Oakes College
Oakes College Office, Oakes Administration Building
(831) 459-2558
https://oakes.ucsc.edu/
Academic Programs
Academic Literacy Curriculum
College Scholars Program
Community Studies
Community-based Advocacy and Research (CARA) Certificate Program
Academic Emphasis
As a result of their experience at Oakes College, students will cultivate equity and justice. This is what drives Oakes College. The broad learning outcomes are for Oakes students to understand the self, community, systemic oppression, and action for change.
The Oakes College faculty represents a wealth of expertise from the natural sciences to the humanities, and we are proud to have some of the top scholars in the world among our faculty fellows. Our students major in nearly every discipline at UC Santa Cruz—from economics and computer science, to theater arts and Latin American and Latino studies—and they are well supported by the depth and breadth of the Oakes College faculty and the extensive knowledge of our advising team. Oakes graduates have gone on to successful careers in fields such as medicine, law, education, medical research, and community service.
The Oakes core course, Communicating Diversity for a Just Society, is required of Oakes students. Most students take the course in their first year. The course examines individual and collective responses to issues of culture, gender, sexuality, race, and class. Those who are admitted as transfer students are exempt from the core course requirement but may take the core course at their option pending available space.
Core Course
OAKS 1, Academic Literacy and Ethos: Communicating Diversity for a Just Society
Offered fall quarter
This course examines the intersections between reading as a college student practice, personal and social identities, and social justice. In our readings, discussions, and assignments, we seek to answer questions about how materials we read connect with our cultural, religious, sexual, ethnic, class, racial, and gender identities. How have our own ways of identifying—of naming or defining ourselves—shaped our individual experiences? Where do we position our own stories within our shared family histories? How do our own autobiographies and essays, as written accounts of our process of identification, bring our search for ourselves and our relationship with reading and writing into the same conversation?
College Advising
First floor, Oakes Administration Building
Mailing address:
The Office of Advising and Records
Oakes College
University of California, Santa Cruz
1156 High Street
Santa Cruz, CA 95064
Contact information:
oakesadvising@ucsc.edu
(831) 459-4531
At Oakes College, our role as college advisers is to serve as the first point of contact for our undergraduate students. We believe that effective advising mandates that we collaborate with students to identify and clarify their goals, develop a sense of self-authorship, and learn to make meaningful decisions about their lives. We ensure our students know that their educational trajectory extends beyond coursework, and includes opportunities and experiences that will enhance their education.
Investing in an advising model where a student’s lived experience is an educational asset, we advance our practices and become more engaged and proactive in our work. Our Oakes college advisers advocate for necessary policy and procedural changes. We address institutional barriers by engaging with justice rather than simply adopting it as a value. In turn, we aspire for students to see the greater meaning of their educational experience and how it can transform their lives beyond their undergraduate career.
The purview of colleges advising includes navigating campuswide requirements such as general education, academic progress, time to degree, and major selection and qualification.
Other Academic Programs
At Oakes College, we foster student engagement and leadership within and beyond the classroom. To this end, we encourage students to develop the knowledge, skills, and cross-cultural understanding necessary to become actively engaged people and future leaders in their own communities, workplaces, and academic disciplines as well as in the larger U.S. society and the world as a whole. We also provide a range of resources and programs that enable all students to succeed in their academic endeavors. Such resources include:
The Learning Center and the Westside Writing Center at Oakes College provide space for study groups as well as tutoring. Special assistance in academic reading and writing in a variety of subjects is offered to Oakes students.
The Oakes Computer Lab provides access to 20 PCs for Oakes students.
Co-curricular programs like Oakes 4.0, Oakes Core Café, and the residential Science Community at Oakes College all offer living-learning opportunities to enhance student success and to provide students with unique opportunities for interacting with faculty in small group contexts.
The Oakes College CARA Program. The Community-based Action-Research and Advocacy (CARA) Program of Oakes College works to create opportunities for experiential education, leadership, research, and career development; we center the strengths and needs of first-generation college students and projects for transformative social justice. Courses emphasize community-building along with research and communication techniques within the critical frameworks that build confidence and support justice initiatives. The program includes a development and outreach strategy with campus and community groups—including schools, youth sites, direct-service provider networks, and grassroots organizations, both on-campus and off. Upper-division courses are commonly accepted as major requirement substitutions in multiple departments. The Corre la Voz after-school program offers paid student leadership positions; the Puentes Program, in collaboration with Legal Studies, sponsors interns. Oakes students can earn a CARA certificate by completing a sequence of community-engaged coursework focused on social justice.
Student services at Oakes include academic advising and psychological counseling.