A. 1978 - Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at University of Illinois at Chicago

Arts and letters

• Will Bagley, BA 1971 - historian of 1800s American West
• Michael A. Bellesiles, BA 1975 - author of a book "Arming America: The origins of a National Gun Culture" which won the Bancroft Prize in 2001; the prize was rescinded by Columbia University in 2002 as for having "violated basic norms of scholarship and the high standards expected of Bancroft Prize winners." Called a con-man by author Gary Wills, he was forced to resign from Emory University that year.
• Susie Bright - writer, sex activist and sex therapy focus leader
• Gail Carriger, MA 2008 - steampunk author
• Laurie Garrett, BA 1975 - Newsday science reporter and author, Pulitzer Prize winner
• Philip Kan Gotanda - playwright
• Reyna Grande, BA 1999 - author, American Book Award winner
• Kira Lynn Harris, MFA 1998 - artist
• bell hooks, PhD 1983 - feminist social critic
• Miranda July^[1] - filmmaker and writer
• Jayne Ann Krentz, BA 1970 - New York Times bestselling author
• Katerina Lanfranco, BA 2001 - artist
• Deborah Madison, BA 1968 - cookbook author, founding chef of the Greens Restaurant
• Steve Martini, BA 1968 - bestselling mysteries author
• Omar Musa - award-winning Australian author, poet and rapper
• Kent Nagano, BA 1974 - conductor of the Los Angeles Opera and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra
• Larry Polansky, BA - composer
• Dana Priest, BA 1981 - Washington Post reporter and author; winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting and 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service
• Michael Schennum, BA 2000 - photojournalist
• Lore Sjöberg^[1] - writer
• Andrea Smith, PhD 2002 - Cherokee activist and author
• David Talbot, BA - founder of Salon.com, author, journalist
• Mark Teague, BA 1985 - author and illustrator of children's books
• Hector Tobar, BA - Los Angeles Times columnist, author, winner of Pulitzer Prize in 1992
• Bernt Wahl, BA 1984, BS 1986 - author and entrepreneur, Fulbright Fellow. November 1985 coined UC Santa Cruz motto "Fiat Slug"
• Annie Wells, BA 1981 - photographer, filmmaker, winner of Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography in 1997
• Lawrence Weschler, 1974 - author
• Richard White – historian of American West, Native American history, and environmental history; MacArthur Foundation fellowship, 1995
• Daniel James Wolf, BA 1983 - composer
• Laurence Yep – author

Business

• Shel Kaphan, BA 1980 Mathenmatics Amazon's first employee and founding member of its technical team
• Jonah Peretti, BS 1996 - founder of BuzzFeed and Huffington Post
• Susan Wojcicki, MS - senior vice president, advertising at Google

Entertainment and broadcasting

• Lorin Ashton, aka Bassnectar - free-form electronic music artist and DJ
• Jello Biafra^[1] - singer and songwriter of the Dead Kennedys
• Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, BA, filmmaker (V/H/S, Southbound) and guitarist for Link 80
• Brannon Braga^[1] - award-winning film writer for Star Trek Generations and an executive producer of 24
• Bill Carter, BA Politics, Economics - documentary film director and author
• Rick Carter, BA, Oscar-winning art director and production designer
• John Craigie, BA Mathematics 2002 - folk singer
• Dennis Delaney, BA Anthropology 1976 - writer and actor
• Brett Dennen - singer, songwriter
• Jacob Aaron Estes, BA 1994 - film screenwriter and director
• Anne Flett-Giordano, BA 1976 - television writer and producer (Kate & Allie, Frasier, Desperate Housewives)
• Cary Joji Fukunaga, BA 1999 - Sundance Award-winning filmmaker (Sin Nombre)
• Matthew Gray Gubler,^[1] BA – actor (Criminal Minds') and director
• Richard Gunn, BA 1997 - actor (Dark Angel, Granite Flats, and For the Love of Money)
• Richard Harris - National Public Radio science reporter
• Antony Hegarty - attended in late 1980s - Composer and singer for Antony and the Johnsons, and visual artist
• Alice Inoue - former television presenter and author
• Victor Krummenacher^[1] - bassist for Camper Van Beethoven, Monks of Doom
• David Lowery, BA 1984 - singer and songwriter for Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker
• Camryn Manheim, BA 1984 - actress
• Barry Mendel - film producer (Rushmore, Sixth Sense, Munich, Funny People)
• Stephen Mirrione, BA - Academy Award-winning film editor
• Bradley Nowell,^[1] singer and songwriter with Sublime
• Marti Noxon, BA - TV producer
• Joe Palca, PhD 1982 - National Public Radio science reporter
• Jack Passion, BA 2006 - competitive beard grower and star of IFC's Whisker Wars
• Chuck Ranberg, BA 1977 - television writer and producer, Frasier, Desperate Housewives
• Rebecca Romijn^[1] - supermodel, actress
• Maya Rudolph, BA 1995 - SNL cast member
• Andy Samberg,^[1] BA - Saturday Night Live cast member
• Tim Schafer^[1] - game designer for LucasArts and founder of Doublefine Productions
• Akiva Schaffer, BA - Saturday Night Live writer, filmmaker
• Stuart Schuffman, aka Broke-Ass Stuart, BA 2003 - travel writer, poet, host of IFC's Young Broke & Beautiful
• Jonathan Segel, BA 1985 - composer, multi-instrumentalist for Camper Van Beethoven
• Nikki Silva, BA 1973 - one half of The Kitchen Sisters, who are regularly featured on NPR
• Chris Tashima^[1] - actor, Academy Award-winning filmmaker
• Jesse Thorn, BS - host of NPR's Bullseye with Jesse Thorn
• Rubén Valtierra, BA - keyboardist for "Weird Al" Yankovic
• Ally Walker, BS - actress known for roles in Profiler, Sons of Anarchy, and The Protector
• Gillian Welch, BA 1990 - singer and songwriter
• Rich Wilkes, BA 1988 - writer, filmmaker (Billy Madison, Stoned Age, Beer Money, XXX, Airheads)

Law

• Vince Girdhari Chhabria, BA 1991 - judge, United States District Court for the Northern District of California
• Joan E. Donoghue, BA 1978 - judge, International Court of Justice
• Ellen Leonida, defense attorney for Scott Dyleski

Politics and public life

• Bettina Aptheker, PhD - leader in the Berkeley Free Speech Movement
• Katherine Canavan, BA - former United States Ambassador to the Republic of Botswana and United States Ambassador to Lesotho
• 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
• James Charles Kopp, BA Biology 1976 - murderer of Buffalo abortion doctor Bernard Slepian in 1998; convicted in 2003 and serving sentence of 25 years to life
• John Laird, BA 1972 - California Natural Resources Agency Secretary, former California Assemblyman, and Mayor of Santa Cruz
• Azadeh Moaveni, BA - journalist and writer
• Huey P. Newton, BA 1974, PhD 1980 - Co-founding member of the Black Panther Party
• Aaron Peskin, San Francisco Board of Supervisors member
• Drummond Pike, BA 1970 - Tides Foundation founder, philanthropist, and social entrepreneur
• Art Torres, BA 1968 - California Democratic Party Chairman, former California State Senator

Science

• Richard Bandler, MA 1975^[2] - co-creator of neuro-linguistic programming
• Joseph DeRisi, BA 1992 - molecular biologist, professor at UC San Francisco, MacArthur Fellow, known for work on SARS and malaria
• Alan Dressler, PhD 1976, staff astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science, member of the National Academy of Sciences, cosmologist, author
• J. Doyne Farmer, PhD 1981 - pioneer in chaos theory, Prediction Company, Santa Fe Institute
• Debra Fischer, PhD 1998, Professor of Astronomy at Yale University, planet finder
• Yoav Freund, PhD 1993 - computer scientist, professor at University of California, San Diego, inventor of AdaBoost
• John Grinder, PhD 1971 - linguist, co-creator of neuro-linguistic programming^[3]
• Steven Hawley, PhD 1977 - astronaut, Professor of Physics at Kansas University
• Geoffrey Marcy, PhD 1982 - Professor of Astronomy at UC Berkeley, planet finder, and member of the National Academy of Sciences
• Marc Okrand, BA 1972 - linguist, creator of the Klingon language
• Mark M. Phillips, PhD 1978 - staff astronomer at Las Campanas Observatory, inventor of the Phillips relationship, pioneer in supernova cosmology
• Rob Shaw, PhD 1980 - MacArthur Award for work on chaos theory, 1988
• Pamela Silver, BA 1974 - Professor of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School, first Director of Harvard University Systems Biology Graduate Program, synthetic biologist
• Kathryn D. Sullivan, BS 1973 - astronaut, science museum CEO (COSI Columbus), Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere, NOAA Administrator
• Nicholas B. Suntzeff, PhD 1980 - Professor of Astronomy at Texas A&M University; cosmologist; co-founder of High-Z Supernova Search Team, which discovered dark energy

Sports

• Anton Peterlin^[1] - soccer player

Notable faculty

• Ralph Abraham - Professor Emeritus of Mathematics, notable for founding the Visual Mathematics Institute and for his pioneering work on chaos theory
• Bettina Aptheker - Professor of Feminist Studies and History
• Elliot Aronson - Professor Emeritus of Psychology; author of The Social Animal and Nobody Left to Hate: Teaching Compassion after Columbine; creator of the Jigsaw Classroom model; 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 preeminent architectural historian, in particular of the modern era
• Tom Banks - Professor of Physics. Known for work on string theory, elementary particle physics, and cosmology
• Gregory Bateson - late lecturer and fellow of Kresge College; anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist
• George R. Blumenthal - Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics, and Chancellor of the University of California, Santa Cruz
• Norman O. Brown - late Professor Emeritus of Humanities
• William L. Burke - late Professor of Physics (cosmologist); chaos theory "godfather"
• James H. Clark - Assistant Professor of Information Science, founder of Silicon Graphics and Netscape
• James Clifford - Professor of History of Consciousness, known for publications of postmodernist and postcolonial interpretations of anthropology and ethnography
• 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, 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)^[4]
• William Everson - late lecturer and poet-in-residence
• Sandra M. Faber - Professor of Astronomy and 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),^[4] and the American Philosophical Society (elected 2001)
• Alison Galloway - forensic anthropologist who worked in identifying the physical remains of Laci Peterson in the Scott Peterson Trial ^[4]
• Donna Haraway - Professor of History of Consciousness; doctorate in biology; often-cited author of feminist history of science and culture studies of cyborg
• David Haussler - Professor of Biomolecular Engineering; he and his team assembled the public draft human genome and developed the Genome Browser as part of the Human Genome Project; member of the AAAS (elected 2006)^[4] and the National Academy of Sciences
• George Herbig - emeritus Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics, pioneer in the study of star formation, discoverer of the Herbig Ae/Be stars and Herbig-Haro Objects, member of the National Academy of Sciences
• George Hitchcock - late lecturer, poetry and theater
• David A. Huffman - deceased; founding faculty of the Information and Computer Science Board; developed 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 P. Kraft - Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics, stellar astronomer, member of the National Academy of Sciences
• Tom Lehrer - lecturer in American Studies and Mathematics; known for his satire and songwriting
• Chip Lord - Professor of Film and Digital Media; member of Ant Farm, a groundbreaking, experimental art and architecture collective he founded in 1968 with fellow architect Doug Michels
• 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 – Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics, member of the AAAS (elected 2002)^[4] and the National Academy of Sciences
• Gordon Mumma - Professor Emeritus of Music, composer
• Richard Abel Musgrave – member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (elected 1961)^[4]
• Jerry Nelson - Professor of astronomy and astrophysics; 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 [American Academy of Arts and Sciences (elected 1969)^[4] and the National Academy of Sciences (elected 1992)
• Donald E. Osterbrock – member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (elected 1968)^[4] and the National Academy of Sciences (elected 1966)
• Micah Perks - fiction writer and memoirist
• 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 Cambridge Grammar of the English Language; member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (elected 2003)^[4]
• Adrienne Rich - late professor, poet and essayist
• Page Smith – Historian
• Michael Ellman Soule – member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (elected 2005)^[4]
• Ben Stein – former professor of economics, more notable for his work as a comedian, actor and political commentator
• Stephen Thorsett - Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics; Dean of Physical and Biological Science; known for work on properties of compact stars
• Anna Tsing - Professor of Anthropology; Guggenheim Fellow and Niels Bohr Professorship
• Noah Wardrip-Fruin - Associate Professor of Computer Science, digital media and interactive fiction researcher
• Hayden White – member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (elected 1991)^[4]
• Jim Whitehead - Chair of Computer Science and creator of WebDAV
• Harold Widom – member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (elected 2006)^[4]
• Stanford E. Woosley - Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics; noted for his work on supernova gamma ray bursts; member of the NAS (elected 2006) and American Academy of Arts and Sciences (elected 2001)^[4]
• Karen Tei Yamashita - author and playwright

Notes and references

1. Attended but did not graduate.
2. BA from UCSC in 1972, MA - Lone Mountain College, 1975
3. John Grinder (1971). On deletion phenomena in English. Thesis (PhD. in Linguistics). University of California, San Diego. OCLC 17641707
4. Bulletin of the American Academy, Fall 2006, pp 66 - 104, "List of Active Members by Classes", accessed July 17, 2007